Abstract
This article presents nuclide-specific organ dose rate coefficients for environmental external exposures due to soil contamination assumed as a planar source at a depth of 0.5 g cm−2 in the soil and submersion to contaminated air, for a pregnant female and its fetus at the 24th week of gestation. Furthermore, air kerma free-in-air coefficient rates are listed. The coefficients relate the organ equivalent dose rates (Sv s−1) to the activity concentration of environmental sources, in Bq m−2 or Bq m−3, allowing to time-integrate over a particular exposure period. The environmental radiation fields were simulated with the Monte Carlo radiation transport codes PHITS and YURI. Monoenergetic organ dose rate coefficients were calculated employing the Monte Carlo code EGSnrc simulating the photon transport in the voxel phantom of a pregnant female and fetus. Photons of initial energies of 0.015–10 MeV were considered including bremsstrahlung. By folding the monoenergetic dose coefficients with the nuclide decay data, nuclide-specific organ doses were obtained. The results of this work can be employed for estimating the doses from external exposures to pregnant women and their fetus, until more precise data are available which include coefficients obtained for phantoms at different stages of pregnancy.
Highlights
The monitoring of radiation doses received by a pregnant woman as well as its embryo and fetus due to naturally or anthropogenic radiation is of great interest to the public as well as to national and international organizations
This work provides a dataset of organ dose rate coefficients of a pregnant female and its fetus at the 24th week of pregnancy to be used for the assessment of external dose from environmental exposure for two typical environmental conditions
The computations of the dose coefficients were based on methodologies previously developed
Summary
The monitoring of radiation doses received by a pregnant woman as well as its embryo and fetus due to naturally or anthropogenic radiation is of great interest to the public as well as to national and international organizations. Ingestion could possibly play an important role after a certain period, if appropriate and quick restrictions for some foodstuffs are not taken. This was the case after the Chernobyl accident and the internal doses to the public in some regions were estimated to be comparable to the external doses. External exposure from radionuclide deposition on the ground is significant for a longer time than the internal exposure, as after the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan in March of 2011 (UNSCEAR 2013)
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