Re: New dosimeter for emergency personnel

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 09:03 AM 3/17/00 -0600, you wrote:
>It can be set to detect radiation at 
>several different energy levels, from 15 millirems up to 2 rems.

Frankly, for the kind of work and threats to life and health that
firefighters deal with routinely, what good would a dosimeter be for them
if it goes offscale to 2 rem? Hopefully no one will be teaching them to
abandon a rescue because the "badge" reached its 2 rem threshold.

It seems to me that the concept for the dosimeter is good, but the useful
range needs to be higher. And it has to avoid two potential errors: 1) it
must not falsely indicate a high dose when that dose has not occurred (such
an event could result in a decision to abandon a rescue), and 2) it must
not falsely indicate a low dose in the presence of a potentially
life-threatening dose. Not a small job for any real-time dosimeter.

Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
bflood@slac.stanford.edu
(650) 926-3793

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