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Designated Work Areas Maximize Efficiency

 

One of our basic recommendations when we help investigators set up a radiation laboratory is to establish a designated work area. Establishing such an area and restricting work with radioactive materials to it can maximize the efficiency of your procedures because it:

·        reduces the need to put labels and stickers all over the lab benches and cabinets,

·        reduces the need to protect all of your lab benches with absorbent paper,

·        reduces the need to perform detailed contamination surveys of large areas, and

·        it enhances security by making it easier to maintain a line-of-site to stock materials and sources that have been removed from storage.

 

Documentation Binder -- Your One-Stop Reference

 

We put a Radiation Safety Handbook in a binder and give it to each investigator when the authorization is issued. Keep your binder near the radiation work area and use it to maintain the following documents:

·        Radiation Safety Handbook,

·        NUtrino newsletters (signed by radiation workers),

·        inventory forms and records of periodic inventory reconciliation,

·        radiation safety surveys,

·        survey instrument calibration records,

·        radioactive waste records, and

·        radiation worker list.

Inspectors are impressed when you can produce these documents on request, and it makes compliance easy.

 

Contamination is Forgivable -- Failure to Clean It Up Is Not

 

Contamination happens (even though nearly all contamination is avoidable). When we find it (or when you find it during your regular after-procedure survey), we move from the realm of the forgivable to the realm of the obligatory. Once contamination is detected, it must be cleaned up. This is best accomplished on the spot, by the person who caused it. Workers must not be subjected to the risk of cleaning up someone else's hazard. ORS is required to do follow-up surveys and there is no excuse if we come back a week later and find the same contamination. That, like food in the lab or lack of security, is a basis for escalated enforcement.