Radiation Protection Criteria Research Articles

Ecological radiation protection criteria for nuclear power

Ecological radiation protection criteria for nuclear power

原子力施設跡地等の再利用のための米国環境基準

原子力施設跡地等の再利用のための米国環境基準

Book reviews

This report, together with other NCRP reports, existing or pending, forms an update of NCRP's existing recommendations regarding basic radiation protection criteria and is based closely on ICRP 26, but with certain modifications to take account of recent and pending changes in the estimation of risk due to exposure to ionizing radiation.

Radiation exposure and protection in cardiac catheterization laboratories

Cardiac catheterization with angiography can deliver the greatest dose of x-radiation of any diagnostic medical examination. The physicians and technologists in the angiography room receive low-level scattered radiation over a period of months to decades. Although the radiobiology is complex, the physicians who perform cardiac catheterization should be familiar with the potential genetic and somatic effects of radiation and with the methods to reduce or eliminate x-ray exposure. The aim of radiation protection criteria is to reduce the risk of cancer death to less than the fatality risk for other occupations regarded as safe. This report is a review of the literature relating to radiation exposure and protection in cardiac catheterization laboratories. Catheterization personnel have control over the time duration of exposure, placement of technologists, shielding, location of equipment and monitoring of dose received.

Book reviewsProtection Against Ionizing Radiations—A Survey of Current World Legislation. By the W.H.O., pp. 328, 1972 (Geneva, World Health Organization; London, H.M.S.O.), £2·80.

This book is a comprehensive survey of existing legislation on protection against ionizing radiations in 19 countries throughout the world. It is introduced by a useful review of the development of radiation protection criteria during the past 70 years.

Film monitoring of normal subjects during diagnostic radiology

The use of diagnostic X-rays in research on normal humans is a sensitive subject because of the moral and legal questions involved. NCRP Report No. 39, 'Radiation Protection Criteria', re-emphasizes the need to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure and the absolute necessity of truly informed consent on the part of normal subjects undergoing any potentially hazardous procedure. Concern for this problem is leading physicians and medical physicists to a greater interest in diagnostic radiation monitoring methods. The possibility of obtaining misleading low dose information from some of the available monitoring systems was dramatically brought to our attention in recent months. In an attempt to monitor normal subjects undergoing fluoroscopic examination in conjunction with a research oriented procedure, several monitors, alone or together (R-meters, Diamentors, dental size film and TLD), failed to supply the required information. The major difficulties encountered were in defining areas of exposure and assuring that the monitors were in the X-ray beam and totally exposed. Large sheet film was most helpful and convenient in obtaining an acceptable indication of surface exposure, beam size and radiation dose to critical organs. These latter data were obtained by relating the surface exposure on the film to TLD measurements within a Rando phantom. The study revealed that several films commercially available in large sheets are suitable for the exposure range of interest and in most cases can be automatically processed.

On Radiation Standards

In view of the continuing debate on radiation standards, the Bulletin presents a critical review of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements Report 39, “Basic Radiation Protection Criteria” (1971). This document is one of a series of NCRP Reports on which many standard-setting and many radiation-using bodies base their radiation protection standards and policies. This critique was adapted by the author and the editors of the Bulletin from an earlier version published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine Dr. Hamilton is a molecular biologist and physician specializing in hematology at the Medical Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York.

Radiation protection standards

The report traces the development of the understanding of radiation hazard, and the philosophy for protection against it. Special attention is given to the work of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), form which two organizations most of the basic radiation protection philosphy and criteria in the world today has been generated.

Radiation protection standards.

When we speak about standards we may well ask ourselves what we mean. To most people standards mean something firmly fixed, or at least reproducible—something quite permanent or something that is quite definitely definable. As a matter of fact, there are few absolute standards. We may think of physical standards, such as the meter-bar, that can be stored away in a vault and can confidently be expected to remain the same, year in and year out. Or we may have what we call standard preparations. These are used, in the main, for checking measurement methods or technics. Standard samples of steel, for example, after careful analysis in the laboratory are sent out to the mill, where they are run through an analysis procedure as a check on its accuracy. Again, we have standards of radioactivity—a radionuclide accurately measured in the laboratory and then used to check measurement technics in a hospital or some other laboratory. In the field of human applications we have what may be called biological standards. These are frequently based on some specified biological result produced in an animal exposed to a particular material. The proving of a drug against a biological standard involves the exposure of a number of animals and then a statistical analysis of the final result. By its very nature, this is a procedure that cannot use man as the standardizing animal. But at least we have a procedure which for most cases will determine the potency of a biological agent within some range of certainty. There is much talk today about radiation protection standards. Here the so-called standards are based mainly on long experience with man working in a known environment of radiation, followed by the exercise of technical judgment as to whether or not an effect may have been produced upon him. Radiation protection standards do not permit of direct testing. Indeed, most of them should not be called standards at all. They might much better be designated as radiation protection guides. Actually, most of our radiation protection criteria of today are based on absence of the demonstration of any deleterious influence. Because of our limited knowledge of the effect of low levels of radiation on animals, and the almost nonexistent knowledge of the effects of small doses of radiation on man, the permissible exposure levels for radiation workers have been set low enough so that there is a negligible probability of radiation damage occurring to the exposed individual.