Games with gammas: problems in environmental gamma dose determination

The evaluation of the environmental dose rate is fundamental to ESR, OTL and TL dating, but results from different measurement methods, independently calibrated, are not always consistent. Some field measurements of environmental dose rate using a Canberra field gamma spectrometer are compared with those obtained using TLD and show a systematic discrepancy close to a factor of two. Possible reasons for the discrepancy are discussed but none offers a sufficiently substantial adjustment to reconcile the disagreement in the results given by the two methods. Comparison with dose rates estimated from radionuclide concentrations could not determine which method was more accurate as the correlation between these estimates and the previous ones was negligible, casting some doubt on the accuracy of the concentration estimates. The danger of relying on a single method of estimating dose rate without careful cross-calibration is highlighted. (author)