Purpose: Calculations of radiation detriment to the population currently living (in 2020) in the territories of Russia contaminated with 137Cs after the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
Material and methods: Radiation detriment was calculated in two ways: according to the original ICRP method, and approximate calculation as the product of the nominal risk factor of RSS-99/2009 by the effective dose (nominal radiation detriment). For ICRP calculations, equivalent doses were estimated using the dose coefficients of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The number of the studied population at the beginning of 2020 was 142676 people, 65205 men and 77471 women. This is mainly the population of the Bryansk region and Tula region, 85.5 % and 10 % of the total population, respectively. The average accumulated effective dose of the population was 30.6 mSv, and the maximum individual accumulated dose was 707 mSv.
Results: In 2020, for men at the age of 44 and for women at the age of 55, the nominal radiation detriment is approximately equal to the value of radiation detriment calculated using the ICRP method. At the same time, the nominal detriment is significantly (up to 2.3 times) underestimated for younger and overestimated for older ages. In 2020, the critical population groups with the highest accumulated doses and maximum radiation detriment are men aged 34 and women aged 35. For these population groups, the average accumulated effective doses were 35.3 mSv and 39.2 mSv, and the average radiation detriment was 2.6×10–3 and 4.2×10–3, for men and women, respectively. For 11.8 % of the population (8.3 % of men and 14.8 % of women), the individual radiation detriment calculated using the ICRP method exceeds the value of 3.5×10–3, which corresponds to the maximum increase in individual risk for the population over 70 years of exposure, established by RSS-99/2009 for normal exposure conditions. The maximum radiation detriment of 3.9×10–2 was found for a woman of the Krasnogorsky district of the Bryansk region at the age of 37 years, with an accumulated effective dose of 392 mSv.
Conclusion: The results of this work can be used in preparing recommendations to health authorities on improving medical supervision of exposured citizens living in areas contaminated with radionuclides, as well as in developing regulatory documents for the provision of targeted medical care to people from high radiation risk groups using personalized medicine methods.