Radiological protection, radioecology, and the protection of animals in high-dose exposure situations

Although much consideration has been given to the subject of ‘protection of the environment’ in recent years, this has largely been driven by the desire to protect the natural environment, focused on the needs to maintain biological diversity, the conservation of species, and so on. The numerical values developed to help achieve these aims have therefore been aimed at protecting animals at the population level. But recent experiences with large scale nuclear accidents, and the seemingly growing threat of acts of terrorism or worse, draw attention to the needs to consider in more detail the radiological protection of animals under high-dose exposure situations, and in the context of urban and agricultural environments rather than natural ones. The concerns here are also quite different - essentially those of animal welfare, at an individual, not a population, level. So now that the International Commission on Radiological Protection has embraced the need to consider protection of the animal as patient in veterinary medicine, it is worth considering a number of possible implications for responding to such environmental exposure situations, such as ethical drivers, dosimetric modelling, categorisation of radiation effects, and the need for numerical guidance. All of these issues are briefly discussed.