Health-Physics, Instrumentation, and Radiation Protection

Fallout Suits and Human Rights: Disrupting the Technocratic Narrative

“…The precedence to dismiss layperson's concerns about nuclear contamination as ignorant, irrational, and emotional has its origins in the secret Manhattan Project and the following decades when all health physicists were trained by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). 13 As author Toshihiro Higuchi describes, the debate about fallout dangers, however, came into focus for the public after the disastrous March 1, 1954, Bravo thermonuclear weapons test contaminated U.S. soldiers, Japanese fisherman, and Marshallese Islanders. 14 What had once seemed a complex mathematical exercise by health physicists of estimating radiation's external dose to an "average man" became entwined with the biota.…”

Radiation Exposure in the United States

“…The normal gamma-radiation exposure received by dial-painting workers appears to be about 0.02 roentgen per day (5). Exposures to radiation may also occur in the use of finished products containing a luminous compound.…”

“…It is generally accepted that the maximum permissible concentration for radon in the air is 10 micromicrocuries per liter (5). When workroom ventilation requirements are met, the radon concentration in the workroom air does not exceed 30 percent of the maximum permissible concentration.…”

“…However, in laboratories where cyclotrons, linear accelerators, and positive ion tubes, as well as high-voltage X-ray machines, are used, it is estimated that there is a frequency rate of "one palpable injury per 20 to 30 man-years of active employment in radiation work" (5).…”

Histological and Cytological Changes Produced by Alpha-Particles in the Skin of Mice

“…As the discussion of the exact definition of doses delivered by the different ionizing radiations is still unsettled (PARKER, 1950), the term ,roentgen)) will be used in this paper. According to LEA (1946), 1 roentgen of 1-5 MeV alpha-rays produces 2,005--1,906 ionizations per lo-'* g tissue.…”