RE: Treatment of Contaminated Personnel -Reply -Reply

["Edwards, Richard W" <Richard.Edwards@PSS.Boeing.com>]

> I believe Rick was referring to the DOE Incident Command Structure
> that does lend itself well to a DOE facility Emergency Management
> program, but is not well-suited to a rapid, coordinated offsite
> response.
> 
Actually, I was referring to an Incident Command system based on the fire department ICS model and the initial or short-term response to an emergency. My experiences have been with industrial emergency response and integrating those responses with local emergency response organizations (and colored, somewhat, by past work on shipboard radiation emergency response, damage control and fire-fighting and in commercial nuclear power plants).

Partly, I hoped to convey my belief that experience and training in occupational or environmental radiation health and safety does not necessarily prepare us to make the kinds of decisions that have to be made in emergency response. Personally, I hope that any of us that might have to support emergency response activities would invest time and energy into learning and practicing to do so.

Also, I wanted to point out that "gut" responses to emergencies can often be the wrong responses. While rushing into an area with dose rates >1000R/hr may not kill a would-be rescuer as rapidly as rushing into a tank filled with ammonia vapors, it has the potential to do so eventually. Of course the converse is also true. Hanging back when the posted "threat" is about as hazardous as a smoke detector can readily result in victim's deaths that could well be avoided. The problem is determining which situation applies or where in the spectrum between these extremes we are at any given moment. Emergency response organizations have to be able to make these determinations. That often means they have to be able to function without relying on the on-site presence of a specialized radiation emergency response team.

We approach this by providing our responders a lot of tools. We evaluate all the areas containing sources of ionizing radiation as well as the transient conditions, work, devices and packages that involve ionizing radiation for their potential threat to emergency responders. We post fixed areas based on their "emergency" threat potential. We integrate radiation emergency response training with fire department and haz-mat team training. Finally, we provide around the clock access to radiation safety staff prepared to support the teams. (That is to say, I'm wearing a pager tied to our fire and security department dispatcher and can't go outside a three county area or farther than 15 minutes from a phone without arranging for a back-up.) 

While this has proven to be a workable solution for our particular needs, I do not recommend a blanket adoption of this approach. I do recommend that organizations that may get involved with radiation in emergency situations evaluate their needs and address them before something goes wrong.

Rick Edwards, Analyst
The Boeing Company
richard.w.edwards@boeing.com


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