Environmental Monitoring: Why, Where, What and How? - Illustration by the Risk-Related Approach of Radioactivity Surveillance in Radiation Protection
Environmental monitoring is worldwide a major concern. The main questions to be answered when addressing environmental monitoring are: why, where, what and how? The environmental monitoring program must allow a general knowledge of the situation. It must also proceed of a synthetic step including all the chain, from the emission of the pollutants to their impact on man. It is obvious that the monitoring program, for economic reasons, must remain within reasonable limits and that one cannot thus all control. The aims of environmental monitoring mainly are: (>) to ensure that the emissions of pollutants (biological, chemical, radioactive) caused by the human activities are acceptable; (>) to ensure that the level of environmental contaminants do not undergo an unacceptable increase due to the human activity; (>) to check that the impact of pollutants discharges and their contributions to the public exposures are acceptable considering the associated risks; (>) to ensure that in the long term the level of pollution does not grow in an unacceptable way;(>) to ensure the knowledge of the current levels of environmental natural and artificial hazards and the capability to very early detect an abnormal or unexpected situation, e.g. Due to an accidental situation or a process of contamination (ecology); (>) to ensure a methodology and the startup of monitoring tools allowing an effective control of the metrological problems in the event of an increase of pollution. (>) to ensure quality assurance of the monitoring(>) to select a monitoring program based on the following principles: - Control levels of emissions (regulatory aspects)- Monitoring of the levels in the biosphere (ecological aspects)- Impact on the population (health aspects) (>) to allow a competent interpretation of the monitoring results in order to: - connect sources of emissions, through the transfer in the biosphere, at the impact on the individual;- carry out projections in the future- choose the sensitive indicators(>) to ensure the credibility of the monitoring authority based both on quality assurance and stakeholders information: - by a complete transparency; - by information accessible to general public;- by setting in perspective the results, e.g. While comparing with the natural levels or by replacing the risks associated in the context with the technological and natural risks. The objective of this lecture is to present the environmental monitoring strategy adopted from the angle of radioactive pollutants in reviewing recent scientific and policy developments in this area to achieve the above mentioned goals. In the context of radioactive materials as environmental pollutants the awareness of environmental issues has increased over the past two decades, especially after the Chernobyl accident, leading to reconsider the assumption on which current standards are based, namely that if humans are adequately protected, the other species will also be adequately protected.
Christophe Murith
Swiss federal Office of Public Health, CH-3003 Bern
国际会议
2007环境科学与技术国际会议(The 2007 International Symposium on Environmental Science and Technology)
北京
英文
2007-11-13（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）