Safety Culture

["J. J. Rozental" <josrozen@netmedia.net.il>]

Radsafers:

Even, in EEUU where Compliance Monitoring is conducted by the Regulatory
Authority frequently, and seems to me  that the enforcement system is
strong,  we can can learn every month  the occurence of several  violations
in Hospital and industry,  that an incident/accident can be happen
unexpectedly.

	To give  an example, only considering accidents with fatalities,   the
table shows the cases and number of fatalities in the last decade. 


           RADIOLOGICAL ACCIDENTS IN TERMS OF FATALITIES 1981/1996

YEAR	      LOCATION	      APPLICATION	        FATALITIES
			                             WORKERS     PUBLIC
 1981	Oklahoma, USA	  Industrial Radiography	 1	
 1982	Kjeller, Norway	  Irradiation Facility	         1	
 1984	Marroco	          Lost of source		           8
 1987	Goiania, Brazil	  Teletherapy Device		           4
 1989	San Salvador	  Irradiation Facility	         1	
 1990 	Israel	          Irradiation Facility	         1	
 1990	Zaragoza, Spain   Linear Accelerator		           3
 1991	Nesvizh,  Belarus Irradiation Facility	         1	
 1992	Xinzhou, China	  Lost of Co-60 source		           3
 1996	Iran	Industrial Radiography	                 1 ?	
 1996	Costa Rica	  Teletherapy		                  32 ?

 TOTAL	                                             5 + (1?)   18 + (32?)      

	By other hand,  IAEA's documents mentions the occurrence of more than 100
registered accidents with sealed radiation sources involving about 700
persons over-exposed to whole body dose larger than 0.25 Sv or to a local
skin dose above 6 Sv. In addition there have been accidents with sealed or
unsealed sources that were not reported, in number probably equally large.

        Roots for high number of incidents in developing countries,
considering only the ones with  a reasonable legislation and Regulation, as
well as, competent authorities:

- lack of on-site inspections 
- poor quality of inspections
- insufficient staff
- staff with insufficient skills
- Conflit of authorities

        Whitout good inspection in hospital how one can guarantee protection
for patient?

        How it is possible to improve the mentality of Safety Culture?

        In case of accident with fatality who is  responsible (individual):
Radiation Safety Officer? Physician?  

J. J. Rozental <josrozen@netmedia.net.il>
Consultant, Radiation Safety and Regulation
for Developing Countries