Re: Treatment of Contaminated Personnel

[Mike McNaughton <mcnaught@lanl.gov>]

>Let's consider the following:
>Approximately 10 P.M. Friday,  a light truck with adequate placard was
>transporting two gamma radiography containers: One housing a 3.7 TBq (100
>Curies) Ir-192 source and the other a 0.74 TBq (20 Ci) Co-60 source. Close
>to a small city, 20 km away, in a rural area, the truck was involved in a
>road accident. The  truck collided with a vehicle, traveling in opposite
>direction and overturned. The truck's driver, was seriously injured  and
>unconscious and the radiographer's right leg fractured. Also 2 passengers
>and one children from the other vehicle were injured, and could not be moved
>fom the car. Considering that the radiographer could not move,   he asked to
>the first person who came to help them for the survey meter. Following, he
>confirmed a dose rate of  25 R/h next the vehicles and he concluded that one
>or both sources could be unshielded...

In response to this scenario, the Los Alamos training says: your stay time
is 48 minutes so do your job as normal. If the dose rate exceeds 200 R/h,
do a rapid extrication of the victims, as if there were immediate hazards
such as vehicles about to explode. If the dose rate is >1000 R/h, back off
and do not perform a rescue.

I would value your comments. Thanks, mike
"Shlala gashle" (Zulu greeting, meaning "Stay safe")
mike (mcnaught@LANL.GOV)
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