ICRP Publication 103 — The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection
1. Source documents
- Publication 103 PDF retained locally — ICRP, 2007; supplied 17 September 2026.
- Extracted text
- Provenance and SHA-256 metadata
- Official ICRP publication page — citation, abstract and publisher download.
2. Authority and jurisdiction
- International recommendations and professional consensus issued by the ICRP, an independent advisory body.
- Publication 103 is not legislation and does not directly regulate THHS. Its concepts influence IAEA standards and Australian frameworks; legal or local force requires an identified Queensland, licence or approved-plan mechanism.
- ICRP is reviewing the system with a view to new general recommendations around 2030. Publication 103 remains the current general recommendations until superseded, while later ICRP publications may update particular topics.
3. Key takeaways
- Defines three principles of radiological protection—justification, optimisation and application of dose limits—and specifies where each applies. Justification and optimisation apply across planned, emergency and existing exposure situations; dose limits apply to occupational and public exposure from regulated sources in planned situations, not to patients' intended medical exposure.
- Makes optimisation central and uses prospective dose or risk constraints for planned exposure and reference levels for emergency and existing exposure; these tools are not interchangeable with dose limits.
- Distinguishes exposure situations (planned, emergency and existing) from exposure categories (occupational, public and medical), preventing controls for one category from being transferred uncritically to another.
- Defines effective dose as a reference-person protection quantity for planning, optimisation and compliance; it is not an individual-specific cancer-risk estimate, a tissue-reaction quantity or a substitute for patient organ/tissue dose.
- For medical exposure, protection depends on layered justification and optimisation, competent professionals, dosimetry, quality assurance and accident prevention rather than limiting the prescribed therapeutic dose.
- Provides the conceptual international layer beneath IAEA GSR Part 3 and Australian sources; Queensland law, licence conditions and the approved RSPP remain the immediate authorities for THHS practice.
4. Summary
4.1. 1 — Introduction
- Describes the history and development of the Commission's recommendations and the structure of Publication 103.
- Consolidates the 1990 recommendations and later guidance while updating biological, dosimetric and system concepts.
4.2. 2 — Aims and scope
- Sets the system's aims: contribute to protection of people and the environment without unduly limiting beneficial activities; manage tissue-reaction and stochastic risks.
- Applies in full where a source or exposure pathway can reasonably be controlled, with exclusion and exemption used to define practical regulatory scope.
4.3. 3 — Biological aspects of radiological protection
- Summarises tissue reactions, stochastic effects, diseases other than cancer, embryo/fetus effects, and the judgements and uncertainties used for protection decisions.
- Uses population evidence and prudent models to support protection; it does not turn a protection coefficient into a precise prediction for an identified individual.
4.4. 4 — Quantities used in radiological protection
- Distinguishes physical, protection and operational quantities and updates radiation and tissue weighting factors.
- Defines equivalent and effective dose using reference models and sex-averaged tissue weighting factors.
- Limits effective dose to population-based protection uses. Individual risk or tissue-reaction assessment requires appropriate organ/tissue absorbed doses and case-specific biological information.
- Collective effective dose supports optimisation only when the exposed population, dose range and time period are specified; aggregating trivial individual doses over very large populations or times is inappropriate for risk projection.
4.5. 5 — The system of radiological protection of humans
- Defines a source for protection decisions and separates planned, emergency and existing exposure situations.
- Separates occupational, public and patient medical exposure, while addressing carers, comforters and research volunteers where relevant.
- States the three principles and distinguishes source-related constraints/reference levels from individual-related dose limits.
- Treats justification as achieving more good than harm and optimisation as the best protection under prevailing circumstances, below the applicable restriction.
4.6. 6 — Implementation of the recommendations
- Applies the system to planned, emergency and existing exposure situations, including normal and potential exposures.
- For planned exposure, integrates design, construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning, waste and foreseeable deviations; occupational and public protection use optimisation and dose limitation.
- For emergency and existing exposure, protection strategies are optimised prospectively using reference levels, followed by evaluation and further improvement.
- Assigns national authorities the regulatory role and users of sources responsibility for practical protection arrangements; domestic law determines the enforceable duties.
4.7. 7 — Medical exposure
- Uses three levels of justification: the general use of radiation in medicine, a defined procedure for a stated objective, and the procedure for the individual patient.
- Optimises the intended medical exposure for the clinical purpose; diagnostic reference levels can support imaging optimisation but are not individual patient limits.
- Emphasises training, normal-tissue dose awareness and prevention of accidental exposure in external-beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy.
- Addresses pregnancy, carers and comforters, and volunteers in biomedical research separately because their benefit and protection relationships differ from those of the treated patient.
4.8. 8 — Protection of the environment
- Introduces an explicit framework using Reference Animals and Plants to assess environmental protection.
- Does not propose environmental dose limits in Publication 103.
4.9. Annex A — Biological and epidemiological information
- Documents the health-risk evidence, risk models, nominal risk coefficients, detriment calculations and associated judgements supporting the recommendations.
4.10. Annex B — Quantities used in radiological protection
- Gives the physical and computational basis for dosimetric quantities, reference models, weighting factors and assessment methods.
5. Important definitions, roles, limits and records
- Planned exposure situation
- Deliberate introduction and operation of a source; includes anticipated normal exposure and foreseeable potential exposure.
- Emergency exposure situation
- Unexpected situation requiring urgent action to avoid or reduce undesirable consequences.
- Existing exposure situation
- Exposure already present when a decision about control is required, including prolonged post-emergency exposure.
- Dose constraint
- Prospective source-related restriction used in optimisation for planned exposure; it is not a dose limit.
- Reference level
- Prospective restriction for emergency or existing exposure above which allowing exposure is judged inappropriate and below which optimisation continues.
- Effective dose
- Reference-person protection quantity, suitable principally for prospective planning/optimisation and demonstrating compliance, not for estimating a named patient's or worker's individual health risk.
- Dose limits
- ICRP recommends limits for occupational and public exposure in planned situations; they do not apply to the patient's intended medical exposure. Use current Queensland legislation—not Publication 103 alone—to state binding THHS limits.
- Roles and records
- Publication 103 describes responsibilities at a general level but does not define THHS office holders, detailed record systems or retention periods. Those come from IAEA/Australian requirements, Queensland instruments, licence conditions and the approved RSPP.
6. Practical relationship to the THHS RSPP
- Supplies the concepts used to distinguish patient, worker and public protection and to organise justification, optimisation, limitation, constraints, reference levels and foreseeable potential exposures.
- Supports radiotherapy controls for prescription and justification, normal-tissue optimisation, calibrated delivery, QA, independent verification, maintenance, incident prevention and learning.
- The traceability route is normally ICRP → IAEA and Australian sources → Queensland law/licence conditions → approved RSPP → procedures and records; Publication 103 is not treated as a direct legal instruction to THHS.
- Later source-specific requirements and current Queensland/local instruments prevail where they are more specific or have been updated.