The IAEA and the Nuclear Regulatory Authority of Argentina have held a regional workshop in Buenos Aires from 21 to 23 March 2017, to discuss the application of current international standards for managing radioactivity in food, drinking water and commodities in non-emergency situations.
The workshop, jointly organized by the IAEA, the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization, was attended by 46 participants from 16 Member States and two non-Member States, Aruba and St. Lucia. The participants included high level experts and senior staff from regulatory bodies, industry, research organizations and government ministries charged with the responsibility for establishing national standards for radioactivity in food, drinking water and commodities that are traded, and for assessing compliance with such standards.
Food, drinking water and commodities may contain both naturally occurring and man-made radionuclides. When consumed or used, these products may expose people to radiation. For this reason, it is important to know the amounts of radionuclides in food and drinking water and, if necessary, control their distribution and harmonize national approaches in order to facilitate international trade.
The main purpose of the workshop was to seek feedback from countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean region on their experience in using the international standards, including the identification of any aspects requiring further clarification or development.
A number of countries in the region currently do not have programmes for monitoring radioactivity in food and drinking water. The workshop offered these countries an opportunity to learn from the experiences of others on how to design and implement an appropriate and cost-effective monitoring programme, including the management of situations where activity concentrations in the standards are exceeded. The first step in designing such a monitoring programme is to undertake baseline studies describing the situation nationally.
