research BEIR VII, Phase 2. In its press release the Academies stated: The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (a body commissioned by the United States Congress). endorsed the LNT model in a 2001 report that attempted to survey existing literature critical of the model. The United States Environmental Protection Agency endorses the LNT model in its 2011 report on radiogenic cancer risk: UNSCEAR notably reversed its earlier support on the LNT model in 2014 for doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels (see below). Oppose A number of organisations disagree with using the Linear no-threshold model to estimate risk from environmental and occupational low-level radiation exposure: The French Academy of Sciences (Académie des Sciences) and the National Academy of Medicine (Académie Nationale de Médecine) published a report in 2005 (at the same time as BEIR VII report in the United States) that rejected the linear no-threshold model in favor of a threshold dose response and a significantly reduced risk at low radiation exposure: The Health Physics Society's position statement first adopted in January 1996, last revised in February 2019, states: The Health Physics Society (in the United States) has published a documentary series on the origins of the LNT model. The American Nuclear Society concurred with the Health Physics Society's position that: However, it recommended further research on the Linear No Threshold Hypothesis before making adjustments to current radiation protection guidelines derived from the LNT model. UNSCEAR, which supported the LNT model in its previous reports on radiogenic cancer risk, has adjusted its position in its 2012 report and stated: Mental health effects It has been argued that the LNT model had caused an irrational fear of radiation, whose observable effects are much more significant than non-observable effects postulated by LNT. In the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, Europe-wide anxieties were fomented in pregnant mothers over the perception enforced by the LNT model that their children would be born with a higher rate of mutations. As far afield as the country of Switzerland, hundreds of excess induced abortions were performed on the healthy unborn, out of this no-threshold fear. Following the accident however, studies of data sets approaching a million births in the EUROCAT database, divided into "exposed" and control groups were assessed in 1999. As no Chernobyl impacts were detected, the researchers conclude "in retrospect the widespread fear in the