quarterly vs. monthly TLDs revisited

["Jim F. Herrold" <HERROLD@UWYO.EDU>]

Back in November of 1993 there was a brief discussion on both radsafe and
safety networks about the merits of monthly or quarterly personnel monitoring.
Up until now we have been using film badges, for economy and other reasons. Now
we are being forced to go to TLDs on a select group of employees who will be
working in a biosafety containment facility due to the necessity for
sterilizing the badges when they come out. The process of sterilization is
somewhat complicated and time consuming (over a week). Because of theis reason,
and the added cost of TLDs, we are considering going to quarterly badges. We
have the exposure records from these same people when they were in another
building showing hardly ever a reading over 10 mrem in any month, so I don't
have a problem with less frequent badge reports. While investigating the
possibilities, we have been considering converting the rest of the campus to
quarterly while we are at it.

My question to radsafers is: Is there somebody out there who has gone to
quarterly monitoring, for part or all of your monitored population, or anyone
else out there who feels strongly enough about this subject, who can tell me
what advantages or problems you have found? I would appreciate any information
I can get at this point. We are looking at converting to TLDs for these people
within the next week or so.

Jim Herrold, U of Wyoming