Model for estimating population impacts averted through the remediation of contaminated soil

This is the second in a series of papers that discuss methodologies being developed and employed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in support of its decisions on cleanup levels for radioactively contaminated sites that are to be remediated and released for public use. It describes a model, CU-POP, designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency to obtain estimates of the potential collective radiological health impacts over specific periods of time (100, 1,000 and 10,000 y following cleanup), both on and off site, due to residual radioactive materials in on-site soil. Collective doses and risks are linear in population density for the direct exposure, dust and indoor radon inhalation, and soil ingestion pathways; it is assumed that specific fractions of all food grown and all groundwater pumped at a site are consumed by on- and off-site populations. The model was developed for application to a set of hypothetical reference sites; its testing on a simple generic site is discussed briefly here