Education and training of health physicists.

Abstract

Health physics is a growing profession. Prior to 1942, experience with radiation hazards was almost wholly associated with the use of radium and x-rays by the medical profession and with experiments in physics laboratories. The employment of x-rays and radioactive materials by industry was quite limited. Many injuries and some deaths occurred during this period which were directly attributable to radiation exposure. This gave impetus to the establishment of “codes” or “standards” for radiation protection, which were of invaluable help in the early days of the Manhattan Project when it was faced with unprecedented radiation hazards. The problem had quickly changed from that of a few radium dial painters following a fixed procedure, and of scientists, doctors, and technicians dealing with small quantities of radium or with x-ray machines and accelerators, to one involving many people working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor releasing radiation which was of seemingly fantastic magnitude and which consisted, in part, of neutrons whose behavior was little known. To be considered, also, were scientists working with new radioactive materials many times more intense than the usual radium source and with accelerators, the voltages of which had been stepped up by large factors over the earlier models. These unprecedented problems in radiation hazards encountered in the Manhattan Project were solved by the co-operation of physicists, chemists, biologists, and medical men, and a new group of specialists known by various names, of which the most common was probably “health physicist”—specialists whose problem it is to detect, to control, and to protect against radiation hazards. The constantly expanding atomic energy program (new reactor sites and new laboratories), the increased use of radioactive isotopes in industry and in research, the new problems in civil and military defense, in industrial hygiene, and in environmental health, have increased the demand for trained health physicists by the Atomic Energy Commission, the U. S. Public Health Service, the National Military Establishment, by industry, by universities, hospitals, and laboratories. In the older AEC plants, small efficient groups of trained people developed around an exceedingly small number (3 or 4) of individuals who had had experience in the field of radiation hazards prior to the war. In the newer AEC plants, some of the health physicists have been recruited from the staffs of the older plants, while others ha ve been trained either through the AEC Fellowship program or by on-the-job training in one of the established Health Physics Divisions. In any hospital, research laboratory, or industrial organization using radioactive materials, or operating reactors and/or accelerators, it is essential to have available an individual trained in radiation monitoring and in the handling, measurement, and disposal of isotopes and their associated by-products.