Re: Radon vs. LNT - [CUT TO] the Chase

[Thomas Gleich Harrison <tomh@jove.acs.unt.edu>]

You know.. in my very, very humble opinion,.. I do wish we could simply
ignore the so called "radon health threat" that we seem to be so
mesmerized by these days. Other than for a very few specific environmental
situations such as for uranium miners where it need be addressed, we have
lived with uranium and it's progeny in our environment for how long
now...... and if radon is a "problem", how are we going to solve it....
"clean up" radon in our air ????  Is that the suggested solution ????

But let me ask about another situation... does anybody in the RADSAFE
community know about any quantitative work that has been done on
evaluating the gross underestimate for torso dose that can be expected
from single TLD or film badge display orientation to a unidirectional
radiation field ????  It seems to me that due to variable geometrical
orientation and body shielding, wearing a single film tab anywhere on the
upper torso undoubtedly results in a gross underestimate of realistic
whole body doses, possibly recording only 10% or maybe even less of the
actual dose received by the body in a unidirectional field. I've had
several students express an interest in looking into this problem if in
fact it is a problem.... simply stated, they've asked that if their TLD
reports a  WB dose of 100 mrem which of course is a minimum dose, is there
a correction factor which would give them a more realistic WB
dose estimate?? My only answer is I don't know of one.....

Thanks in advance for yor help.....

Tom Harrison, Ph.D.
Radiation Safety Officer
Physics Dept
University of North texas

e-mail: tomh@facstaff.cas.unt.edu    


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