Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Astronauts are exposed to approximately 50-2,000 millisieverts (mSv) while on six-month-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon and beyond. The risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 50 mSv and above. Related radiological effect studies have shown that survivors of the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear reactor workers and patients who have undergone therapeutic radiation treatments have received low-linear energy transfer (LET) radiation (x-rays and gamma rays) doses in the same 50-2000 mSv range. While in space, astronauts are exposed to radiation which
Effective dose (radiation) level of incident radiation and the absorption properties of the irradiated object. Absorbed dose is a physical quantity, and is not a satisfactory indicator of biological effect, so to allow consideration of the stochastic radiological risk, the dose quantities equivalent dose and effective dose were devised by the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) and the ICRP to calculate the biological effect of an absorbed dose. To obtain an effective dose, the calculated absorbed organ dose "D" is first corrected for the radiation type using factor "W" to give a weighted average of the equivalent dose quantity "H"