HPS Midyear Topical Meeting on "University, Medical and Laboratory Health Physics, January 22-25, 2006, Scottsdale Arizona.
CRCPD joins HPS at a Winter Meeting
By Debra McBaugh, CRCPD Chairperson
“They” said it was unseasonably cold, but sun, blue skies, and 65ş were a very pleasant change from 35 days straight of rain and 40ş. As chair of CRCPD, I represented you at the HPS Midyear Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, which was jointly sponsored by CRCPD. The topic was chosen to make best use of CRCPD’s knowledge and experience – University, Medical and Laboratory Health Physics. The joint sponsorship came about through significant efforts by both our then-chair Ed Bailey and the then-President-elect, now President of HPS – our own Ruth McBurney. Your Board, current and past was well represented by Ed Bailey, Pearce O’Kelley, Debbie Gilley and me. Other members attended as well (Jim Yusko, Barbara Hamrick – we claim her though she is OAS chair as well, and Stan Fitch, also an OAS member, to name a few).
Debbie Gilley and I both gave papers; hers was titled
“Licensing Evaluation for Broad Scope Medical Facilities.” Mine was titled
“CRCPD’s Suggested State Regulations Cover all Aspects of Radiation Protection
and Control.” Kathleen McAllister, along with our Executive Director, provided
me great support by writing the paper for the meeting proceedings and helping
prepare the presentation. It is very easy being the voice of CRCPD with such
support. I value it immensely!
As you know, Suggested State Regulations are a very significant product of
CRCPD. They cover all aspects of radiation control from AEA to non-AEA material
to x-rays and nonionizing radiation. No one else does this major work on
regulations for all areas of radiation control and we have shared them, not just
with HPS members, but also with other countries and with the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
The topic of the meeting was of great interest to me since I used to be in Radioactive Materials doing licensing and inspections of laboratories. In particular one paper told of the changes in the past 10 years regarding the radionuclides and methods used at laboratories and the amount of waste produced. According to Dr. Ring, from Harvard University, most labs now do little synthesis, use already-labeled compounds in smaller quantities than before (10s of mls instead of 100s of mls), do fewer iodinations, receive fewer packages, and produce less waste (but it is longer lived). While these would appear to be good things in many ways, he noted that we should be aware that new users are much less experienced using radioactive material and will need more oversight when they do use it.
One
other activity for us was to put up and man (or woman) the CRCPD exhibit. It
was a challenge putting it up and we came back with a few lessons learned – redo
the posters, steal--I mean borrow--chairs and tables from neighbors (for
comfort!), and have a bowl of candy to draw passersby in
J. Even without the candy, we had
many visitors, gave away many of our SI/special unit conversion cards, and even
encouraged a few to become members.
[Posted 2/8/06]