Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
composed of specialists in a number of disciplines—physics, medicine, biology,
dosimetry, instrumentation, administration, and so forth. They are not government
affiliated and they have no legal authority to impose their recommendations. The
NCRP today is a nonprofit corporation chartered by the United States Congress.
Some important dates and events in the history of radiation protection follow.
1895 Roentgen discovers ionizing radiation.
1900 American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) founded.
1915 British Roentgen Society adopts X-ray protection resolution; believed to be
the first organized step toward radiation protection.
1920 ARRS establishes standing committee for radiation protection.
1921 British X-Ray and Radium Protection Committee presents its first radiation
protection rules.
1922 ARRS adopts British rules.
1922 American Registry of X-Ray Technicians founded.
1925 Mutscheller's “tolerance dose” for X rays.
1925 First International Congress of Radiology, London, establishes ICRU.
1928 ICRP established under auspices of the Second International Congress of
Radiology, Stockholm.
1928 ICRU adopts the roentgen as unit of exposure.
1929 Advisory Committee on X-Ray and Radium Protection (ACXRP) formed in
United States (forerunner of NCRP).
1931 The roentgen adopted as unit of X radiation.
1931 ACXRP publishes recommendations (
National Bureau of Standards Hand-
book
15).
1934 ICRP recommends daily tolerance dose.
1941 ACXRP recommends first permissible body burden, for radium.
1942 Manhattan District begins to develop atomic bomb; beginning of health
physics as a profession.
1946 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission created.
1946 NCRP formed as outgrowth of ACXRP.
1947 U.S. National Academy of Sciences establishes Atomic Bomb Casualty
Commission (ABCC) to initiate long-term studies of A-bomb survivors in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1949 NCRP publishes recommendations and introduces risk/benefit concept.
1952 Radiation Research Society formed.
1953 ICRU introduces concept of absorbed dose.
1955 United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
(UNSCEAR) established.
1956 Health Physics Society founded.
1956 International Atomic Energy Agency organized under United Nations.
1957 NCRP introduces age proration for occupational doses and recommends
nonoccupational exposure limits.
1957 U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy begins series of
hearings on radiation hazards, beginning with “The Nature of Radioactive
Fallout and Its Effects on Man.”
