Contribution to developing the environment radiation protection methodology

The environment sustainable development and biota protection, including the environment radiation protection are issues of nowadays interest in the society. An activity is ongoing on the development of a system of radiation protection for non-human biota. Anthropocentric and eco-centric principles are widely discussed. ICRP Publications 103, 108, 114 and many other reports and articles refer to the topic of environmental protection, reference animals and plants set, corresponding transfer parameters, dose models and derived consideration reference levels. There is still an open field for discussion of methods and approaches to get well-established procedure to assess environmental risks of radiation impacts to different organisms, populations and ecosystems. A huge work has been done by the ICRP and other organizations and research groups to develop and systematize approaches for this difficult subject. This activity, however, is not everywhere well-known and perceived, and more efforts are needed to bring ideas of eco-centric strategy in the environment radiation protection not only to public but to specialists in many countries as well. One of the main points of interest is an assessment of critical doses and doses rates for flora and fauna species. Some aspects of a possible procedure to find their estimates are studied in this work, including criteria for datasets of good quality, models of dose dependence, sensitivity of different umbrella endpoints and methods of original massive datasets treatment. Estimates are done based on information gathered in a database on radiation-induced effects in plants. Data on biological effects in plants (umbrella endpoints of reproductive potential, survival, morbidity, morphological, biochemical, and genetic effects) in dependence on dose and dose rates of ionizing radiation have been collected from reviewed publications and maintained in MS Access format. The database now contains about 7000 datasets and 25000 records, mainly obtained from Russian-language sources. Estimates of critical doses (ED50) and dose rates (EDR10), defined in accordance with J. Garnier-Laplace et.al., are made at acute and chronic radiation impact on an example of agricultural plants (crops, vegetables, legumes etc). Agrarian ecosystems are of special concern from the viewpoint of establishing safe levels of radiation impact on the environment, since their contamination can affect human health, semi-natural ecosystems are quite sensitive to a number of environmental impacts including ionising radiation, and also the corresponding dose-effect data are better represented in overall studies then for wild species. Perspectives of the study and unsolved problems in frames of the developing system for the environment radiation protection are discussed. Document available in abstract form only. (authors)