Your Environment

Radiation monitoring

The RPII carries out rigorous and continuous testing to ensure that environmental radiation remains within internationally agreed and legal safety limits. These tests ensure that we are quickly aware of any change in environmental radiation in Ireland, and able to provide you with any health warnings and protection advice necessary.

The annual doses incurred by the Irish public as a result of radioactivity from all sources in the environment do not constitute a significant health risk. Doses received as a result of artificial radioactivity are small compared with those received as a result of natural radiation.

Monitoring and sampling

The key elements of the RPII monitoring programme are:

• Assessment of ambient radioactivity based on measurements of radioactivity in air and of external gamma dose rate from a network of permanent monitoring stations located throughout the country. The permanent monitoring network would also provide the first indication of abnormal levels of radioactivity resulting from a nuclear emergency.
• Assessment of levels of radioactivity in a variety of food products and drinking water
• Assessment of levels of radioactivity in the Irish marine environment based on sampling and measurement of seawater, sediment, seaweed, fish and shellfish

The programme combines round-the-clock measurements from the permanent monitoring network and a programme of sampling followed by laboratory testing. We take and test around 2000 samples every year. Most samples are taken from fixed locations throughout Ireland. Fish and shellfish are collected from the main fishing ports. This provides a baseline against which measurements can be compares and would enable elevated values to be identified quicky.

Results of the monitoring can be seen in our latest report Radioactivity Monitoring of the Irish Environment. More recent monitoring data is also available and is updated on an on-going basis.

Europe

A similar routine of sampling and testing of the environment is carried out in every EU country. The results are compiled and are available to view online as EU reports on environmental radioactivity.

In addition, gamma dose rate data is from the permanent monitoring network is transferred every hour to a European Commission computer. Similar data from all EU countries is collated and can be viewed online.