Environmental Protection: Transfer parameters for Reference Animals and Plants

The ICRP has prepared a draft report on the above much needed topic. The report is put up in the ICRP website requesting comments from individuals and groups. The last date is October 1, 2010.

The approach followed by the Commission to environmental protection uses the concept of a limited set of Reference Animals and Plants as a basis for relating exposure to dose, and dose to radiation effects, for different types of animals and plants in an internally consistent manner.

A set of Dose Conversion Factors is derived for the Reference Animals and Plants, to enable dose rates to be calculated when the concentrations of radionuclides within these organisms have been established by direct measurement. The resultant dose rates can then be compared with evaluations of the effects of dose rates on the different Reference Animals and Plants. These data have been compiled in such a way that Derived Consideration Reference Levels can then be established, each of which constitutes a band of dose rates for each Reference Animal and Plant within which there is likely to be some chance of deleterious effects occurring in individuals of that type of animal or plant. Site specific data on Representative Organisms can then be compared with such values and used as a basis for decision making.

An enormous data base has been brought together and used to provide the most up to date data available.