Organ doses of the fetus from external environmental exposures

Petoussi-Henss, N.*; Satoh, Daiki; Schlattl, H.*; Zankl, M.*; Spielman, V.*

Radiation and Environmental Biophysics, 60(1), p.93 - 113, 2021/03

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-020-00891-6

In this study, the nuclide-specific organ dose coefficients of pregnant female and its fetus for environmental external exposures have been evaluated. The radiation sources were uniformly put in the soil at the depth of 0.5 g cm or in the atmosphere. The environmental radiation fields for the soil contamination were analyzed by using the radiation transport code PHITS, and the fields for the air submersion were taken from the existing data analyzed by the YURI code. The numerical models of the pregnant female and its fetus were put in the environmental radiation fields, and the radiation transport simulations were performed using the EGS code to obtain the organ absorbed doses. From the simulation results, it was found that the radionuclide-specific uterus doses of the pregnant female agreed with the total body doses of the fetus within 6%, except for some radionuclides which emit the low-energy photons below 50 keV. Using the organ dose coefficients evaluated in the present study, the doses of the pregnant female and its fetus can be estimated easily from the data of activity concentration of the radionuclides distributed in the environment.