Environmental Dosimetry and its Role in Radiological Monitoring from Coast to Coast to Coast

Health Canada’s National Dosimetry Service Division (NDS), runs a small environmental dosimetry program in support of the HC National Monitoring Section’s (NMS) efforts to characterize the gamma component of background rates across Canada. Passive environmental dosimeters (Landauer InLight design), are distributed to NMS stations in every province and territory on a quarterly basis, which are then deployed and retrieved by NMS partners. A specialized algorithm processes the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) elements of the dosimeter to calculate the ambient equivalent dose equivalent, H*(10). These data are then sent to the NMS, which publishes the results to the Canadian Radiological Monitoring Network – Environmental Dosimetry website (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/67bedee8-beb0-4b3a-a1c6-24a4cda08afe). Emphasis would be placed on the rationale for passive environmental dosimetry, and dosimeter design.