Virginia ANS monthly meeting – Jan 21

The Virginia Chapter of the American Nuclear Society will be holding its monthly meeting on January 21 at the Dominion Innsbrook Technology Center in Glenn Allen, VA. That meeting will be the annual joint meeting with the local chapter of the Health Physics Society.

Schedule:
Social Hour – 5:30 p.m.
Dinner – 6:00 p.m.
Presentation – 6:45 p.m.
Adjourn – 8:00 p.m.
COST: $25 ($15 for students) includes dinner and social refreshments.

Reservations for the meeting need to be made by 4 p.m. on Monday, January 18, 2016.

The presenter will be discussing the health effects of low level radiation. His talk will include a short history of radiation protection standards and the basis used for setting them. It will provide some details about the long running controversy over the assertion that there is no safe dose of radiation. That assertion rests on a 1920s vintage “single hit” model which guessed that a single quanta of ionizing radiation can interact with the nuclei of living tissue in such a way as to cause damage that has a greater than zero probability of eventually producing genetic mutation or metastasizing cancer development.

Modern investigations that include techniques allowing measurements of DNA impacts and observation of cellular repair mechanisms have convinced a growing number of specialists that it is time to revise the standards based on evidence instead of assumptions.

There will be plenty of time for questions.

Note: Maybe I shouldn’t have used the third person above.