Russian dose or exposure unit the "ber"

["Carbaugh, Eugene H" <gene.carbaugh@pnl.gov>]

Peter & Radsafe

Since you asked for clues:  may I suggest that "ber" stood for "biological
equivalent roetgen?"

In the early Hanford days, Herb Parker (who, by the way,  hired K.Z. Morgan at
Oak Ridge and then went on to head up the Hanford Site "health physics"
organization) coined the terms rep and reb as acronyms for roentgen equivalent
physical and roentgen equivalent biological, respectively.  The story goes that
following a class given to a group of Hanford engineers at which he had
carefully explained the differences between a physical absorbed dose and a
biologically effective dose (absorbed dose X RBE), he was greeted with nothing
but confused expressions and an obvious confusion on the part of the students.
It was then he realized that there is no audible difference between "rep" and
"reb" when one has a cold and a completely plugged nose (which he had at the
time).  After that he started using the obviously different sounding terms "rad"
and "rem."  My recollection is that this occurred somewhere in the late 1940s,
and Parker documented it in a speech he gave at a Health Physics Society
function that was published in the journal some 15 or 20 years back.  I thought
I had a copy in my "history" file, but I couldn't find it just now.  At any
rate, the analogy to a possible "ber" seems reasonable.  Ron Kathren - where's
your memory when I need it?

Gene Carbaugh, CHP
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

					Peter wrote:

					I am reading "Red Atom", Paul Josephson,
and in an early chapter some
					extremity exposures were cited as "ber".
The text says something like, "Only
					a few percent exceeded 1.5 - 5 ber and
the average exposure was 0.3 - .5 ber
					but the collective dose when working on
the inner loop, armatures etc. was 100 to 500 ber."  Anybody have a clue?
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