P-32 and Skin Burns

["Sue M. Dupre" <dupre@arundel.Princeton.EDU>]

Good morning: 

This morning I encountered a faculty member who, mostly good-
naturedly, has a soapbox he likes to pound about mindless radiation 
bureaucrats.  During his usual speech, he said there's no isotope use
here on campus that can cause any harm to anyone (he's a H-3 user 
but he specifically referred to the P-32 users - and he wasn't 
interested in cancer risk).  I said, well, no, some researchers do 
use enough P-32 to cause skin burns under the wrong circumstances 
and that I could imagine scenarios involving millicurie users of P-32 
getting a microcurie droplet of P-32 on the skin, not surveying, and 
ending up with a skin burn.  

Although this scenario is an easy one to imagine, it must be really very 
rare in occurrence because, as best as I can remember, I've never heard 
anyone anywhere describe such an incident.  So my question: do any 
of you have knowledge, personal or anecdotal, of incidents resulting 
in P-32-induced skin burns?  Feel free to respond to me personally at 
dupre@princeton.edu - I'd be glad to summarize (without referring to 
specific institutions) the responses I get.  Thanks for satisfying my 
curiosity!

Sue M. Dupre, Health Physicist

Office of Occupational Health and Safety
Chemical Sciences Building/Forrestal Campus
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544-0710

E-mail: dupre@arundel.princeton.edu
Phone:  (609) 258-6252
Fax:    (609) 258-1804