[New standards for radiation safety and effective dose]

The scientific bases and the peculiarities of the new radiation safety standards (RSS) implemented in Russia in april 1996 are considered. A comparison is made of the merits and shortcomings of both conceptions of standardization--by means of setting dose limits for the critical organs or by means of limiting the effective dose as a measure of the total radiation risk of late effects. The application of the effective dose to practice gives unquestionable advantages for assessing the sufficiency of arrangements providing radiation safety of personnel or public protection against radiation. However the use of the effective dose for individual dose monitoring is often not good (especially in the case of internal irradiation) due to wide variation caused by oversimplifications in the applied models. Essential shortcomings of the RSS-96 are also the absence of the permissible body burden of radionuclides among the derived standards and the regulation of the mean annual (unmeasurable) values of their concentration in air. It is proposed in addition to the effective dose which limits the risk of stochastic effects to reserve in the RSS the limits of equivalent doses for the main body organs (lungs, liver). This would eliminate the deterministic effects and give the possibility of differential evaluation of the irradiation pattern. It is also proposed to replace the reglamentation of mean annual concentrations of radionuclides in air by the reglamentation of their permissible concentration in the working zone.