Research and analysis

Dalgety Bay beach users: scoping health risk assessment

A public health risk assessment (HPA-CRCE-040) for beach users at Dalgety Bay, as requested by the Scottish Government Health Department.

Documents

HPA-CRCE-040: Scoping health risk assessment for beach users at Dalgety Bay to support advice to Scottish Government given in February 2012

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Details

A scoping public health risk assessment for beach users at Dalgety Bay was carried out by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) at the request of the Scottish Government Health Department. It was recognised that the scoping assessment was being undertaken prior to sufficient data being available for a full public health risk assessment. The aim was to carry out a preliminary assessment of the possible health impact for people currently using the beach area in order to determine if any additional urgent actions were required, in addition to the restrictions on access to an area of the beach and advice to beach users that were put in place in the autumn of 2011.

On the basis of the assessment, HPA updated the advice it had given to SEPA on 28th November 2011 in a letter to the Scottish Government Health Department on 1st February 2012. This report describes the scoping public health risk assessment undertaken by HPA that underpinned the advice.

Since the scoping assessment was carried out in January 2012, work has continued at Dalgety Bay, both in terms of the implementation of a monitoring programme to detect and retrieve contaminated objects from the beach and to further characterise the objects found and the in-situ contamination on the beach and surrounding land. This report contains a short review of this more recent information.

Radioactivity at Dalgety Bay: health questions and answers

Updates to this page

Published 1 October 2012

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