Organ and detriment-weighted dose rate coefficients for exposure to radionuclide-contaminated soil considering body morphometries that differ from reference conditions; Adults and children

Kofler, C.*; Domal, S.*; Satoh, Daiki   ; Dewji, S.*; Eckerman, K.*; Bolch, W. E.*

In the current radiation protection system, the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) recommends to use the effective dose for dose estimation. The effective dose is derived from the organ doses calculated using the computational human models (phantoms) defined by the ICRP to represent the reference person at each age. Questions arise, however, among the general public regarding the accuracy of organ and effective dose estimates based upon reference phantom methodologies, especially for those individuals with heights and/or weights that differ from the nearest age-matched reference person. In this paper, the detriment-weighted dose was defined for non-reference persons as the same manner to the effective dose for reference person. The doses were calculated for external exposure to radionuclides in a soil using 351-member phantom library based on the data of the U.S. population reported by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. The results for 33 nuclides were listed in the paper. Especially, for the environmental relevant radionuclides of Sr, Sr, Cs, and I, the detriment-weighted dose of 1-year-old phantom agreed with the effective dose within 5%, while the range of percent differences in these two quantities increased with increases the body size and age, e.g. +15% to -40% for adults.