RE: Re[2]: MONITORING UNIVERSITY HEALTH

[DOUG TURNER <turners@earthlink.net>]

At 04:35 PM 4/30/96 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Sandy Perle wrote:
>
>I will maintain my opinion based on observance of many law suits being 
>brought for doses that are well below regulatory as well as "monitoring not 
>required" thresholds.
>___________
>
>Sandy:
>
>I'm curious. What kind of exposures are you accustomed to seeing on a 
>regular basis? In the type of research conducted at UW (using millicurie 
>amounts of P-32 or I-125) it is very rare if anyone's badge registers above 
>10 mrem in a month. In the last ten years the most anyone has gotten in a 
>year was 300 mrem. (We're talking about background levels here.) Under those 
>circumstances I find it hard to believe anyone would even attempt a lawsuit, 
>let alone have even a remote chance of being  successful.
>
>If Sandy or anyone out there can site specific lawsuits which were the 
>result of  low-level exposures I will give the information to our risk 
>manager.
>
>Jim Herrold, RSO
>University of Wyoming
>herrold@uwyo.edu
>
>
>Jim, San Onofre had the infamous Ms. Tang an ex NRC inspector with a
masters degree in health physics sue with less than 100 mrem total dose
spread over an 18 month period.  This resulted in a jury trialand a hung
jury.  SCE settled out of court with Ms. Tang just before the retrial.  SCE
fortunately won a second case with a low lifetime dose against a craft
supervisor.  Both claimants had CML.  We also had experts in health physics
testify in their behalf.

I believe the best defense is to have the workers involved in the program
decision making and implementation to instill a sense of ownership.
Sucesses in program improvements need to be publicized to instill pride.
Programs today generally are excellent, and the workers need to know that so
they can have confidence.