Archives → 2022 → Vol. 62, № 3 → pp. 227-239
Article
Average Accumulated Radiation Doses foe World Nuclear Workers: Low Doses, Low Effects. Comparison with Doses for Medical Radiologists
Koterov A. N., Tukov A. R., Ushenkova L. N., Kalinina M. V., and Biryukov A. P.
A.I. Burnasyan Federal Medical Biophysical Center of Federal Medical Biological Agency, Moscow, Russia
Abstract
A synthetic study was carried out to assess the average external exposure dose accumulated over the entire period of employment by nuclear workers as a world professional category (1946–2010). For a sample of 63 variants (18 countries; cohorts of various nuclear installations, including international groups), the average (mean) and median doses were 31.1 mSv and 24.0 mSv, respectively. After processing the sample for outliers (up to 52 variants), the values decreased to 21.7 mSv and 20.7 mSv. Whatever values are taken into account, they are below the limit of low doses radiation with low LET (up to 0.1 Gy/Sv) and, on average for group, should not lead to any tissue (deterministic) effects. Estimation of cancer mortality rate at the doses received in terms of excess relative risk (ERR) per 1 Gy (based, for example, on the value for a pooled cohort of 15 countries; Cardis E. et al., 2005) gave values that cannot be detected against the background of carcinogenic effects of non-radiation factors, confounders and biases. Thus, the expected increase in the number of deaths from cancer over 10 years was only 0.036–0.06% of the size of the study group. The obtained values of the average doses for nuclear workers were compared with those for medical radiologists (combined values for studies from seven countries; mainly 1950s and up to 2000), which amounted to 62.9 mSv and 61.9 mSv for the mean and median, respectively. The average dose received for medical radiologists is thus 2–3 times higher than that for nuclear workers. Although the contribution of incorporated radionuclides to the radiation dose for the second group was not considered, the discovered fact can have an effect to the formation of a relatively favorable image of employment in the nuclear power industry.
Keywords
Nuclear workers, average radiation doses, health effects, medical radiologists
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