Resilience after a nuclear accident: readiness in using mobile phone applications to measure radiation and health indicators in various groups (SHAMISEN SINGS project).

An anonymous web-based survey was developed to check different aspects (SHAMISEN SINGS project): stakeholder awareness and perceptions of available mobile applications (apps) for measuring ionising radiation doses and health/well-being indicators; whether they would be ready to use them in the post-accidental recovery; and what are their preferred methodologies to acquire information etc. The results show that participation of the citizens would be most beneficial during post-accident recovery, providing individual measurements of external ionizing dose and health/well-being parameters, with possible follow-up. Also, participants indicated different preferences for sources to gain knowledge on ionising radiation and for the functions that an ideal app should have. The level of awareness and readiness to use apps to measure ionising radiation dose depended on two main aspects: individual differences (age & gender) and whether people were from countries affected by the previous major accidents. We concluded that stakeholders could have benefits from the data management plan: (1) it potentiates resilience at individual and community level; (2) citizens' measurements contribute to environmental monitoring and public health screening; (3) linkages between different types of data (environmental exposure, individual behavioural diaries, and measurements of health indicators) allow to perform more rigorous epidemiological studies.

A real-time system to report abnormal events involving staff in a nuclear medicine therapy unit.

A system for internal and voluntary reporting of abnormal events in a Nuclear Medicine Therapy Unit is described. This system is based on the Internet of Things and is composed of an application for mobile devices and a wireless network of detectors. The application is addressed to healthcare professionals and is intended to be a user-friendly tool to make the reporting procedure little laborious. The network of detectors allows for a real-time measurement of the dose distribution in the patient's room. The staff was involved in all stages, from the design of the dosimetry system and mobile application up to their final testing. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with 24 operators in different roles in the Unit (radiation protection experts, physicians, physicists, nuclear medicine technicians and nurses). The preliminary results of the interviews and the current state of development of the application and the detection network will be described.

Lessons from past radiation accidents: Critical review of methods addressed to individual dose assessment of potentially exposed people and integration with medical assessment.

The experiences of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents showed that dosimetry was the essential tool in the emergency situation for decision making processes, such as evacuation and application of protective measures. However, at the consequent post-accidental phases, it was crucial also for medical health surveillance and in further adaptation to changed conditions with regards to radiation protection of the affected populations. This review provides an analysis of the experiences related to the role of dosimetry (dose measurements, assessment and reconstruction) regarding health preventive measures in the post-accidental periods on the examples of the major past nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Recommendations derived from the review are called to improve individual dose assessment in case of a radiological accident/incident and should be considered in advance as guidelines to follow for having better information. They are given as conclusions.

Radioactivity in drinking water: regulations, monitoring results and radiation protection issues.

INTRODUCTION: Drinking waters usually contain several natural radionuclides: tritium, radon, radium, uranium isotopes, etc. Their concentrations vary widely since they depend on the nature of the aquifer, namely, the prevailing lithology and whether there is air in it or not. AIMS: In this work a broad overview of the radioactivity in drinking water is presented: national and international regulations, for limiting the presence of radioactivity in waters intended for human consumption; results of extensive campaigns for monitoring radioactivity in drinking waters, including mineral bottled waters, carried out throughout the world in recent years; a draft of guidelines for the planning of campaigns to measure radioactivity in drinking water proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (ARPA) of Lombardia.

Thorium series radionuclides in the environment: measurement, dose assessment and regulation.

Environmental radioactivity research is more advanced for the (238)U series than for the (232)Th series, for a number of reasons. One reason is that some radionuclides of the (232)Th series are more difficult to measure than the corresponding isotopes in the (238)U series, and measurement techniques are less widely available. The (232)Th series population doses, however, are sometimes significant. This paper analyses some main radionuclides in the (232)Th series in comparison with corresponding nuclides in the (238)U series, with regard to measurement techniques, dose coefficients and regulation needs.

A method to evaluate the contribution of building material to indoor gamma dose rate through outdoor measurements: preliminary results.

Building materials can be an important source of exposure to gamma radiation indoors. In situations in which it is impossible to enter the dwellings to measure indoor gamma dose rate, as can happen in epidemiological studies and in surveys on randomly selected dwellings, it is important to obtain accurate and precise estimates of the indoor gamma dose rate. In this paper, preliminary results of a validation study of a new method, named IN-OUT, to estimate the indoor gamma dose rate attributable to the building materials are presented. This method, which is still in progress, is based on outdoor measurements, performed close to an external wall of a dwelling, and on a 'room model' elaboration, which takes into account geometrical and structural characteristics of the dwelling. The validation was performed using data--relevant to 91 dwellings, at present--collected in Latium and Campania within the framework of 'SETIL', the Italian epidemiological study on the aetiology of childhood leukaemia, lymphoma and neuroblastoma.