Effective doses from natural spring waters ingested by adults and infants

Effective doses from natural spring waters ingested by adults and infants. People in France drink commonly mineral spring waters from those regions where concentrations of natural radionuclides are high. Using the recently updated age dependent dose coefficients recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (Publications 56, 67, 69, and 72), it is shown that the largely consumed natural waters can be separated into two categories: non gaseous waters for which a constant exclusive consumption would result into an annual committed effective dose around than 0.03 mSv; and the saline and gaseous ones for which, in same conditions, the dose would be 10 to 40 times higher. For the infant, the diet of whom is often including largely the first category, the annual effective dose committed over 70 years of lifetime would be around than 0.3 mSv. (authors)