Which statement about EfD is true?

• A. Miscarriage
• B. Desquamation
• C. Cataracts
• D. Carcinogenesis

Answer: (D)

EfD, or effective dose, is a single quantity that combines the doses to different tissues with weighting factors that reflect how sensitive each tissue is to stochastic health effects, mainly cancer and genetic (heritable) risks. It’s used to estimate the overall probability of such effects in a population, not to predict a specific deterministic injury to a particular tissue.

Because carcinogenesis is a probabilistic, stochastic effect, EfD is the best match for describing the overall cancer risk from radiation exposure. The other options describe deterministic effects—miscarriage, skin desquamation, and cataracts—that have threshold doses and are not what EfD is used to quantify.