The Commission received progress updates on its Committees and made the following decisions:
C1 – Members of the Commission emphasised importance of obtaining quantitative data about the risk to the embryo and foetus.
C2 – The Commission decided that the objective should be to complete Part 3 of ICRP-30 and to calculate ALIs and DACs for radionuclides of as many of the remaining elements as possible. Regarding ALIs for members of the public, the Commission agreed to C2’s approach of deriving simple reduction factors as a means of obtaining appropriate ALIs for members of the public from the values given in ICRP-30.
C3 – The Commission approved the proposal to create a TG on Concepts and Units in order to prepare a draft of Revision of ICRP-21 where medical aspects will be excluded. Additionally, the revision should address a summary of data on the relationships between field quantities and absorbed, equivalent, and effective equivalent dose.
C4 – The Commission agreed that C3 and C4 should work closely together and a member of C3 should attend C4’s meeting. The Commission decided not to enlarge the working group on Revision of ICRP-7. In response to a letter from OECD, the Commission stated that ICRP recommendations applied to storage of radioactive waste as it contained potential irradiation of humans.
On the topic of statements, the Commission decided that it would no longer be appropriate to release statements on ICRP-26 and that there was a need to provide clarifications of authorised limits, or of operational boundary limits to optimisation for individual practices. A working paper on this topic was requested for Brighton 1980.
Extensive discussion was held regarding Exposure Limits for Rn-222 and Rn-220. A structure for the report was proposed by Dr. Beninson and Professor Jacobi and was accepted by the Commission.
The Commission agreed to establishing informal relations with ICPEMC, the IRPA committee on NIR, and to encourage contacts with radiobiologists who are carrying out studies on the topic of radiation risk assessments.