Demonstration of generic handbooks for assisting in the management of contaminated food production systems and inhabited areas in Europe

Abstract

Two handbooks have been developed in conjunction with a wide range of stakeholders that provide assistance in the management of contaminated food production systems and inhabited areas following a radiological incident. Emergency centres in Member States not involved in the development of these handbooks were invited to take part in demonstration activities to establish whether the handbooks would be useful for the purposes of contingency planning and accident management. Some eight centres took part. Emergency exercises or similar events based on scenarios involving contamination of the foodchain and inhabited areas were used. Feedback from all of the demonstrations was positive with constructive criticism given on how to improve the navigation, structure and format of the handbooks. All of the key improvements highlighted during the demonstrations were taken into account and included in version 2 of the handbooks. Two additional demonstrations took place in Denmark and Slovakia to investigate the appropriateness and applicability of a stakeholder participatory process when applying the handbooks. These stakeholders expressed their willingness to discuss the issues at stake from contamination of food production systems and inhabited areas and gave a clear commitment to continue the process.

New model for agricultural countermeasures in RODOS and ARGOS

“…For the estimation of worker doses the only tasks considered are those which are introduced solely as a result of the countermeasure. Doses arising from tasks that are expected to be carried out regardless of decisions on countermeasures are not considered (this is consistent with the approach for the EURANOS handbook for management of contaminated food production systems (Nisbet et al, 2009)). This approach requires that for each countermeasure those tasks which are considered to be solely applicable to the countermeasure and those tasks which are considered to be "routine" activities are separately identified.…”

“…In the EURANOS handbook (Nisbet et al, 2009) short-term sheltering of dairy animals is distinguished from long-term clean feeding/housing of livestock as short-term sheltering is implemented prior to deposition and feeding is done only with stored feedstuffs. Both variants are modelled in the same way in AGRICP.…”

“…Having implemented such an option in AGRICP, means that the assessment of waste options will be possible for some foods in future. One of the objectives in the new development was to allow for the implementation of additional countermeasures which emerged within the EURANOS project from work on the generic handbook for management of contaminated food production systems in Europe (Nisbet et al, 2009). Not all countermeasures collected in (Nisbet et al, 2009) were explicitly modelled, since several options only have effects outside the scope of radioecological modelling (or depend on local variability of soil contamination, which can not be modelled adequately).…”

“…One of the objectives in the new development was to allow for the implementation of additional countermeasures which emerged within the EURANOS project from work on the generic handbook for management of contaminated food production systems in Europe (Nisbet et al, 2009). Not all countermeasures collected in (Nisbet et al, 2009) were explicitly modelled, since several options only have effects outside the scope of radioecological modelling (or depend on local variability of soil contamination, which can not be modelled adequately). One further objective of the project, realised at the end of EURANOS, was to integrate the new agricultural countermeasure model in both European decision support systems RODOS (Ehrhardt and Weis, 2000;Ehrhardt and Raskob, 2007) and ARGOS (Hoe et al, 2008).…”

Implementation in ARGOS of ERMIN and AGRICP

“…At the same time, this study derives more locality-specific values for Nordic countries for parameters like consumption habits, foodstuff import fractions, seasonal variation in crop growth in different climates (leaf area index) and local animal feeding regimes. The countermeasure data that has been implemented is based on the descriptions in the EURANOS handbook for assisting in the management of contaminated food production systems (Nisbet et al, 2009b).…”