Belgium's Royal Academies of Science and the Arts host symposium entitled: Health Impact of Pre- and Early Post-natal Irradiation: State-of-the-Art

On 7 October 2012, a one-day symposium devoted to studying the health effects of pre- and early post-natal irradiation took place at Belgium's Royal Academies of Science and the Arts. It was a joint initiative of SCK.CEN and the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control. The main objective of this symposium was to assess the latest scientific data in the field of radiation-induced risks resulting from the exposure of embryos and young children to ionizing radiation. Leading specialists delivered lectures on the various topics that featured on the symposium agenda. Another objective of the symposium was to discuss the current data and their potential implications, as well as the priorities for future research. This part of the symposium included a round table discussion between various stakeholders, some of them work outside the radiation protection community. In this paper, we gave a short overview of the symposium, including a summary of the different talks and the main conclusion which could be drawn during the roundtable which followed.