Re: A radiation unit for the public

[Christian Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

Schoenhofer
Habichergasse 31/7
A-1160 Wien
AUSTRIA
Tel./Fax: +43-1-4955308
Mobiltel.: +43-664-3380333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at

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> Von: Kim D Merritt <kdmerri@sandia.gov>
> An: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
> Betreff: Re: A radiation unit for the public
> Datum: Donnerstag, 25. September 1997 21:32
> 
> 
>      While this seems as if it would be easily understood by the public 
>      what would the standard for natural radiation be?  This varies a
great 
>      deal throughout the US.
>      
> **********************
> *Kim Merritt, RRPT   *
> *Sandia Labs, NM     *
> *kdmerri@sandia.gov  *
> **********************

It does not vary only throughout the US, but throughout the whole world. It
varies by orders of magnitude. So I do not think that this is a
scientifically well based system unless one refers to the background in
areas where people addressed live. 

As it was pointed out in another mailing the question of "avoidable dose"
is justified - is not the main principle of radiation protection ALARA?
Controllable exposure and uncontrollable exposure are of importance in
radiation protection.

I had a different approach, when the question of radon doses came up in
Austria. We had done a lot of measurement of radon in drinking water. As
long as I used Bq/l, mSv per year etc. nobody cared about the results. Then
I introduced the unit "1 Chernobyl", which was 0.4 mSv as the average dose
to the Austrian population during the first year after the accident.
Suddenly people understood that their doses received might be much higher
than the ones from the accident, which had given so much concern and mass
media coverage. The result is that we have now a country wide radon project
for determination of radon risk running. Do you regard doses from radon in
air and water as "background radiation"?

The approach of referring to background radiation is not so bad, but it is
not so easy to have the correct background radiation doses to refer to.

Franz