Re: Landauer's New Badge

[Chris Alston <alstonc@odrge.odr.georgetown.edu>]

TLD's can be used for quarterly monitoring. In fact, one could use them for
annual monitoring, if one were willing to accept the five percent (5%) fade
(per year) that Landauer claims for its Type K and M badges. However, I
think that it's a little hypocritical for them to be selling the "new"
system, for occupational dosimetry, (I take it that we're talking about OSL)
as being able to report down to one (1) mrem. At an institution with which I
was formerly associated, where we used a weighting factor less than one (1)
for external doses in radiology/cardiology, Landauer did not want to report
EDE's of (e.g.) three (3) mrem, for a badge reading of ten (10) mrem, given
a weighting factor of three (3), on the grounds that monitored persons could
ascribe too much significance to extremely small doses!!! At least, I
believe that was their argument.

chris alston



At 08:13  09/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I think that the new Landauer system is a good move for several reasons.
>By allowing bi-monthly or quarterly read cycles, it reduces our
>administrative load considerably.  The monthly cost per unit will remain
>the same as our current film badges while, due to increases in film costs,
>film badges are slated to increase in cost (most of the film is made here
>in Rochester by Kodak, who is having some tough times).  
>
>The lower reporting threshold has both good and bad, but I'm willing to
>live with the bad (pretty well summarized by others already).  I would
>rather have this information (ie doses of less than 10 mrem) and deal with
>nervous workers than to not have it.  It may give us the opportunity to
>justify badging fewer people by giving hard numbers for annual dose rather
>than "Well, I know they're receiving less than 120 mrem" (I know, 120 mrem
>in a year is nothing for us to worry about, but it can still make people
>nervous).  
>
>All in all, I like the new technology and we're really looking forward to
>implementing it in the near future.
>
>Andy
>
>Andrew Karam, MS, CHP				
>RSO, University of Rochester			  
>(716) 275-3781 (voice)						
>(716) 256-0365 (fax)
>akaram@safety.rochester.edu
>
>"The mind is not a vessel to be filled  but a fire to be lighted" 
> Plutarch
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Chris Alston
alstonc@odrge.odr.georgetown.edu
I am not here a representative of my employer.

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