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Canadian Guidelines for the Restriction of Radioactively Contaminated Food and Water Following a Nuclear Emergency

Appendix B: International Guidance on Food Intervention

Table B.1
Comparison of methodologies adopted by various international organizations
Organization	Intervention Level	Food Groups	Contamination Factor	Action Level Groups	Implementation
Health Canada	1 mSv per food group	3 food groups	f = 1 for fresh liquid milk and tap water; f = 0.2 for all other foods.	For individual radionuclides.	Applied independently between food groups; all radionuclides additive within single food group.
ICRP	10 mSv averted dose for a single food - optimized values for specificfoods based on cost-benefit analysis.			For 2 dose coefficient categories.	Applied independently to single foodstuffs - actual intervention criteria based on real accident conditions.
IAEA	Optimized action levels derived from cost-benefit analysis.	2 groups classified by cost per kg	Not applicable.	For 3 dose coefficient categories.	Applied independently between food and radionuclide groups; additive within single group.
Codex	5 mSv whole body	2 groups	f = 1.0	As above.	As above.
CEC		5 groups		For 4 radionuclide groups.	As above.
WHO	5 mSv whole body, 50 mSv thyroid	Adult - 8 groups Infants - 1 group	f = 1.0	For 2 dose coefficient categories.	Additive between all food and radionuclide groups.
USFDA	5 mSv whole body, 50 mSv thyroid	Applied to total diet.	f = 0.3, except f = 1.0 for I & Te ininfant milk diet	For 5 groups of 9 radionuclides.	Applied independently between radionuclide groups; additive within single group.

Table B.4
WHO recommendations
Class of Radionuclide	Derived Intervention Levels by Food Group (Bq kg^-1)
Class of Radionuclide	Cereals	Roots and Tubers	Vegetables	Fruit	Meat	Milk	Fish	Drinking Water
i. High dose coefficients, 10^-6Sv Bq^-1	35	50	80	70	100	45	350	7
ii. Low dose coefficients, 10^-8 Sv Bq^-1	3 500	5 000	8 000	7 000	10 000	4 500	35 000	700
Guideline values for infants on milk diet
⁹⁰ Sr	160
¹³¹I	1 600
¹³⁷Cs	1 800
²³⁹Pu	7

Table B.6
CEC recommendations
Radionuclide	Council Food Intervention Levels (Bq kg^-1)
Radionuclide	BabyFoods	DairyProduce	MinorFoods	OtherFoods	LiquidFoods
Isotopes of Sr, notably ⁹⁰Sr	75	125	7 500	750	125
Isotopes of I, notably ¹³¹I	150	500	20 000	2 000	500
Alpha-emitting isotopes ofPu and trans-Pu elements	1	20	800	80	20
All others with half-lives greater than10 days, notably ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs	400	1 000	12 500	1 250	1 000