Monitoring and Assessment

The EPA provides the expertise, technical capability and information essential to the protection of people and the environment through targeted environmental monitoring, research to assess the sources of radiation exposure and maintains the capability to assess the radiological impact when new sources of radiation dose are identified.

Specifically, the monitoring programme assesses:

• Ambient radioactivity based on measurements of radioactivity in air and of external gamma dose rate from a network of permanent monitoring stations located throughout the country
• Levels of radioactivity in a variety of food products and drinking water
• Levels of radioactivity in the Irish marine environment based on sampling and measurement of seawater, sediment, seaweed, fish and shellfish.The programme includes round-the-clock measurements from the permanent monitoring network and a programme of sampling followed by laboratory testing.

The results of the monitoring show that, while the levels of artificial radioactivity in the Irish environment remain detectable, they are low and do not pose a significant risk to human health.