RE: One last comment on Irradiation

[Wieland@nepo1.iaea.or.at (Wieland Patricia)]

Dear all,

May I remind you of the internationally recommended basic principles of 
radiation protection.
In particular the justification of a practice, briefly:

"A practice that entails or that could entail exposure to radiation should 
only be adopted if it yields sufficient benefit to exposed individuals or to 
society to outweigh the radiation detriment it causes or could cause".
IAEA - SS n. 115,  1994

This principle shall be taken into account by the national regulatory bodies 
to authorize a practice  that entails or that could entail exposure to 
radiation.

In other words, although food irradiation has a lot of known advantages, 
RADIATION SAFETY  has to be considered always. The practice should be 
adopted if it is suitable and there is no other "non-radioactive" option 
available.

Patricia Wieland
IAEA
e-mail: wieland@nepo1.iaea.or.at


 ----------
From: radsafe
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: One last comment on Irradiation
Date: Tuesday, 17. December 1996 06:50

X-Comment:  Radiation Safety Distribution List

     I personally hope we can close out this thread pretty soon.  I think
     we've reached the point of diminishing returns.  However, there still
     appears to be a miscommunication that I hope I capture here, in that
     Herr Franzhoeffer discusses the issue of whether foodstuffs ought to
     be irradiated in the first place, and whether ALL foodstuffs should be
     REQUIRED to be irradiated, while many of the rest of us appear to
     operate on the basic premise that the decision WHETHER to irradiate
     should be a strictly commercial or private decision, with the
     additional proviso that anyone who doesn't want to eat the stuff
     doesn't have to, because there are plenty of options and one should be
     ALLOWED to act independently of the government insofar as it is
     possible to do so.  This debate is, I believe, better suited to a
     discussion of national and political freedoms, rather than radiation
     safety.

     I promise to climb off my soapbox now.

     V/R
     George Cicotte
     george_cicotte@health.ohio.gov