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AW: ICRP Background Dose
Peter,
About 10 or 15 years ago the European Union published an "atlas" among
others about the radon concentrations in indoor houses. When I saw it, I
was really upset, because the distribution in Austria (I am an Austrian)
was simply nonsense. I met the author of this atlas at the NRE
conference in Salzburg, asked him about these wrong tables and he
excused himself that he had received the "data" from MT, a person who is
not entitled to speak officially for Austria in the context of the
European Union and who otherwise has no scientific reputation on this
topic within Austria and Europe.
If already the European Union adopts information which is totally wrong
I would not be surprised if world over information was not correct and
misleading. It is common practice to exaggerate results, to produce
maximum values as if they were average (arithmetic? Geometric?) ones. I
know this very well from my activities as a reviewer for a well
reputated international journal.
Franz Schoenhofer
PhD, MR iR
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
AUSTRIA
phone -43-0699-1168-1319
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-
> radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu] Im Auftrag von Peter Thomas
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. November 2004 00:35
> An: Tom Mohaupt; RadSafe
> Cc: Kim Morris; krk@slac.standford.edu; Peter Burns
> Betreff: RE: ICRP Background Dose
>
> The numbers come from simply adding up the high and low ends of the
> "typical range" from Table 31 of Annex B of the UNSCEAR 2000 report.
> (The pdf is 74k and can be downloaded from www.unscear.org) However
> there's not a lot of discussion in the UNSCEAR report of how those
> numbers were picked as representing a "typical range".
>
> Paragraph 192 reads "The normal ranges of exposures to the various
> components of natural radiation are indicated in Table 31. This
> accounts for common variations in exposures [begin emphasis] but
> excludes those individuals at the extreme ends of the distributions
[end
> emphasis]. On this basis, worldwide annual exposures to natural
> radiation sources would generally be expected to be in the range 1-10
> mSv, with 2.4 mSv being the present estimate of the central value."
>
> I added the emphasis, which does not appear in the original. In the
> present context I should point out that the 2.4 mSv central value
> includes 1.2 mSv from radon which has been explicitly excluded in the
> ICRP reference.
>
> UNSCEAR 2000 (Annex B) goes on to say in paragraph 197 "... It is
> estimated that about 65% of individuals have exposures between 1 and 3
> mSv, about 25% of the population have exposures less than 1 mSv, and
10%
> have exposures greater than 3 mSv."
>
> High background areas receive a mention in Paragraphs 54 - 56 and
Table
> 11 gives some numbers and references. These imply that annual doses
> above 10 mSv are possible (the numbers are actually quoted as absorbed
> dose rates in air in nGy per hour).
>
> Peter Thomas
> Medical Physics Section
> ARPANSA
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
> [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu] On Behalf Of Tom Mohaupt
> Sent: Tuesday, 30 November 2004 7:11 AM
> To: RadSafe
> Cc: Kim Morris; krk@slac.standford.edu
> Subject: ICRP Background Dose
>
>
> The ICRP Recommendations for 2005 contains a statement regarding
> background doses across the world that doesn't make sense to me.
> Paragraph 158. "The world wide average annual effective dose from all
> natural sources, excluding radon, quoted in the UNSCEAR 2000 report is
> 1.2 mSv with a range of 0.8 mSv to 2.4 mSv."
> The upper range value of 2.4 mSv (240 mrem) per year seems too low for
> the places on earth with very high natural background doses. Ramsar,
> Iran has an average terrestrial dose of 10.2 mGy (1 rem) (maximum of
260
>
> mGy/year (26 rem))
(http://www.taishitsu.or.jp/radiation/index-e.html),
> and this dose value doesn't include cosmic radiation, internal doses,
or
>
> radiation weighting factors, which would increase the dose further
> still. It seems the upper part of the range should be the most highly
> exposed
> people on the planet. Can anyone explain why there's such a big
> difference? Is the highest dose to people in Ramsar, Iran; Guarapari,
> Brazil; Kerala, India; and Yangjiand, China really only 2.4 mSv as
> reported by UNSCEAR (and referenced by the ICRP) or did they omit the
> really high background values to avoid that tricky issue.
> Also, I noticed that the ICRP did not include a discussion of the
> biological effects of persons from these high background areas in
their
> report.
> Tom
>
> --
>
> Thomas Mohaupt, M.S., CHP
> Radiation Safety Officer
> Wright State University
> 937-775-2169
> tom.mohaupt@wright.edu
>
>
>
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