[ RadSafe ] Collective Dose and colorimetric dosimeters

[משה קרן]

I agree with Bill and will be happy to get comments on a similar issue: 
Subject: Hospital preparedness to radiological emergencies, either accidents or terror, not nuclear. 
I believe all will agree that hospital first receivers should be monitored to possible exposure.
 I hope too all will agree that the majority of them, or a great number, are not "radiation workers", hence are "members of the public" regarding doses.
Colorimetric dosimeters are now on the market (RADview, SIRAD) and are much chipper the EPDs. So there is a tendency to purchase them instead of EPAs.

Question: Hospital first receiver's possible exposure may be much lowers then that of first responders acting on the scene - true or false?

If true, then since colorimetric badges are not sensitive do doses smaller the several rems, do not give dose rate indication or alarm, and that there is no way to learn exact dose, there is a need of a better measuring unit.     

Best regards
Moshe  Keren, M.Occ.H.
Head of Ionizing Radiation Inapection Unit
Noise and Radiation Abatement Department
Ministry of Environmental Protection
ISRAEL
e-mail:moshek at sviva.gov.il      
 
        

-----Original Message-----
From: William Lipton [mailto:doctorbill34 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 9:16 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Collective Dose

Tracking collective dose, is very important in ensuring good radiological
work practices.  Without this, management would consider whether it's
cheaper to hire more workers instead of spending the money required for
engineering controls.  This is especially true for jobs which can be
performed by unskilled labor.  I've heard of situations where management
hired workers, burned them out quickly, and then replaced them.  These
workers were then unemployable as radiation workers for the rest of the
quarter.  This is NOT good health physics.

Collective dose is an important parameter for evaluating an ALARA program.

Bill Lipton

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Perle, Sandy <SPerle at mirion.com> wrote:

> Otto,
>
> I see where collective dose is useful when planning repetitive jobs,
> primarily in nuclear plant environments, and is also a useful metric to
> determine that appropriate actions have been taken to reduce the overall
> dose with degradation of the job's goals established. Individual dose is
> obviously of greater importance, but these individual doses ultimately do
> roll-up.
>
> I personally like the term dose/hour worked when comparing dose reduction
> success and job planning.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sandy
>
> On Jan 4, 2011, at 6:47 AM, Otto G. Raabe wrote:
>
> >
> >> January 4, 2011
> >
> > Collective dose is meaningless and misleading. Only individual dose
> > is meaningful.
> >
> > Otto
> >
> >
> > **********************************************
> > Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
> > Center for Health & the Environment
> > University of California
> > One Shields Avenue
> > Davis, CA 95616
> > E-Mail: ograabe at ucdavis.edu
> > Phone: (530) 752-7754   FAX: (530) 758-6140
> > ***********************************************
> > _
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