[ RadSafe ] Fwd: Hospital workers subjected to excessive radiation, lawsuits claim

[Chris Alston]

Susan

We don't really know the specifics, at this point.  But it was CT,
not, for instance, interventional radiology, or even a chest x-ray
room, wherein the pt could have been standing against that wall.
There is a great deal of inherent shielding of CT scans, and given the
inverse-square law, it is possible that the output of the shielding
calculations was: "So, no shielding is required".  Bear in mind, too,
that the room was likely designed when the limit would have been 500
mrem/y, not 100.

I know of a hospital at which, back in the 1990's, the x-ray
technologists refused to work with one (or two, I cannot remember now)
of the "portable" radiographic machines, because they could get images
on film via the head leakage.  This machine met the regulatory spec
for leakage (which I no longer remember).  The manufacturer had tried
to save some money on shielding, by not kitting it out to
near-background levels, unlike most other OEM's.  The hospital needed
the machine in service, for operational flexibility, and, of course,
there was the investment of das Kapital it represented.  So, the
manufacturer came up with a custom-retrofit of shielding for the unit.

Cheerfully I await the slings and arrows
cja
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S L Gawarecki <slgawarecki at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Hospital workers subjected to excessive
radiation, lawsuits claim
To: Franz Schönhofer <franz.schoenhofer at chello.at>
Cc: "The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing
List" <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
What makes this story even more jaw-dropping is that Methodist Medical
Center is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the original Manhattan
Project sites, home of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and birthplace of
health physics.  Of course the facility is in violation of the strict
standards specified by the state of Tennessee which enforces federal
requirements in this area.
This is what can happen when there is no oversight of a contractor's work.
Someone with a radiation safety background should have verified the
installation of shielding.
Regards,
*Susan Gawarecki*