The Development of WHO’s Approach to DILs

Abstract

Prior to Chernobyl, many international organizations such as the Commission of European Communities (CEC) (1), International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) (2), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (3), and the World Health Organization (WHO) (4), had produced guidelines for national authorities to apply in the event of an accident at a nuclear facility. Following Chernobyl it was generally accepted that this guidance was applicable close to the accident site, but was inadequate in guiding national authorities far removed from the accident. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that different national philosophies produced widely differing intervention and derived intervention levels. This deficiency was recognized early and led to a number of interagency and international meetings to determine how it could be remedied. One outcome of the interagency discussion was that WHO would endeavor to produce guideline values for derived intervention levels in environmental media, below which actions to reduce or avoid the potential health detriment were not justified. It was also felt that such guideline values would provide a basis upon which countries could implement their own derived intervention levels, and so promote a measure of harmonization.