Health risks of low dose ionizing radiation in humans: a review.

Radiobiologists have been struggling to estimate the health risks from low doses of radiation in humans for decades. Health risks involve not only neoplastic diseases but also somatic mutations that may contribute to other illnesses (including birth defects and ocular maladies) and heritable mutations that may increase the risk of diseases in future generations. Low dose radiation-induced cancer in humans depends on several variables, and most of these variables are not possible to correct for in any epidemiologic study.