Speaker
Speaker: Michael Væth, Professor, Section for Biostatistics, Department of Public Health, University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Abstract
Our current knowledge about late health effects of ionizing radiation comes to a large extent from studies of survivors after the atomic bombings conducted at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The talk will describe the history of RERF, the collection of information, the development of a dosimetry, and results of the statistical analyses of the epidemiologic data from the still ongoing follow-up of approximately 100,000 survivors of the atomic bombings in the so-called Life Span Study (LSS). The LSS cohort was initiated in the 1950s to describe the association between radiation exposure and mortality and disease incidence.