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HW-80991
The Federal Radiation Council has provided two sets of guides against which
exposures from environmental sources can be judged, viz. one for the individuals that receive the greatest exposure, the other for the average exposure received by an exposed population (taken as one-third that set for
individuals).
For the Hanford environs, possible exposures from the vari-
ous sources described in the preceding sections have been combined in two
ways to allow comparisons with both the individual and population guides.
In one case a hypothetical, but plausible, individual has been assigned die-
tary and other habits that would result in what would seem to be the greatest
rational exposure.
As a second case, an exposure has been estimated for
the "average" Tri-City resident. Several hundreds (perhaps a few thousands)
of people receive more exposure than calculated for the "average" Tri-City
resident but very few, (and quite possibly none) receive as much as that cal-
culated for the "maximum" individual.
Included in the intermediate group
are the families that subsist largely on foodstuffs produced on farmsirri- .
gated with water taken from the Columbia River downstream from the plants.
A.
The Maximum Individual
Attempts are being made to identify the individuals that actually receive the greatest exposure.
Such individuals are undoubtedly persons that
frequently eat fish caught locally in the Columbia River and produce grown
on farms irrigated with Columbia River water.
During the past 2 years,
over 600 fishermen have been questioned by employees of the State of
Washington Department of Game on their consumption of fish.
The greatest
consumption reported was about 200 meals per year, consisting dominantly
of crappie, perch, bass, catfish, caught near Burbank (Figure 2).
On the
basis of radiochemical analyses of such fish caught in this area, the intake
of P?? for this individual during 1963 would have amounted to about 7 ye,
(about 45% of the NCRP limit).
fish is not confirmed.
Whether the individual actually ate that much
Some other persons reporting unusually high consump-
tion of local fish have been counted in the Whole Body Counter and contained
far less zn®° than predicted on the basis of their estimates of the quantities
of fish eaten.