NIH Incident

[BFLOOD@SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Bob Flood)]

I have been reading with interest the comments about the contamination
victim's anxiety. Let me point out that, while we may regard the quantity of
P-32 and its dose implications as medically insignificant and see the
'deliberate' nature of the incident and the loss of control of regulated
material as the salient features, none of us males in the discussion will
ever have any idea what it is like to be pregnant, let alone pregnant and
exposed to a potentially harmful substance, and are, therefore, uniquely
unqualified to judge whether she should be fearful in this situation. (It is
my personal obeservation that the majority of comments have been from male
Radsafers.) It is not difficult to understand how Dr. Ma might find reason
to be anxious about her health and that of her unborn child, even though our
profession's best estimate is that no observable harm should be expected.
The fact that she is an educated woman doesn't mean that her education
included health physics; she may have received most of education about
radiation from the same place as the rest of America: a popular press
educated in science by Beekman's World. Alternatively, her education may be
sufficient to understand how little we know about internal dosimetry for the
fetus. While we may see her fear as unnecessary, her fear is still very real
to her.

It has been my experience that internal exposure incidents in the workplace
generally involve small amounts of radioactive material and inconsequential
doses, but the unusual nature of the contamination event triggers a strong
response from management and the radiation protection staff. The victim
usually doesn't understand that the staff's reaction is to the unusual
incident, not the magnitude of the doses involved. Thus, the HP staff
reaction can inadvertently create the anxiety in the victim concerning dose
that we see as unwarranted. My question is: has the hoopla (NIH
investigation, all the bioassay, NRC investigation, FBI investigation, press
attention) created a sense of alarm that didn't need to exist? How can we
deal effectively with investigating the events of the incident without
upsetting the participants in the incident?

Bob Flood
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.
(415) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu