I'm a former nuclear engineer so I feel *somewhat* comfortable with this topic, and I don't see anything particularly controversial here.

(Linear no-threshold and all that jazz ... we can sidestep those debates).

Where I do sympathise with the general public is that radiation operates entirely outside of the human sensory apparatus, and so there is no inbuilt, instinctive 'feel' for the danger level. It's not irrational to be ... irrationally fearful of it, if you see what I mean :) 

 i mean if you are side-stepping that then what are we talking about 

 Sidestepping, i just mean, take LNT as true and stick with those guidelines and it's reasonable. Unless you think even LNT is noymt cautious enough? 

 i do not believe that a linear no-threshold model is valid.   I agree with that article that we should denounce that model. Hopefully the public can one day understand that dental and most medical imaging is benign and harmless 

 So you believe there's a threshold. Back when I was studying this, I remember also feeling strongly that this should be true, logically.

Reminds me of the old (possibly apocryphal) story of the guy who dropped his banana from lunch on the floor of a nuclear power plant and it triggered alerts on people's dosimeter readings 😄

Natural sources are easily high enough to matter, a lot, with LNT. So yeah i agree it's probably just wrong, and 'ALARA' is ... not even wrong 😄 

 ya I think we're on the same page.  what do you mean when you say 'ALARA is ... not even wrong'?  

 Oh sorry it's a joke reference to a critique of string theory, criticizing it as not being real science. Stimuff like ALARA/P is not really anything to do with science imo.