The Assessment of Shielding Status of Conventional Radiographic Rooms According to the National Council on Radiation Protection Reports No.49 and No.147 and Recommendation to National and International Authorities of Radiation Protection to Prevent Wasting Shielding Costs of Conventional Radiographic Rooms

Abstract

A decade after the invention of X -ray machines, radiographic rooms shielding became one of the major concerns of the scientists related to radiation, so that after 100 years after the invention of X-ray machines, there are still some discussions in national and international reports concerning this issue. One of the significant reports is that of National Council on Radiation Protection, so that in the reports No.49 and 147, this council paid comprehensive attention to radiography rooms shielding. In this study, the reports No.49 and 147 of NCRP was invoked, and considering the radiographic rooms design under study and also radiographic devices profiles used in each radiographic room, the shielding needed to each radiographic room was separately calculated and evaluated according to the reports No.49 and 147 of NCRP. In the next step, the calculated shielding thickness for each radiographic room compared with the shielding used in each radiographic room, and some recommendations presented for preventing wasting the finance resources along with proper shielding of radiographic rooms. For this purpose, the number of exposures to each radiographic room along with the amounts of mAs and kvp used for each patient collected for 6 months for calculating the shielding needed for each radiographic room, and the workload data was precisely determined for each device. In the next stage, the shielding thickness needed for each radiographic room was calculated in two ways: 1. According to the NCRP report No.49, and 2. According to the NCRP report No.147. The calculated shielding thickness was eventually compared with the shielding thickness used in each radiographic room. This study show that the shielding thickness used in radiographic rooms under study is usually higher than calculated needed shielding, so that building thickness of radiographic rooms under study has been sufficient for required shielding and there was no need to lead knocking the rooms. The accurate calculation of shielding needed for radiographic rooms according to national and international recommendations causes the radiation protection principles to be observed and also the national capitals wasting prevented. In this study, the unnecessary shielding costs of radiographic rooms is nearly 10000 $ in only six radiographic centers under study, which cause a large part of the national capital to be wasted at the macro level.