radiophobia was to blame. Chernobyl abortions Following the accident, journalists mistrusted many medical professionals (such as the spokesman from the UK National Radiological Protection Board), and in turn encouraged the public to mistrust them. Throughout the European continent, in nations where abortion is legal, many requests for induced abortions, of otherwise normal pregnancies, were obtained out of fears of radiation from Chernobyl; including an excess number of abortions of healthy human fetuses in Denmark in the months following the accident. In Greece, following the accident there was panic and false rumors which led to many obstetricians initially thinking it prudent to interrupt otherwise wanted pregnancies and/or were unable to resist requests from worried pregnant mothers over fears of radiation, within a few weeks misconceptions within the medical profession were largely cleared up, although worries persisted in the general population. Although it was determined that the effective dose to Greeks would not exceed 1 mSv (0.1 rem), a dose much lower than that which could induce embryonic abnormalities or other non-stochastic effects, there was an observed 2500 excess of otherwise wanted pregnancies being terminated, probably out of fear in the mother of some kind of perceived radiation risk. A "slightly" above the expected number of requested induced abortions occurred in Italy, where upon request, "a week of reflection" and then a 2 to 3 week "health system" delay usually occur before the procedure. Radiophobia and health effects The term "radiophobia" is also sometimes used in the arguments against proponents of the conservative LNT concept (Linear no-threshold response model for ionizing radiation) of radiation security proposed by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) in 1949. The "no-threshold" position effectively assumes, from data extrapolated from the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that even negligible doses of radiation increase ones risk of cancer linearly as the exposure increases from a value of 0 up to high dose rates. The LNT model therefore suggests that radiation exposure from naturally occurring background radiation may be harmful. There is no biological evidence and weak statistical evidence that doses below 100 mSv have any biological effect. After the Fukushima disaster, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that Japanese residents were suffering from radiophobia. British medical scientist Geraldine Thomas has also attributed suffering of the Japanese to radiophobia in interviews and formal presentations. Four years after the event The New York Times reported