Re: Personnel Contamination Events

["Arthur and Marian Desrosiers" <52deerjump@mediaone.net>]

If the worker wears contaminated PCs, then some contamination on the worker
should be expected.

If you allow 500 cpm on PCs for reuse, then it should not be "an event" if
someone has 100-500 cpm on their skin.

PCEs are certainly useful as an indicator of RP program performance, but the
trending and investigation effort should be proportional to the level of
contamination.

There should be some significant threshold for investigating an event and
the investigation should include ALARA, namely would more protection have
increased the overall detriment to the worker?  If you can work without
respirators and accept some uptake in the name of ALARA, then you can
certainly accept some skin contamination in the name of reducing dose
equivalent.

To paraphrase an RP legend " I trust that this IS about dose!"

Purely my own random thoughts............

arthur@bartlettinc.com



************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html