Re: Antw: Pregnant policies in Europe?

[Aad van der Kooij <A.vanderKooij@IRI.TUDelft.NL>]

Diane Griffiths wrote: 
> > Is there anyone out there that would know what the dose limits are for
> > pregnant personnel in European countries, and are they allowed to continue
> > working with radioactive materials? I have a pregnant lady here that is
> > telling me one thing about policies in Sweden and Western Europe and I am
> > curious about this.
> >
> > I would appreciate any input on this!
> >
> > Thanks!!
> >
> > Diane Griffiths
> > Assistant Radiation Safety Officer
> > Baylor College of Medicine
> > Houston, Texas
> > dianeg@bcm.tmc.edu
> >
> >Richard van Sonsbeek wrote:
> Diane,
> 
> Here some rules coming from the Dutch Nuclear act:
> 
> A user of radioactive sources or x-ray apparatus must take care that a woman
> that can bear children, does not carry out work with which in 13 subsequent
> weeks, she can get a dose equivalent of more than 13 mSv in the abdomen.
> He must also take care that a woman is not irradiated in such a way that the
> cummulated dose in the foetus during the period from the moment the pregnancy
> is noticed (the moment she tells the user) till the moment of birth is ALARA
> and not more than 5 mSv.
> ----


It might be usefull to add the following quotation from the
EURATOM DIRECTIVE ON BASIC SAFETY STANDARDS (11701/1/95 EN),
thet have been adopted by the European Council (may 1996), and thus will 
have to be incorporated in national law of the EC memberstates within 
the next few years:

Article 10

Special protection during pregnancy and breastfeeding

1.	As soon as a pregnant woman informs the undertaking in 
accordance with national legislation and/or national practice, the 
protection of the child to be born shall be comparable with that 
provided for members of the public. The conditions for the pregnant 
women in the context of her employment shall therefore be such that the 
equivalent dose to the child to be born will be as low as reasonably 
acievable and that it will be unlikely that this dose will exceed 1 mSv 
during the pregnancy.

2.	As soon as a nursing woman informs the undertaking of her 
condition, she shall not be employed in work involving significant risk 
of bodily radioactive contamination.

The document I quoted contains also a suggested ammendment to 1. of 
article 10, to refrase the last sentence to read ... 1 mSv during at 
least the remainder of the pregnancy. I am not sure if this amendment 
has been adopted.

At this stage I'll refrain from any comment on the practicality of this 
article in the BSS, but one might ponder on :
- At what stage of foetal devellopment are external stressors as 
radiation most harmfull?
- At what stage in pregnancy will a female worker (want to) know she is 
pregnant?
- How soon will she inform 'the undertaking' about her pregnancy?

Since my RPO-experience on this subject is nill (the Technical 
University of Delft has painfully few female 'exposed workers') I wonder 
how this part of the BSS will be interpreted by other RPO.

Aad van der Kooij (avdkooij@iri.tudelft.nl)
Health Physics Department
Interfaculty reactor Institute
Technical University Delft