Modern Approaches to Addressing the Problems of Environmental Regulation

Since 2000 when the problem of radiation exposure protection of the bio environment became hugely relevant, the conceptual principles of its protection were being developed based on the matters of public health and maintaining species diversity of the biota. Due to multiple aspects of the given problem and the complexity of the tasks to solve on the grounds of norm establishing and development of the quantitative criteria of the harm being caused to life objects it should be noted that by now only primary steps are done on this path. Taking into account threshold effect of ionizing radiation on living objects of nature (biota) this paper studies basic approaches to establish reference (control) levels of radiation exposure to biota at the organismic, population and ecosystem levels. For certain organisms (reference species of biota) the methods to estimate absorbed radiation doses are developed and the control levels are suggested. For the purpose of maintaining the normal functioning of population the issues of norm establishing are ensured to be part of the recent discussion. On ecosystem level there are criteria proposed considering acute and chronic radiation exposure in the ecosystem but there is no consensus in terms of their justification and their including in the regulatory acts of some countries is postponed.