Intervention levels foodstuffs

The transfrontier impact of nuclear installations has been too readily dismissed in the past and it is now necessary to reinforce environmental monitoring and to provide the possibility of independent verification. Chernobyl has revealed the Community s inability to respond in a coordinated way to a major accident... " The action taken over foodstuff intervention levels was taken as much in an attempt to prevent economic chaos from the disruption of markets as it was to establish human health protection. Concerted action over intervention levels has fallen foul of uncertainty about dose-response patterns at low levels of radiation exposure and the different philosophies adopted in member countries about how to handle environmental pollution, in particular whether to take immediate action on a reasonable basis of presumption about effects or to delay action until certainty has been scientifically established. 

The intervention levels of averted doses recommended by ICRP are those at which intervention is almost always justified. In the early phase, these doses are 50 mSv for sheltering, 500 mSv equivalent dose to thyroid for administration of stable iodine, 500 mSv (1 week) whole body dose or 5,000 mSv equivalent dose to skin for evacuation (ICRP 1991d). For the late phase countermeasures 1,000 mSv for relocation (5-15 mSv per month for prolonged exposure), and 10 mSv (in 1 year) for restriction to a single foodstuff (1,000-10,000 Bq kg for beta/gamma emitters and 10-100 Bq kg for alpha emitters) are recommended. 

Samples of pasture, milk and other foodstuffs and water should be collected and measurements should be made to assess the exposure of the population and for the purposes of the implementation of interventions such as the restriction of foodstuffs. Milk is especially important in the event of a reactor accident or criticality accident because of the associated releases of radioiodines. Recommended intervention levels for radionuclides in foodstuffs are provided in the Basic Safety Standards [2], If it is suspected that releases of tritium have occurred, measurements of tritium in pasture vegetation should be made. 

Monitoring of food contamination with long lived radionuclides for the purpose of the substantiation of protective actions would generally be justified if the radionucUde levels in food comprised a substantial fraction of the generic action levels for radionuclides in foodstuffs [2] or the appropriate national intervention or action levels. 

Many plant biotechnological strategies are directed towards introducing fundamental changes in Ae properties of (woody) plant cell walls and their biopolymers. Alternatively, other approaches attempt to alter levels of specific constituents such as those imparting defense functions. The purposes of such manipulations are manifold To optimize wood properties for lumber and paper production, to produce new biopolymers which are expected to be valuable as replacements for petroleum-derived polymers, to alter nutritional qualities of foodstuffs, to increase the production of pharmacologically important compounds, and to either introduce or enhance novel defense functions in plants (i.e., antioxidants, biocidal properties and the like). Such approaches, in fact, represent exploitation of ongoing evolutionary processes by calculated human intervention. 

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