{"id":1758,"date":"2019-11-14T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T19:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crpa-acrp-bulletin.ca\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2020-02-18T19:42:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T01:42:12","slug":"presidents-message-message-du-president-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crpa-acrp-bulletin.ca\/fr\/2019\/11\/14\/presidents-message-message-du-president-5\/","title":{"rendered":"President\u2019s Message \/ Message du pr\u00e9sident"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Communication. We all need to communicate. We communicate feelings, states of mind, opinions, questions, advice, facts, and a countless abundance of other thoughts each and every day. We communicate with each other, with our pets . . . We may even frolic in the forest communicating with nature! You get the point.<\/p>\n

Communication is not always simple. We often encounter barriers to communication\u2014language barriers, physical or emotional barriers, and barriers resulting from having different levels of understanding of a given subject. Every day we strive to overcome these communication barriers.<\/p>\n

If communication is so important in our day-to-day lives, why is it sometimes difficult for radiation protection and health physics experts to adequately explain radiation risk to the public and the media? Simply put, scientists and engineers have a hard time drawing a \u201cline in the sand\u201d and saying, \u201cbelow that line we are safe\u201d and \u201cabove that line we are at increased risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are good at understanding the technical side of radiation exposure, statistics, and uncertainty, but we are often not good at translating these important technical concepts into readily digestible (yet accurate) explanations for the non-technical expert.<\/p>\n

We understand bell curves and hypotheses, and we can synthesize and understand the abstract. However, this detailed understanding is often what prevents us from saying that something is \u201csafe.\u201d It is extremely difficult to convey the concept of \u201csafe\u201d versus \u201cunsafe\u201d when we rely on a partially scientific hypothesis called the linear non-threshold (LNT) hypothesis as our basis for risk estimation.<\/p>\n

I say \u201cpartially scientific\u201d because we have a pretty good idea of both the deterministic and the stochastic effects at high-dose and high-dose-rate ionizing radiation exposure. However, at low-dose our knowledge is based on \u201cfairy dust and dreams,\u201d tied to an unscientific assumption that zero risk only happens at zero-dose.<\/p>\n

Of course, this has been the subject of some rather animated discussions at conferences, workshops, and meetings around the world dealing with the effects of low-dose radiation. It is clear that even within the ranks of radiation protection professionals, communicating these ideas is difficult!<\/p>\n

So, what can we, as professionals, do to improve our chances of communicating risk and<\/em> benefits from radiation exposure to the public and the media? A few ideas come to mind:<\/p>\n