The development of radiobiology in Bulgaria

The ongoing changes in radiation risk assessment and development of ICRP conceptions is greatly due to the achievements of radiobiology. At doses below 0.2 Sv, radiation risk is determined only by stochastic effects. In these cases initial changes at molecular and cellular level and potentially lethal damage cannot be detected with known methods. Radiobiology and molecular epidemiology will become increasingly involved in evaluating the risk of the non-cancer health effects of radiation. In addition, emphasis will be placed on evaluating non-targeted effects of radiation at the cell and tissue levels, including bystander effects, genomic instability, and adaptive response. Integration of recent molecular knowledge and techniques, together with present epidemiological methods, will give a more precise evaluation of the risk. We might expect that the present debate on the non-threshold linear model for low dose irradiation should soon have enough grounds to be predefined.