Sensitivity analysis of health risk to probability distributions for the exposure parameters

Abstract

© 2014 RAD Conference Proceedings. All rights reserved. Purpose of this paper was to estimate cancer mortality risk related to direct soil ingestion exposure to radionuclide 238U using Monte Carlo simulations. This method enables adequate description of assessed risk that should include estimated probability density function with statement about related measurement uncertainty. Ten soil samples were taken from the alluvial horizon of the Djetina River. Gamma spectroscopic measurement was performed for determination of the radionuclide 238U activity concentration in soil samples. Four hypothetical exposure cases were considered with different combinations of input parameter distributions. Also, it was made attempt to extract influence of the specific distributions for input quantities on the assessed risk using parameter sensitivity analysis techniques.