Wisconsin Co-60 Accident

[dj_strom@ccmail.pnl.gov]

The accident that Dr. Cameron recounted was described in

Rossi, E. C., A. A. Thorngate, and F. C. Larson.  1962.  "Acute Radiation 
Syndrome Caused by Accidental Exposure to Cobalt-60."  J. Lab. Clin. Med., 
59:655-666.

That account states that "the dose was estimated to be 250 to 300 R."  The 
source was "a 200 c. Co-60 source."

This dose would have resulted from 0.91 hour at 1 meter.

A request to RadSafers:  When you're the HP at an accident, publish it as a note
in Health Physics.  Be sure to include the isotope(s), activities in process, 
amount of intake, doses (as reconstructed), and enough details to figure out 
what happened.  Too often, cases reported in the medical literature by M.D.s 
omit crucial details that make the case history useless for probabilistic risk 
assessment.  

The Wisconsin case was one of about 42 that we found in the literature with 
enough information to be useful (Strom, D. J., R. L. Hill, and J. S. Dukelow.  
1994.  Probabilistic Descriptions of Human Interactions with Radiation Sources 
Based on Historical Accidents.  PNL-SA-22651 A.  Presented at Health Physics 
Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, June 29, 1994; abstract Health Phys. 66(6
supplement):S65; 1994).

- Dan Strom <dj_strom@pnl.gov>
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory