Re: respiratory protection

["Charles Meyer" <cmeyer@brc1.tdh.state.tx.us>]

Date:          Wed, 21 Aug 96 11:07:09 -0500
Reply-to:      radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
From:          "Stephen A. Costigan" <costigan@lanl.gov>
To:            Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Subject:       respiratory protection

I would like some RADSAFE feed back on the following situation. 

If you're simply performing air sampling then your most likely integrating
over the duration of the job and there would be no problem evident. However,
with continuous monitoring you can observe the transient situation. Do you
immediately go up to the next level of resp. protection? Can you live with a
small spike above your protection factor? How big of a spike before it's a
problem? How long? (For the sake of simplicity, ignore all the helpful
advice you would like to give about engineered controls, containment,
contamination control etc.)

I am interested in hearing how radsafers handle time-averaging for airborne
contamination vs. respiratory protection?


Well, Steve, here goes.  Your really only interested in staying 
within certain dose constraints.  Since there are so many " smart " 
survey instruments out there now, why not get a " smart" cam? It 
could be programmed with information necessary to estimate a 
cumulative dose for each job, and have a cumulative dose alarm say 
when you reached your desired action level instead of a 
concentration, which if continued for some period of time would cause 
a given dose.  You can figure in your respirator protection factors, 
dose per unit intake, breathing rate corrections(if necessary) and 
since in any case you assume the sample is representative, you can do 
that here too.


             ***************************************
               Russ Meyer                            
               Internet: cmeyer@brc1.tdh.state.tx.us 
               tel: 512/834-6688                                                    
               fax: 512/834-6654
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