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National Dose Registry - a central point for occupational dose records
Presenter: Cameron Lawrence, Juliette Feuardent, Govert de With
Date of broadcast: 17 December 2019, 4:00 PM CET
About the webinar
Individual monitoring of workers exposed to radiation as a part of their job, and recording their radiation doses are important parts of national occupational radiation protection programmes. The IAEA General Safety Requirements on Governmental, Legal and Regulatory Framework for Safety (No. GSR Part 1 (Rev.1)) and Radiation Protection and Safety of Radiation Sources: International Basic Safety Standards (No. GSR Part 3) describe the characteristics of such programmes. GSR Part 3 includes requirements for the retention of workers’ occupational exposure records by the regulatory body or a State registry, or by a relevant employer, registrant or licensee.
Many Member States have National Dose Registries that contain the dose records of individuals. Such registries enable the optimization of protection and help ensure compliance with the dose limits at the national level. The General Safety Guide Occupational Radiation Protection (No. GSG-7) notes that a typical registry contains personal, employment, and dosimetric data for all the occupationally exposed workers in the country.
Experts from Australia, France, Netherlands will provide examples and discuss the main objectives of such a National Dose Registry:
- To assist national authorities in controlling and safekeeping occupational dose records and to allow statistical analyses of the monitored personnel and their radiation exposure grouped by various aspects such as occupation, age, sex etc.
- To assist in regulatory control by notifying regulatory authorities and of overexposures ,
- To contribute to health research and scientific knowledge on risks from occupational exposure to radiation,
- To provide dose histories to individual workers and organizations for work planning and for compensation and litigation cases,
All information in a registry may be subject to confidentiality requirements.
The life-time dose data of radiation workers kept in the registries enable authorities to ensure and review radiation safety of workers, issue certificates and fulfil other legal requirements. In addition, such data is useful in epidemiological studies.
Learning objectives
Participants of the webinar will learn about:
- IAEA safety requirements listed in IAEA publications on the establishment and maintenance of national dose registry
- Typical characteristics and structure of a national dose registry with examples
- Required information and types of doses recorded
- Occupational categories in the registry
- Responsibility for the submission of dose records
- Reporting and data analysis
- Special procedures for managing overexposure and/or emergency doses
About the presenters
Cameron Lawrence is a Radiation, Health and Hygiene Specialist with over a decade of experience in mining and manufacturing for the uranium and aluminium industries. His work experience has provided him with significant experience in environmental, radiation, health and hygiene monitoring programs, including the analysis and reporting of results. He has designed and implemented Occupational Radiation Protection, Health and Safety policies and procedures for major resource companies. Mr Lawrence also has extensive experience in the development of training packages, auditing, incident investigation, international representation, legislative compliance and emergency management. He is Manager of the Australian National Radiation Dose Register (ANRDR) at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), a role he has held since early 2016.
Juliette Feuardent has 15 years experience in radiation protection of workers at the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). She is the Head of the Occupational Exposure Surveillance and Analysis Office at IRSN’s Health Division, a position she has held for two years. The office is in charge of the National Register of Occupational Exposure to Ionising Radiations for the Ministry of Labour. She is also the French representative for the ESOREX Platform. Ms Feuardent holds a PhD in Physics (medical imaging) and gained experience in radiation protection of patients during her first career in hospital as medical physicist.
Govert de With entered the field of radiation protection and occupational exposure in 2008. Since 2012 he is responsible for the management of the national dose register in the Netherlands. He recently was been appointed Chairman of the HERCA Network on Occupational Dose Collection, Registration and Reporting. He is a member of various professional bodies and committees, including the UNSCEAR Expert Group on occupational exposure. He holds a qualification as a radiation protection expert from the RADBOUD University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has over 30 peer-reviewed publications in the field of radiation protection and several relevant book contributions on topics related to radiation exposure from natural radiation and other areas of radiation protection.