Abstract: There has been increasing recognition that field sampling is very important and can be the main source of total variability in the results of environmental radiation monitoring. However, the problems in obtaining an unbiased samples with sufficient representativeness have been overlooked. With an intention to promote the developments and improvements on these issues, the related conceptual guidance on statistical sampling problems given by ICRU report No. 75 is introduced and a general overview about the representativeness of environmental sampling in the scenario of current Chinese practices is given.

Key words: radiological environmental monitoring, environmental sampling, representativeness of sampling