RE: Radioactive Material in Two Graduate Students' Apartment Baffles

["Heinmiller, Bruce" <heinmillerb@aecl.ca>]

Someone should let the NYT and its readers know:

-- that they've confused radioactivity with radiation;
-- that radioactivity is not measured in the units given;
-- that the dose rate measurement is highly geometry-dependent;
-- that the normal background and limits quoted are for an entirely
different dose quantity than that measured; and,
-- that altitude is only one (and generally not the largest) of a number of
determinants of natural background effective dose rate.

Bruce Heinmiller CHP
heinmillerb@aecl.ca

> ----------
> From: 	Jacobus, John (OD)[SMTP:JJacobus@ors.od.nih.gov]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Tuesday, February 29, 2000 10:57 AM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Radioactive Material in Two Graduate Students' Apartment
> Baffles 
> 
> This is from today's New York Times. -- John
> 
> February 29, 2000
> 
> Radioactive Material in Two Graduate Students' Apartment Baffles Columbia 
>  
> By ANDREW C. REVKIN
> 
> Phosphorus-32 used in biological work is stored in a liquid solution in
> vials
> typically holding 0.25 milliliters of the isotope, and investigators have
> estimated that the contents of one vial were poured onto the pillow. The
> stain
> was emitting radioactivity at 200 millirems an hour, said officials
> involved in
> the investigation. 
> 
> The normal background level of radiation, which varies by altitude,
> averages
> about 0.02 millirems an hour in New York, one ten-thousandth of the amount
> radiating from the surface of the pillow. That average totals 175
> millirems a
> year. The acceptable safe limit for the public is 100 millirems a year
> above
> that, according to federal health officials. 
> 
> 
> 
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