RE: RADSAFE digest 1425 - I-131 PI question

[DamschenGA <damschenga@mkf.ornl.gov>]

Perhaps, instead of pointing fingers at each other we could agree as
professionals that it would be appropriate for medical-use HPs to remind
patients that while the risks to others are minimal and they can be
released, their employer may need to limit their access to certain areas if
radioactive materials may be used at their place of employment.

Having been on both sides of the issue, I can assure the medical HPs that
the commercial HPs make this clear to their workers. However, there is
considerable consternation among the workers when we try to explain that
they are restricted from certain areas for a short period of time after they
have been released by nuc med to go home.

The effort required to add this to the patient information sheet is minimal
compared to the effort required to determine, and document to a regulator's
satisfaction, that the 100,000+ dpm/100cm2 you keep finding outside the
Radiological Area is from a medical administration and not from somewhere
within your facility. This does not count the cost of cleaning the stuff up
or compromised experiments/projects.

Just my opinion,
Gerald Damschen
damschenga@mkf.ornl.gov

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>------------------------------------------------------
>>   We simply choose not to deal with this carelessness from the 
>>   radio-med industry at our exit point(s). Better to keep them out 
>>   entirely.
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>>CARELESSNESS!!!???  Would you rather we withhold care to nuclear power
>workers
>>or lock them away like criminals  for a sentence of 10 half-lives and make
>them
>>pay for the incarceration!!!???
>
>>I believe you chose the wrong word on this one.  This may cause
>operational
>>problems for you, but I would not term it "carelessness by the radio-med
>>industry".
>