Idiot Survey meters and action levels for ER personnel

[Ken Smith <ksmith@cats.ucsc.edu>]

Hi All-

Let me first clarify our ER policy in regards to radiation.  Our radiation
ER policy is currently under review.  I'd like to put a copy on our web
site for RadSafer’s review and comments once it’s completed.
 
UCSC is very fortunate in that we maintain our own fire department on
campus.  This allows us to provide a high level of training to our fire
department in regards to radiation safety and emergency response.  We
primarily use radioactive materials in the bio-chemical sciences and we
only have a limited number of sources that would prove an immediate danger
to someone.

That being said our policy in regards to and emergency that involves
radiation can be summarized as follows:

1. CONDUCT ALL LIFE SAVING ACTIONS FIRST.  First responders are instructed
to save human life, provide first aid without regard to radiation exposure
or contamination.  (This would include entering the burning building,
starting CPR on a contaminated individual, etc. with proper judgment and
PPE of course).  We just don't have the activity on present to pose a
serious hazard to a first-responder.

2. We have in place a fire-fighting approach.  Because of the limited staff
(sometimes as small as 3 fire personnel on weekends), safety, unions etc.
our standard approach is that the first unit on-scene in usually search and
rescue.  Fire fighting usually starts with the second engine on-scene. When
we evaluated the scenarios on -campus we concluded that standard fire
turn-out gear coupled with a SCBA provided adequate protection for almost
all of our radiation use areas.  However there are some areas where we have
a "let-burn order."  Which means that fire-fighters don't make an entry for
fire fighting, they maintain so-many feet distance and just fight the fire
from using external methods only. 

3. Maybe "evacuate" was the wrong word.  Perhaps the cold-zone delineation
point would of been the better wordage. We chose the level of 2mR/hr
because this level is very functional for our needs.  Once the scene was
stabilized (no need to save human life) fire-personal could follow an SOP
and "evacuate" the area of all personnel, students, public visitors, etc.
so that out-side the excluded zone the dose rate was no higher than 2mR/hr.

This is a good "stand down" level for us.  This allows plenty of time for
HP personal  to show up on-scene. HP staff can fell very comfortable that
there is "no-longer an emergency" and now just an “incident”.

In theory the fire department will be able to able to perform it
first-responder duties and stabilize the scene (without even turning on or
bothering with the instrument) then turn on the instrument and “control”
the incident to a safe level (2mR/hr). HP and EH&S staff would then assume
incident command and hopefully correct the problem. 

Now disclaimers made - This situation would not work for most fire
departments because they may be expect to respond to a great variety of
unknown sources.  Remember everything radioactive on campus we know about
(I hope)  and that’s not the case in the real world.

Recently I’ve been asked to provide radiation safety training to the local
City and County fire departments on radiation safety.  I’d be very
interested to learn what other departments have in place in terms of
responding to incidents involving radioactivity.  Does any one know if
there are national guidelines (NFPA?, NRC?, DOT?) for responding the
radiation emergencies?  Have any other RSO given this training to their
local fire department? Is so please let me know.

Thanks
Ken

----------
Ken Smith, Radiation Safety Officer

Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S)          voice: (831) 459-3911
University of California                                fax: (831) 459-3209
1156 High St.                                   e-mail: ksmith@cats.ucsc.edu 
Santa Cruz, CA  95064                           web: www.ehs.ucsc.edu 
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