Proceedings from a symposium held at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo 6–7 June 2001

Preface

This book contains a collection of papers presented at the symposium "Nat ural Ionizing Radiation and Health" held in Oslo June 5-6, 2001. The meeting was number 13 in a series of symposia organized from 1980 on by the Com mittee for Geomedicine of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Since 1986 these symposia have been arranged in collaboration with the working group "Soil Science and Geomedicine" of the International Union of Soil Science. Titles of the previous symposia in this series are listed on P. 8.

The present volume is dedicated to the initiator of this series of meetings, the late Professor, Dr. J. Låg, who served as a chairman of all the 12 previ ous symposia and editor of the "Green Books" following every meeting. Dr. Låg, born in 1915, was Professor of Soil Science at the Agricultural University of Norway during the period 1949-1985. He was among the most prominent soil scientists of his generation and made significant con tributions to several scientific disciplines. During his later years much of his work was devoted to the field Geomedicine, which he promoted inter nationally through his book with this title published by CRC Press in 1990.

Professor Låg's achievements were a great inspiration to those of us con tinuing and further developing the work on geomedicine. We consider the present symposium series to be an important contribution to the future work in this area and intend to continue holding such meetings on topical issues in geomedicine. Our current definition of this field of science is the follow ing: "Geomedicine is the science dealing with the influence of natural envi ronmental factors on human and animal health". This means that geomed icine includes the field named "Medical geology".

This symposium would hardly have been possible without financial sup port from various sources. We are grateful for contributions from the Geo logical Survey of Norway, Laborel, the Norwegian Cancer Society and the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority.

Eiliv Steinnes

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim Chairman, Geomedical Committee of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters E-mail: Eiliv.Steinnes@chem.ntnu.no