4.5 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 meet the 5 rem guide (community type B diet).
Rongelap:
Source
Livermore
Brookhaven****
DOE-1982***
*
xe
-kkex
30-year Adult Exposure (1990-2020)
Whole-body
(rem)
Red marrow
(rem)
1.80*
1.88**
-91*
-93%*
(.88 - 3.1)
{.93 - 4.1)
1.9
2.9
Committed effective dose equivalent
Committed dose equivalent
Integral doses
xaxk 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.
DOE-1982 stated that the diet on which its reported doses were based
consisted only of local foods from Rongelap Island. 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 risk for 500 persons settled on Rongelap Island and
receiving 1.9 rem over the next 30 years would be:
500 x 1.9 x 2.5 x 10-*
=
.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.
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