Radiation Protection Dosimetry 28:143-148 (1989)
© 1989 Oxford University Press
The New ICRU Quantities and the CEC Recommendations on Individual Monitoring
In 1975 the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) published Technical Recommendations for Monitoring the Exposure of Individuals to External Radiation (EUR 5287). Since then, however, the objectives, concepts, and methods of individual monitoring have changed substantially. As a result the CEC has decided to revise this document with the help of a small drafting group consisting of the above authors. A major consideration in the revision is the radiation quantities that personal dosemeters are required to measure and the whole of this paper is devoted to this question. In its Report 39 ICRU recommends the use of the individual dose equivalents, penetrating, Hp(10) and individual dose equivalent, superficial, Hs(0.07) as a means of overcoming the difficulties of measuring the primary limiting quantities introduced by ICRP in Publication 26 and subsequently adopted by CEC in its Basic Safety Standards, i.e. organ dose equivalent and effective dose equivalent for non-stochastic and stochastic effects respectively. The revision of EUR 5287 is meant to provide guidance for those responsible for individual monitoring programmes, for those operating monitoring services, for those involved in dosemeter design and for those responsible for the formulation of appropriate legislation. The ICRU quantities have therefore been examined with their needs in mind. It is concluded that in general these quantities are suitable for purposes of those persons mentioned above and it is proposed to recommend their use for individual monitoring in the revision of EUR 5287. The paper also discusses a procedure for the calibration and type testing of dosemeters based on the use of the ICRU sphere, or its equivalent, as the phantom. The paper concludes with a short discussion on extremity dosimetry particularly on the appropriate depth for these measurements. Although the thickness of the epidermis can be as great as 0.5 mm over the palmer surfaces of the hands and the soles of the feet it is nevertheless recommended that for weakly penetrating radiations the depth should be taken as 0.07 mm so that Hs(0.07) is recommended as the appropriate quantity for extremity monitoring.