Social Security and Public Health: is Radiation a Threat or a Benefit?

Among all the factors that determine social security and public health there is the most important one to investigate: i.e., radiation. This paper is about real danger and probable usefulness of radiation, to consider both and to prove that all possible attention must be paid to it. Since the discovery of the natural radioactivity, people's attitude towards radiation is constantly changing. Originally it was believed that radiation produced solely detrimental effect on the organisms. But recently, the scholars working in radiobiology reported about the beneficial, protective effect of low doses of the total radiative forcing. Not long ago it was found out that the most important for human health was a natural resource of radiation, namely, the gas called radon (Rn), the alpha-emitter, with the products of its divisions. Calculations carried out in different countries have shown that exposure to radon forms nearly half of the dose received by a person from all sources of radiation. Theoretically, the problem is to figure out whether radon is dangerous or safe, because the observations data are contradictory and the experiments have not been conducted, as far as we know. In practice, if it is confirmed that there exists of a "safe threshold" dose, below which the exposure to radon might even be regarded as useful, then the task will be to establish this threshold and to apply radon in order to increase the protective properties of living organisms. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.