Radiation Accidents 2nd Qatar International Trauma Care, Disaster

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Radiation Accidents 2nd Qatar International
Trauma Care, Disaster Emergency Medicine
Conformance April 7-11, 2004 Prof. Dr. M. I.
Al-JarallahKing Fahd University of Petroleum
Minerals Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
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• Radiation Accidents
• 1- Definition of Radiation Accident
• 2- Sources of Radiation Accidents
• 3- Types of Radiation Exposures
• 4- Biological Effects of Radiation
• 5- Acute Radiation Syndrome
• 6- Evaluation of Radiation Accidents
• 7- Worldwide Radiation Accidents and Illicit
  Trafficking
• 8- Prevention of Radiation Accidents

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• Radiation Accidents
• 1- Definition of Radiation Accident
• a. Accident is defined as an unintentional or
  unexpected happening that is undesirable or
  unfortunate, especially one resulting in injury,
  damage, harm or loss.
• b. Radiation accident here can be defined as a
  situation which results in any unplanned
  radiation exposure or any unplanned release of
  radioactive material leading to radiation
  exposure.

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Radiation Accidents

• 2- Sources of Radiation Accidents
• Sources of radiation can be categorized as
  follows
• a. Sealed or encapsulated sources
• b. Unsealed sources
• c. Machine producing radiation

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Radiation Accidents
Routinely used in the field in road construction
and similar applications Contain both a
gamma-ray source and a neutron source 0.3 GBq
137Cs 1.5 GBq 241Am/Be About 30 are stolen each
year in the USA alone only 40 are recovered
Moisture-Density Gauges
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Radiation Accidents
Alpha - Sources 241Am, 239Plutonium,
226Radium Activity kBq (µCi)
Smoke Detector
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Radiation Accidents
Contain 0.1-5 TBq of 60Co, 192Ir, or 137Cs About
1000 times more radioactivity than moisture
density gauges
Radiography Sources
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Radiation Accidents
High-intensity Sources
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Radiation Accidents

• Radiation accidents can arise mainly from
  problems with
• A. Nuclear Reactors
• B. Industrial Sources
• C. Medical Sources
• These accidents arise because of
• a. Loss of shielding, resulting in high radiation
  levels.
• b. Loss of containment resulting in a release of
  activity.
• c. An uncontrolled criticality, which is,
  effectively, the rapid generation of a large
  radioactive source and high levels of radiation.

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Radiation Accidents

• 3- Types of Radiation Exposures
• a. External Exposure.
• b. Contamination with Radioactive Sources.
• c. Combination of the above two.
• Contamination is defined as unwanted radioactive
  material on in the body

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Radiation Accidents

• 4- Biological Effects of Radiation

How Radiation can Lead to Damage in Tissue
Radiation
Electrical Effect (Ionization)
Physical Chemical Changes
Damage to DNA
Cell Death
Cell Transformation
Early Effect
Hereditary Defects
Cancer
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Radiation Accidents

• 5- Acute Radiation Syndrome
• For Gamma Radiation to the whole body

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Radiation Accidents
Discarded teletherapysource in Thailand,
25 TBq Co-60
Georgian woodsmen injured by discarded 1500 TBq
Sr-90 RTG sources
Incidents with very high-intensity sources have
caused accidents involving peopleunaware of what
they were dealing with
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Radiation Accidents

• 6- Evaluation of Radiation Accidents
• The essential factor in evaluating the medical
  consequences of radiation accidents includes
  information on the following
• a. External radiation (neutron, Xray or gamma
  radiation) and penetration.
• b. Low-energy surface external reaction (beta
  radiation).
• c. Initial surface contamination (important for
  evaluation of oral or transdermal intake of
  radionuclides).
• d. Exposure to gaseous forms of radinuclides (eg.
  noble gases).

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Radiation Accidents

• 7- Worldwide Radiation Accidents Illicit
  Trafficking

Incidents with Radioactive Sourcesgrouped for
Activity
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Radiation Accidents
Frequency of various Nuclides
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Radiation Accidents

• We can summarize the radiation accidents that
  resulted in radiation injury in medicine and
  industry in the following table

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Radiation Accidents

• 8- Prevention of Radiation Accidents
• The turning point in global interest of radiation
  safety and security problems was the
  International conference on Safety of Radiation
  Sources and Security of Radioactive Materials.
  The conference was cosponsored by the IAEA
  together with INTERPOL, the World Customs
  Organization, and the European Commission. It
  took place from September 14 to 18, 1998 in
  Dijon, France.
• I quote here some of the major findings of the
  Dijon Conference, which are strongly related to
  our topic

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Radiation Accidents

• a- Sources of ionizing radiation must have
  sufficient protection to allow for safe normal
  operations.
• b- The possibility of accidental exposures
  involving radiation sources, must be anticipated
  and there must be appropriate safety devices and
  procedures. In this connection

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Radiation Accidents

• i- weaknesses in the design and construction of
  radiation sources must be corrected
• ii- a high level of safety culture in the
  handling of radiation sources must be promoted,
  so that inter alia human errors are minimized
  through good training and the concept of safety
  culture was to make it clear that safety should
  be the highest priority in organization handling
  radiation sources, which should be prepared to
  identify and correct problems promptly that
  clear lines of responsibility should be
  established, not only for organization in
  handling sources but also in the governmental
  agencies controlling the use of sources. The
  lines of authority for decision making should be
  clearly defined.
• iii- regulatory infrastructures for the control
  of radiation sources must be supported by
  governments and be able to act independently, and
  the regulatory authority in each country must
  maintain oversight of all radiation sources in
  that country.

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Radiation Accidents

• c- Radiation sources should not be allowed to
  drop out of the regulatory control system. This
  means that the regulatory authority must keep
  up-to-date records of the person responsible for
  each source, monitor transfers of sources and
  track the fate of each source at the end of its
  useful life.
• d-Efforts should be made to find radiation
  sources that are not in the regulatory
  authoritys inventory, because they were in the
  country before the inventory was established, or
  were never specifically licensed or were lost,
  abandoned or stolen (such radiation sources are
  often referred to as orphan sources)

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Radiation Accidents

• Conclusion
• It is clear from these points that the key common
  element is effective national regulatory
  authorities operating, within suitable national
  infrastructures. Therefore
• a- Governments are urged to create regulatory
  authorities for radiation sources if they do not
  exist.
• b- The government must provide it with sufficient
  backing and with sufficient human and financial
  resources to enable it to function effectively.

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Radiation Accidents

• Thank you