RE: NRC's Patient Release Rule

[steve.rima@DOEGJPO.COM (Steven Rima)]

     As a non-medical health physicist, I've found the exchange of ideas, 
     accusations, etc. regarding this subject to be interesting and very 
     enlighting. As a few others have stated, I am a little uneasy with 
     hospitals releasing patients to the public with tens to hundreds of 
     mCi of I-131 in them, but maybe part of that is due to my background 
     in nuclear power and the DOE complex. My company would be fined, at 
     the very least, if we allowed a member of the public to receive 500 
     mrem from our activities, yet it is allowed in the medical world. 
     Maybe someone can explain why such a double standard exists.
     
     I especially found the information from Peter Crane and Carol Marcus 
     quite interesting, however, we also found out from Carol that the NRC 
     is "dumb", "incompetent", "sleaze", "dangerously stupid", "useless", 
     "dangerous", and that the NRC "Commissioners have no idea what's going 
     on".
     
     While I have my own opinions as to certain regulatory personnel's 
     competence, I would hope that we would not paint any agency with such 
     a broad brush nor make such statements via RADSAFE.
     
     Steven D. Rima, CHP, CSP
     Manager, Health Physics and Industrial Hygiene
     MACTEC-ERS, LLC
     steven.rima@doegjpo.com
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