RE: radioprotection of other species

["Minnema, Douglas" <Douglas.Minnema@ns.doe.gov>]

Dear RADSAFEr's,

I am not knowledgeable and therefore will not comment on this current effort
that Bjorn mentions, but in the past I was involved with some of these
discussions in reference to an environmental impact statement for one of the
DOE sites.  The contractors doing the work wanted to add a section for a
quantitative risk assessment to some species they felt were indicative of
the local environmental situation, or those perceived to be most at risk.
In that situation, we directed them to back off and to only provide a short
qualitative discussion, based on my belief that there were too many unknowns
and uncertainties for quantitative results to have any significance in
decision-making.

Given that, I will say that at that time I personally concluded that there
were at least two situations where a quantitative dose assessment to a
species (dose, not risk) could be worthwhile:

In the first case, one could establish a dose limit on a species based on
its importance in the human foodchain (obviously this would only be valid
for internal depositions).  Of course, this would only be a shortcut to the
same result as a full analysis of the food pathway, and therefore may not
contribute additional information to the risk analysis for the human
population.

The second case would be a situation where the dose limit was designed to
protect the survival of the species or its local population (not necessarily
individuals).  The would likely be a rather high value, since it would be
based on deterministic effects.  I could only envision a few rare cases
where the whole population could be exposed to such high values in practice,
and so we did not pursue it further.


At that time the issue was not animal rights, but rather protection of the
public and the potential endangerment of local populations of species.

Doug Minnema, PhD, CHP
Radiological Control Program Advisor
Defense Programs, NNSA
U.S. Dept. of Energy

what few thoughts i have are truly my own ...

-----Original Message-----

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Bjorn Cedervall wrote:

> I have read a draft report that deals with radioprotection of other
species.
> It is easy to reject all this as "crazy" and stop right here but I think
> that it is time to look at what's going on. After all people in more than
20
> countries are involved already. It is time to sort out the central issues
> and ask questions.


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