An official website of the United States government.
The Food Standards Agency needs to assess the concentrations of carbon-14 and tritium in foods following releases into the atmosphere, either as part of the routine releases from nuclear sites or following an accident. These concentrations are required so that the radiation exposure of consumers of these foods can be calculated. The methods currently used by the Agency do not take account of the uncertainty which accompany these estimates. The new method being developed will enable the uncertainty in the estimates of the concentrations to be calculated and taken into account in the assessment of the exposure of consumers.
Research Approach<ul>
<li>Conceptual models will be defined to describe the transport of carbon-14 and tritium in the food chain.
<li>A literature review will be carried out. This review will identify appropriate values for the parameters used in the conceptual models. The parameter values will be defined as distributions rather than as single values.
<li>The conceptual model will then be implemented using the AMBER probabilistic modelling tool already used by the Agency.</ul>
<p>
Find more about this project and other FSA food safety-related projects at the <a href="http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/" target="_blank">Food Standards Agency Research webpage</a>.