Re: Definition of Clothing Contamination

["Eric Bickel" <wdwrkr@home.ifx.net>]

Leon-
My previous experience in the commercial arena (NRC Region IV) was that company supplied modesty garments were not contamination incidents as they were owned and laundered by the company and only allowed to be worn under anti-C clothing.  (As we used portal monitors, we still investigated the cause and tried to correct it, but it did not go as a personal clothing or skin contamination incident.  In that the modesty garments were only worn under anti-C's with some residual level of contamination, some low level of contamination would be expected.) If the modesty garments are issued to the individual, allowed to be worn any where on site, and are laundered by them off-site, I would call them personal clothing and count any contamination the same as personal clothing.    

More recent experience in the DOE world goes the other way and counts modesty garments as contamination incidents.  Indeed, many DOE sites count contamination of anti-C clothing as a contamination incident.  

In short, an argument can be made for either case.  Choose a position and a defendable basis; someone or some regulator may question the position, but if you have chosen your basis well, there is no harm.  The real question is if you track contamination incidents (whatever the basis) and take effective corrective actions.  

Eric Bickel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Leon E Brown <lebrown@cmsenergy.com>
Subject: Definition of Clothing Contamination


>However, the identification of contamination on modesty garments
> provided by the company to be worn under PCs poses a gray area as to defining a clothing contamination incident.
> 
> For those of you RADSAFERs out there who track clothing contamination incidents
> and issue modesty garments to be worn under PCs, do you classify contamination
> identified on a modesty garment when performing a whole body frisk as a clothing
> contamination incident?


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