[ RadSafe ] Re: YES. we remain our own worse enemy

[Oldewage, Hans D]

While I appreciate the concern about emergency responders and their
behavior in the face of different risks that they face, I am not
surprised.  In fact, I doubt that firemen and police officers are afraid
of 2 mr/hr, or if they are, I'm sure that they have a basis for it.  

Perhaps a well-meaning expert in the field indicated to them once that a
meter reading of 2 mr/hr is without a doubt above background, and may
indicate that they could find themselves in much higher levels if they
keep going. Or perhaps they searched the regulations for guidance, and
found that the dose rates in Unrestricted Areas at NRC licensed
facilities be less than 2 mr/hr, or that 10 CFR 34 require radiographers
to establish an exculsion area at 2 mr/hr to protect non-radiographers.
Or perhaps they hired a health physicist to advise them, and that person
used federal guidance to back-calculate an acceptable exposure rate,
given some conservative over-estimates of their stay-time, and a
predetermined accpetable increase in cancer fatalities for their work
force.  Or perhaps they went on the internet and reviewed some
environmental impact statements to find out what kind of doses the
federal government and major corporations were spending millions or
billions of dollars to avoid, and decided they should avoid it too.

I don't know, but I would wager that not one expert ever told them 2
mr/hr was safe,
Hans
-------------------------------------
Hans Oldewage, CHP
Sandia National Laboratories
hdoldew at sandia.gov