New Dosimeter for Emergency Personnel

[<tgaglierd@achd.net> (Tony Gaglierd)]

Emergency responders to Radiological incidents need:

Training in properly responding to a radiation incident.

An understanding of the basic radiation protection principles Time Distance 
and Shielding and how to apply them.

Life Safety and management of life threatening medical problems take 
precedence over concerns about radiation or contamination.

Responders need survey meters to tell them they are in radiation field and to 
detect contamination. Self reading dosimeters of the proper range say 20R to 
assess there accumulated dose.

Standerd operating guidelines for turn back values.

At Chernobyl the firemen were the only ones there they new there was 
radiation they did what they were trained to do - and some of them paid with 
there lives.

At Tocumora- a survey meter would have told the responders that they were in 
a radiation environment and they would have loaded the patients up and gotten 
out of the building instead of staying there soaking up dose.

We do a high radiation exercise at FEMA's Radiological Response Operations 
course. (we use simulated radiation, cant use the real stuff any more!) we 
use radio controlled survey meters. I have found Emergency Responders can get 
in assess the victim, stabilize him/her and be out of there in a minute  or 
two. We assign a radiation dose based on the time they are in the radiation 
field. We provide this information to them on dosimeters that we swap out for 
theirs wen they come out.

The other thing I found out is that even people who are trained and supposed 
to know how to read instruments and dosimeters sometimes don't do it 
correctly.
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