Risk communication: toward proper understand of radiation effects

Abstract

It will not be exaggerating to say that modern people cannot spend a life independently of radiation. In addition to the fields of energy and medicine, radiation plays an important role in many fields such as inspection without break. However, probably because of the difficulty to sense the radiation without a special instrument, people tend to worry about their future health once they learned to have been exposed to radiation except the case of medical exposure with consent. Since mass media is almost a unique information source for general people, we reviewed the newspaper articles on health effects of radiation exposure by atomic bombs and the Chernobyl accident to evaluate how the mass media will influence people in their understanding radiation risk.