Far more than for any other common environmental cause of human cancer, the relationship between radiation dose to a population, individual, or organ site and subsequent cancer risk is well understood, and highly quantified. This fact led to a Congressional mandate (Public Law 97-414, Section 7(b)) to create a set of summary tables which might be used to help evaluate the merits of compensation claims for cancer cases thought to have been caused by radiation exposure.

In 1985, the NIH published the so-called NIH radioepidemiological tables (NIH Publication 85-2748). In 2003, a revised report was published (NIH No. 03-5387 (pdf, 1.05mb)). A hard copy of this report is available from the NCI Publications Ordering Service.

In the recent report, the tables have been replaced by an easier-to-use Interactive Radio-Epidemiological computer Program (IREP). A variant of this program, called NIOSH-IREP, was adapted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for adjudication of radiation-related claims by employees of the Department of Energy and its contractors, in accordance with Public Law 106-398 (the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000). That program and related material can be accessed from the website of the NIOSH Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, "Probability of Causation (NIOSH-IREP)".