4.5 Dose Summary
The dosage problem as developed in this Report breaks down into
three parts: the adult dose, the uncertainty introduced into the adult
dose by the transuranics; the infant dose.
{a} Adult dose.
For the 30-year period 1990-2020, the one of
current interest, the following tabulation shows that all three estimates
of the adult dose [based on the community type B diet] meet the 5 ren
guide.
Rongelap:
30-year Adult Exposure (1990-2020)
Source
Livermore data
Brookhaven data****
DOE-1982 Report***
*
=x
wee
Whole-body
(ren)
Red marrow
{ren)
1.80%
1.88%*
91*
(.88 - (3.8]})
98%
(.93 ~ [5.3])
1.9
2.9
Committed effective dose equivalent
Committed dose equivalent
Tntegral doses
xexe The median transuranic dose was employed.
The Brookhaven doses are about half the others; cesium-137 was measured
with the whole-body counter, the preferred method for its determination.
[The “total dose" is based on the median plutonium dose, the "range" on
the lowest and highest individual doses.]
DOE-1982 stated that the diet on which its reported doses were based
consisted only of local foods from Rongelap Island [but see footnote,
p. 23).
That statement is incorrect.
Lawrence Livermore calculated the
cited dose on the basis of the community type B diet, and that diet (for
comparability) has been used for the calculation of all doses above.
The cancer mortality risk for 500 persons settled on Rongelap Island
and receiving 1.9 rem over the next 30 years. would be:
§00 x 1.9 x 2.5 x 10-4
=
.24 cases
The risk factor used here is 2.5 times that advocated in the National
Academy of Science (1972) report. It is lower than what is being used
for the Japanese survivors (Shimuzu et al 1987;
Preston & Pierce 1987),
but they experienced high-dose and high-dose~-rate exposure whereas the
Rongelap exposure would be low and at an extremely low dose-rate.
5000b4 1
‘4
40
.
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