Comments to ICRP Draft Report for Consultation: The Use of Effective Dose as a Radiological Protection Quantity
The draft report is generally well written and coverage is appropriate for the intended use. The report will be valuable for scientists, regulators, employers and radiation workers worldwide. Clarified role of effective dose in dosimetry, optimization and risk assessment helps multi-professional science and medical community in their practical communication and daily work, and also in their education, training, research and development projects. It would still add the value of the report if the role of organ doses, and practical application of sex and age specific factors for risk assessment could be clarified more.
Please, find specific comments below, indicating the page and row of the related text part.
page 8, row 220: text should be clarified as follows: “exposed in the same way, regarding the equivalence of organ/tissue equivalent doses.”
page 9 row 227: please clarify “dose coefficients” already here – as dose coefficients (Sv Bq-1) for intakes of individual radionuclides by workers and members of the public (ref. chapter 3.5) – because the term is used frequently in the following text.
page 9, row 270: consider adding: “population group, and dose distribution heterogeneity.” – to note that if dose in modality A is providing very heterogeneous dose distribution within a specific radiosensitive organ, and modality B does not, they have potentially different detriment although the average organ dose could be the same.
page 11, row 301: correct the name “McCullough”, should be “McCollough”.
page 14, row 467: please, specify what risk is here referred to, e.g. death.
page 15, row 469: please, clarify briefly (one sentence should be enough) the reverse causation.
page 16, row 539: clarify “anatomical site” or “tissue/organ site”.
page 16, row 555: “morbidity and suffering” would be good to clarify further, even briefly.
page 17, row 576: justification to “use of incidence rather than mortality data” would be good to clarify briefly in this paragraph.
page 18, row 620: It would be helpful to explain the column titles a bit more in the Table 2.1 caption or footnote. Thus, the readers do not necessarily have to go to see the Report 103 for that.
page 19, row 660: Uncertainties which are mentioned in the row 649 would be great to clarify in the Table 2.3. along with the wT values. That would give a better perspective to interpret the numbers and understand the magnitude of uncertainty more clearly.
page 25, row 830: correct typo “fndamental”
page 34, row 1203: correct typo “Ranniko” to “Rannikko”. Furthermore, the reference is missing from the list. The correct reference is: Rannikko S, Ermakov I, Lampinen JS, Toivonen M, Karila KT, Chervjakov A. Computing patient doses of X-ray examinations using a patient size- and sex-adjustable phantom. Br J Radiol. 1997 Jul;70(835):708-18.
page 47, row 1789: Recording of organ doses by dose tracking systems would also provide significant data source for the future research – facilitating modality based technical studies, patient specific radiation dose studies and epidemiological risk related studies. This potential should be mentioned.