These sensors can be incredibly sensitive and can capture contamination from small technical or medical radiation sources over a long distance. What is much mo

These sensors can be incredibly sensitive and can capture contamination from small technical or medical radiation sources over a long distance. What is much more of a mystery is how little we understand about the effects of low-dose radiation. In Germany, there was a study started after since 1990 a cluster of leukemia cases appeared around a specific power plant near Hamburg. So, a large statistical study was done about the incidence of leukemia in all of Germany, and whether there is a correlation with distance to power plants. There was a correlation found (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939), the incidence of Lekuemia appears about 50% higher - but we don't know why. The classical radiation-dosis effect models do not explain what is observed. As there were no significant contamination accidents in Germany, there is some suspicion about the effects of low-dose radiation. Of course, the largest case of low-dose contamination in Western Europe and Germany was the Chernobyl accident from 1986. There have been some statistical large-scales studies which observed (small) changes in sex ratios (that is, the quotient of male and female offspring) https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3765590/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3765590/mode/2up . But still, these are only correlations. One train of thought has been that low-level radiation could effect the expression of genetic information. The field of study which looks at this is called epigenetics. It turns out that the working of the genetic "code" is surprisingly complex. It is not like a app package that gets installed on your PC, but it is rather a very complex self-modifying program which reacts to different environmental factors during installation. Now, there is some research of which factors could affect gene expression and how radation could play a role: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=epigenetic+ionising+radiation&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=epig... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378378215002169 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783... This is by far not mainstream research, but the fact that we have no explanation for the correlation between incidence of leukemia and distance to nuclear plants points at that the classical models are missing something significant and we do not know yet the whole picture.