European annual cosmic-ray dose: estimation of population exposure

Abstract

The earth is continually bombarded by high-energy cosmic ray particles, and the worldwide average exposure to cosmic rays represents about 13% of the total annual effective dose received by the population. Therefore, assessment of cosmic ray exposure at the ground level is of great interest to better understand population exposure to ionizing radiation. This paper presents and describes the European Annual Cosmic-Ray Dose Map at 1 km resolution (Main Map). The Main Map displays the annual effective dose that a person may receive from cosmic rays at the ground level, which ranges from 301 to 3955 μSv. Moreover, thanks to the availability of population data, the annual cosmic-ray collective dose has been evaluated and population-weighted average annual effective dose (per capita) due to cosmic ray has been estimated for each European country considered in this study. The accuracy of the present study has been confirmed by comparing our results with those obtained using other models.

Keywords

• Cosmic ray
• mapping
• Europe
• population