European Committee on Radiation Risk

The European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) is a committee set up in 1997 by the European Green Party, (including Green Party MEPs) to discuss the contents of the European Directive 96/29/EURATOM which sets out the basic standards regarding radiation protection in the European Union. The group includes several prominent critics of the dominant view of radiation risk such as articulated by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). The Committee is entirely independent.

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Dr Alice Stewart, one of the first scientists to study the health effects of low doses of radiation, was the first Chair of the ECRR. The Chair of the Scientific Committee is Professor Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake. The Scientific Secretary is Dr. Chris Busby.

The Committee has published two major works, the ECRR 2003 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. Regulators' Edition; and ECRR Chernobyl 20 Years On: the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Both are discussed on the Committee's website [1]. The 2003 Recommendations are published in English, French, Russian, Japanese and Spanish. Chernobyl 20 Years On is available only in English. It is published online and can be downloaded freely (a 4Mb pdf)
In 2005 the official French Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) published a report on the ECRR's 2003 Recommendations. The IRSN report, (also in an English edition) endorses the ECRR's concerns about the theoretical and epidemiological bases of current radiation protection standards but questions the Committee's proposed remedy. The Committee's response to IRSN is published.

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