Improving to knowledge of exposure by ingestion thanks to food surveys

Titre du congrès :Conférence Internationale d'Epidémiologie et d'Expositions Environnementales Ville du congrès :Paris-la-Villette Date du congrès :02/09/2006

  In 2004, the French Institute for Radioprotection and Nuctear Safety (in the framework of its project Radioecological sensitivity, SENSIB), in collaboration with AREVA and BEGEAT (Bureau d'Etudes de Gestion et d'Aménagement du Territoire), analysed the food practices of the populations living near the nuclear installations of Pierrelatte-Tricastin site (France) in order to better quantify the potential impact of opérations of thèse nuclear installations. The aim of this study was to obtain accurate information on the useful local food practices for the future requests for authorization of waste and water sampling of the nuclear installations of Pierrelatte-Tricastin site and, in particular, on way of life leading to higher exposure of population: consumption of locally-produced foodstuffs, own personal production, hunting practises... The child and the young people were specially focused on because of their acute sensibility to ionizing radiations. The survey was realized in the town of Bollene over a complète year by means of four inquiries at the rate of one by season to be able to describe the seasonal évolutions of the consumption of families. The first part of the survey covered seventy-six households during summer and the three other parts covered some twenty five households. The selected households live in rural areas, in the upwind area of the nuclear site, possess a garden or are regular consumers of foods produced locally and contain children or young people. The survey questionnaire given to each family allowed knowing more exactly the raw quantifies of food ingested by the members of the home over a period of seven days as well as the origin of food (resulting from a local farm, from a private kitchen garden, from a firm neighbour or from a classic commercial distribution). A "fictitious" unit called "unit of consumption" was used to make allowance for the wide variations in household make-up for this type of weeklong survey. The obtained data allowed to propose daily food ration averages by investigated household and by unit of consumption and to identlfy the part of the home consumption food. The data treatment revealed the existence of a group of population which stilt has a very high home consumption rate.