Assessment of exposures to firefighters from wildfires in heavily contaminated areas of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

The aim of this study was to assess the exposures received by firefighters engaged in extinguishing the large-scale wildfires in the most contaminated areas of the Ukrainian part of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in 2016 and 2020. The assessments are based on measurements of radionuclide airborne concentrations in the breathing zones of workers and at the aerosol sampling stations of the automated radiation monitoring system operated by SSE Ecocenter. During the wildfires, the radionuclide airborne concentrations increased by orders of magnitude compared to the background levels, reaching maximum values in the firefighting area of 1.20 +/- 0.01 Bq m(-3) for Sr-90, 0.18 +/- 0.01 Bq m(-3) for Cs-137, (1.8 +/- 0.3) center dot 10(-4) Bq m(-3) for Pu-238, (4.5 +/- 0.7) center dot 10(-4) Bq m(-3) for Pu239-240, and (8.0 +/- 1.3) center dot 10(-3) Bq m(-3) for Pu-241. The internal effective doses to firefighters due to inhaled radionuclides did not exceed 2 mu Sv h(-1) and were 3-5 times lower compared to the external dose of gamma radiation. Thus, the time of firefighting in the ChEZ will be limited by the external dose.