Annual limits of intake of radionuclides for workers

Annual Limits of Intake (ALI) of radionuclides have been calculated according to the recommendations of ICRP, based on limiting organ doses to avoid nonstochastic effects and to restrict stochastic effects. A procedure is described for the calculation of the integrated doses received by body organs following the inhalation or ingestion of a radionuclide. The procedure takes into account the contributions from the radioactive daughters and grand-daughters produced after intake and in principle may be extended to any number of generations of a decay chain. In practice, it is usually adequate to consider only the three most significant generations and to make simple approximations for the contributions from any others. Effective whole body absorbed doses for intakes of 1 becquerel of activity are given for 169 nuclides. The corresponding ALI, derived air concentrations and maximum achievable body burdens are also given. For some nuclides the intake limited by the risk of a non-stochastic effect in a specific organ is more restrictive than those based on stochastic effects. The values of these ALIs are given showing which organ is involved and also the value of the annual intake which would be determined by the risk of stochastic effects. (author)