Personal Radiation Dosimeters Offer the Best Protection

Employees should be issued with a personal radiation dosimeter if working in an area where there is a risk of exposure, or where exposure to ionising radiation is part of their daily role.

Personal protection from ionising radiation is crucial for anyone working in an environment where there is a risk of exposure.

It is also a legislative requirement to protect your employees from receiving too high a radiation dose.

Such work environments may include laboratories, hospitals, imaging clinics, industrial facilities, some mines (i.e. mineral sand mines) and many other environments.

Electronic Personal Radiation Dosimeters deliver unparalleled real-time dose reading, improving your employees’ safety and streamlines workplace efficiency by providing ultra-precise dosage information.

In most cases the risk of exposure is low and the annual dose rate your employees are likely to receive is well below national threshold limits. The limits are 20 mSv (for a radiation worker) or 1 mSv (for a non-radiation worker).

However, like any industrial hazard due care needs to be taken when working with ionising radiation.

The dosimeter issued should be worn inside any protective clothing and whenever employees are at work. Generally, they should not be worn outside of work, especially not if anyone is having any medical treatment that involves medical imaging.

Some organisations issue passive personal radiation dosimeters such asTLD (Thermoluminescent Detector) badges.

These are essentially a plastic badge containing a specially treated substance (typically lithium fluoride), which stores the energy it receives from ionising radiation until it is placed into a special oven, where it is heated and releases the energy absorbed as light.

The TLD is typically worn for 4 - 12 weeks before being returned for analysis. When used properly the TLD will indicate your employees’ total dose for this period.

Whilst passive radiation dosimetry may be cheap, the instrumentation to analyse radiation measured by them is not.

Although passive radiation dosimeters are reasonably accurate and effective at measuring average dose rates over specific periods, there is a time lag before it is discovered that an employee has been exposed to an unsafe dose. No alarms or daily dose information can be provided by a TLD badge.

For a higher level of employee protection, ADM recommends the Thermo Scientific EPD Trudose electronic personal radiation dosimeter.

The Trudose is worn on the chest area to capture your employee’s exposure to ionising radiation.

These are a much better method of providing personal radiation protection, as they are able to provide you with information on dose received by your employees in real time, enabling you to control their exposure far more effectively than you could just using a passive dosimetry system.

If the alarm activates, your employee can immediately respond to the threat and remove themselves from the source eliminating unknown and potentially long exposures.   

The EPD Trudose personal radiation dosimeter can detect and measure beta, gamma and neutron radiation, depending on the particular model selected. It provides a very good estimate of the radiation dose that the wearer has received during a shift.
 

Some industrial and medical X-Ray equipment use a pulsed X-Ray rather than a continuous X-ray emission while operating. A pulse version of the EPD Trudose is available. The pulse width can be switched with software between narrow or wide pules to suit the medical or industrial pulse X-Ray application.

Radiation that is detected by the EPD is automatically processed by the EPD to provide an indication of penetrating dose, superficial dose and the dose rates. This information is displayed to the user via an LCD display on the top of the EPD.

The Bluetooth functionality of the Thermo Scientific EPD TruDose enables you to use telemetry to network the radiation dosimeters, so that real time readings can be taken remotely.

You will be alerted to any alarm situations immediately, allowing you to take immediate intervention to reduce a wearer’s radiation exposure.

Electronic Personal Dosimeters are great for providing instantaneous feedback of worker safety, which typically leads to safer work practises being employed by workers. This might involve moving further away from a radiation source, introducing shielding into the work area or limiting exposure times. Thus, EPD feedback enables a far more proactive approach to be taken by the worker when dealing with radiation.

This feedback simply isn't available from a TLD badge system.

For advice on selecting the best radiation dosimeters to protect your employees contact ADM Nuclear Technologies. A member of our expert team will gladly answer any questions that you may have.

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