Design and future uses of national dose registers for regulatory control and epidemiology

Centralization of radiation dose records into national registers of occupational exposures is an increasingly common practice. As a result, additional uses of the data have become possible, based on the improved accessibility of lifetime personal dose histories. So far greatest attention has been paid to the potential for epidemiological follow-up; but there are other emerging needs for computerized life-history data which are readily retrievable in quantity, as implied for example by the ICRP recommendation to limit the average doses to groups of workers, on the basis of cost-benefit analyses involving estimates of harm commitments accumulated over periods longer than a year. Only if the computerized dose data are collated into one lifetime dose history record for each individual will these purposes be readily served. Major difficulties are forseen, however, if the year-by-year computerized dose data for each individual are fragmented into two or more blocks requiring multiple access to multiple locations. Where the machine-redable lifetime histories also contain adequate personal identifying information, epidemiological follow-up become an inexpensive byproduct of good record keeping. Such design features have not figured prominently in published discussions, but are important for registers of occupational exposures to any agents with delayed harmful effects, such as asbestos, products from petroleum and coal tar and oxides of various heavy metals. Design options are considered in the present account, with a view to providing, for all such registers, reliable retrieval of personal exposure histories, in quantity, at modest cost. (author)