The 6th International Conference on Low Dose Radiation Effects on Human Health and Environment (LOWRAD) was held on October 17-20, 2007, in Budapest, Hungary. Venue of the meeting, Hotel Budapest, built several decades ago and notable with its modernistic cylindrical-shaped architectural style, is located at the foot of the Castle Hill nearby to the centre of Buda. Meeting was well organized with all facilities available conveniently at the hotel.

The importance of studying biological and medical consequences of exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation stems from the necessity to understand effects which otherwise could not be observed after high radiation doses. Of note, hundreds of thousand people on the globe have been already exposed to low radiation doses due to A-bombing of Japan, technogenic catastrophes such as Chernobyl accident and during nuclear weapon testing in Semipalatinsk and other sites of the world. Also humanity is permanently dealing with low exposures from the environment, medical procedures, consumer goods, and from the professional activities in some groups of people. It still remains essential to refine radiation safety policies and guidelines, with regard both public health protection and occupational exposures.

Difficulties of evaluation of low radiation dose effects are objectively associated with a non-monotonic character of the dose-effect relationship in very low dose range, seen for example as a low-dose hyper-radiosensitivity/increased radioresistance phenomenon. Applicably to more complex biological systems, such as organisms, interpretation of low dose effects encounters even greater intricacy, especially in the context of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation response. Substantial attention at the conference was devoted to the studies of classical low dose effects, i.e. bystander effect, adaptive response and genomic instability and its manifestations after exposure to low doses of radiation of different quality.

A bright event has been Marie Curie Award Lecture by Maurice Tubiana, a patriarch and a worldwide known expert in clinical and experimental radiobiology. A grand overview of the progress in radiation effect studies with particular stress on radiation oncology was presented which made an indelible impression.

As a whole, the conference was cognitive and useful. Attending it could be recommended to established as well as young scientists. Program and abstracts could be retrieved from
http://www.osski.hu/lowrad2007/LOWRAD2007_program_book.pdf

Hotel Budapest		Dr. Maurice Tubiana