Variation of internal doses caused by differences in physical characteristics between the average Japanese and the ICRP's reference man which is based on the standard data of Caucasians in the dosimetric methodology in conformity to the 2007 Recommendations

Manabe, Kentaro   ; Sato, Kaoru   ; Takahashi, Fumiaki  

It is known that internal doses depend on the physical characteristics of an evaluation subject. Internal dose coefficients provided by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) are evaluated using the characteristics of the standard Caucasian. It is important to grasp the variations of doses due to the differences in characteristics between Japanese and Caucasian when the dose coefficients of ICRP are applied to Japanese. This study evaluated dose coefficients using specific absorbed fraction (SAF) data based on the average adult Japanese physique which was developed by modification of the existing Japanese SAF data with additional calculations to make the existing data fit to the current dosimetric methodology of ICRP and compared them to those provided by ICRP. As a result, the discrepancies in dose coefficients were smaller than plus or minus 10% in most intake conditions. However, some intake conditions indicated varieties over 40% due to the differences in organ masses, amount of adipose tissues around the thoracic cavity, and so on. This information is useful in application of ICRP's dose coefficients to population of which physical characteristics are different from those of Caucasian. Further, the Japanese SAF data is published as an appendix of this paper.