Radiological protection of the environment

Protection of the environment is developing rapidly at the national and international level, but there are still no internationally agreed recommendations as to how radiological protection of the environment should be carried out. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is currently reviewing its existing recommendations for human protection. It has set up a Task Group with the aim of developing a protection policy for, and suggesting a framework of, protection of the environment that could feed into its recommendations for the beginning of the 21st century. Although the Task Group has not yet finally decided on the objectives for the environment, these might be to safeguard the environment by preventing or reducing the frequency of effects likely to cause early mortality, reduced reproductive success, or the occurrence of scorable DNA damage in individual fauna and flora to a level where they would have a negligible impact on conservation of species, maintenance of biodiversity, or the health and status of natural habitats or communities. To achieve these objectives, a set of reference dose models, reference dose per unit intake and external exposure values will required, plus reference data sets of doses and effects for both man and the environment. This paper provides a progress report of the work of the Task Group. (author)