Doses to children from intakes by ingestion.
In this article, sensitivities and doses to children from intakes of radionuclides by ingestion were studied relative to adults. Generally speaking, doses to children were higher due to their higher radiosensitiveness to many radionuclides, even though they consume less food and water than adults. Therefore, the action levels in the Canadian guidelines for the restriction of radioactively contaminated food and water following a nuclear emergency were selected as the most restrictive among the six age groups that could lead to an individual receiving a dose equal to a specified intervention level of 1 mSv. For non-emergency situations, the specified intervention level is 0.1 mSv. At such a low intervention level, the maximum acceptable concentrations (MAC) in drinking water are normally derived for adults. Although this is a common practice for guidelines in non-emergency operations, for those radionuclides when the doses to children are more than 10 times higher than the doses to adults, the MAC in non-emergency situations should be limited to, at least, as restrictive as the action levels for interventional action following a nuclear emergency.