PLAN FOR A CONTINUING FOLLOW-UP OF PERSONS EXPOSED TO RADIATION IN THE CANADIAN NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY

摘要

Present standards of protection of radiation workers are based mainly on data concerning the risk of cancer and other delayed effects following large acute exposures to ionizing radiation. For the future, however, it would be reasonable to gather, in addition, the more strictly relevant data that could be derived directly from the large number of persons actually employed in the nuclear power industry, who have been exposed to radiation in the course of their working lifetimes, within the limits laid down by the radiation protection regulations.nSince personal exposures are already being recorded routinely for legal purposes, it is necessary only that these exposed individuals be followed to determine when they die and the causes of their deaths. To carry out such a study economically, using all of the exposure data for employees in the nuclear industry, it is proposed that machine-readable versions of the exposure records be matched routinely by computer with the death registration magnetic tapes for all persons dying in Canada, and perhaps also with cancer registration magnetic tapes if and when these become available in a suitable form.