There are 27 nuclear sites situated at various points around the UK. Inevitably, as with any industrial process, they produce waste that enters the environment and may find its way into our food. But what does this mean for food safety?
More than 25 years of routine monitoring by the FSA and its predecessors has shown that levels of man-made radionuclides in food are very low. In 2011, the highest dose to the public from any nuclear site directly attributable to food consumption was 0.16 millisievert (mSv). A millisievert is a measure of the amount of radiation received by people ('the dose'). For the majority of consumers, the doses are far lower.
To put this into context, radiation is naturally present in the environment and in the food we eat. Public Health England has calculated that people in the UK are, on average, exposed to about 2.7 mSv of radiation a year.
The FSA’s aim is to ensure everyone’s food is safe, and we do this by allocating our resources according to the risk. Our Board will be considering our radioactivity monitoring at its next open meeting on the 4 June. It will discuss a proposal that the Agency should continue to monitor for radioactivity, with fewer routine samples but still sufficient to maintain food safety. However, flexibility will continue to be built into our programme so that we can act quickly to investigate and, if appropriate, take additional samples, whenever there is a possibility of increased risk.
More on the FSA’s radiological surveillance can be found on our website.