Stather John W
National Radiological Protection Board, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0RQ, UK.
Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2004;112(4):487-92. doi: 10.1093/rpd/nch103.
A significant problem in internal radiation dosimetry is the discrepancy between the radiation dose from exposure to radon inferred from epidemiological studies and the higher dose calculated using the Human Respiratory Tract Model (HRTM) adopted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The difference is a factor of about 3. The agreement between these two assessments by radically different approaches is surprisingly good. Nevertheless, there has been concern to understand fully the reasons for this discrepancy and to attempt to reconcile the two approaches. This is of importance because radon contributes about half of the total effective dose from natural background radiation. Furthermore, the HRTM was developed with application to radon exposure in mind, yet at present it is not used for risk assessment purposes although ICRP does suggest that it is useful for comparative dosimetry.
内照射剂量学中的一个重大问题是，流行病学研究推断的氡暴露辐射剂量与国际放射防护委员会（ICRP）采用的人类呼吸道模型（HRTM）计算出的较高剂量之间存在差异。差异约为3倍。通过截然不同的方法得出的这两种评估结果之间的一致性出奇地好。然而，人们一直关注要充分理解这种差异的原因，并试图调和这两种方法。这一点很重要，因为氡在天然本底辐射产生的总有效剂量中约占一半。此外，HRTM的开发是考虑到氡暴露的情况，但目前它并未用于风险评估目的，尽管ICRP确实表明它对比较剂量学有用。
