Re: European Communities and Radiation Exposure of Flight Crews

[Cameron Jeffries <c.jeffries@qut.edu.au>]

At 02:08 31/08/97 -0500, Al Tschaeche wrote:
>
>I disagree.  The ICRP and NCRP recommendations are only that,
>recommendations.  They are not law.  There is no law that limits flight
>crew doses.  Let's not get radiation health confused with laws and
>regulations.  Either we have evidence that low doses are harmful or we
>don't.  If we don't (and we don't), I say we should not frighten flight
>crews with ideas that low doses are, in fact harmful.  That, to me is
>immoral, unethincal and wrong!  
>
However the laws/regulations in Australia and most other countries, besides
I believe the US and France, are based on these recommendations. So where
there is an occupational exposure to a worker there is a need to ensure that
the exposure is below the regulated limits. That airline crews are exposed
to radiation that is above natural background(very few pilots live in the
Himalayas) as part of their work is hard to denign. Therefore it seems that
some quantification of the level involved needs to be made and that
monitoring take place if the limit could be exceeded.

The fact that monitoring happening isn't something that should frighten
flight crew. Monitoring someones radiation exposure because they could
exceed a regulated limit doesn't say that the exposure is harmful. It says
that limits have been set and the airline needs to consider these limits as
a responable employer concerned about the safety of its employees. Any half
way decent radiation safety induction course will explain the reasons for
monitoring and educate the employees about radiation.

A clear example where monitoring doesn't frighten the workers is in the
Australian mineral sand industry. All of the mineral sand workers I have
spoken to know that the potential harm from radiation is small compared to
the other hazards in the processing plant. The fact that these workers are
monitored doesn't frighten them. But at the same time they don't advocate
potential benifit and drink revigorator water.

Radiation health and laws are already intimately related. A radiation health
professional is involved with considering the health effects of radiation.
The recommendations of the ICRP are based on the work of radiation health
professionals. These recommendations are used to set regulatory limits, and
then the Radiation safety offier makes sure that the regulations are
followed. In the end radiation health has been considered in setting laws
and evidence of no harm or precieved radiation health effects are no reason
to ignore a regulation.

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Cameron Jeffries
Environmental Aerosol Laboratory
School of Physical Sciences
Queensland University of Technology
2 George St
Brisbane, Queensland 4001
Australia

+61 7 3864 1129 (Phone)
+61 7 3864 1521 (Fax)
c.jeffries@qut.edu.au