APPENDIX A Radiation Standards Setting Organizations and Their Roles The organization which recommends basic radiation cri- teria and standards at the international level is the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). It was established in 1928 under the auspices of the Second International Congress of Radiology. During the early period and until 1950, the ICRP was concerned primarily with recommendations designed to provide protection to members of the medical profession in their diagnostic and thera- | peutic use of X-rays and gamma radiation from radium. However, since the advent of atomic energy, and radiation uses on a large scale, it has extended its efforts to include studies of radiation protection matters covering the whole | gamut of radiation applications. It works together with its Sister commission, the International Commission on Radiation Units Measurements (ICRU), and relies on the ICRU for back-_ ground knowledge on radiation measurements. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) was organized in 1929, a year after the ICRP, as a combined effort of several radiation protection committees in the United States to consolidate their scattered efforts and to present a unified voice at meetings of the ICRP.1 The ICRP and NCRP are private groups whose recommendationsare purely advisory. In 1934 the NCRP adopted the simple level of 0.1 roentgen per day, measured in air as the tolerance dose. In -1940, it recommer.ded a permissible body burden of 0.1 micro- gram for ingested radium. The latter standard, still in effect today, corresponds to an average dose to the skeleton of about 30 rem/yr or a dose to the critical endosteal tissue out to a distance of 5-10 microns of about 10 rem/yr. 1/ Initially the NCRP was known as the Advisory Committee on X-rays and Radium Protection; in 1946 the name was chancod to the National Committee on Radiation Protection and Mencurements, and in 1964 it received a Tederal charter and toon its present name.