Research and analysis

Internal contamination in people: PHE rapid monitoring facility

This report (PHE-CRCE-019) describes a facility for monitoring people for internal radioactive contamination.

• From: Public Health England
• Published: 30 July 2015

Documents

PHE-CRCE-019: PHE facility for rapid monitoring of internal contamination in people

Ref: ISBN 978-0-85951-771-3, PHE publications gateway number 2015195

PDF, 552 KB, 26 pages

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Details

Public Health England has developed a facility for rapidly monitoring people for internal contamination. For many gamma emitting radionuclides this facility could be used to identify people who require medical assessment and, in the case of intakes of radiocaesium, those who would benefit from decorporation therapy.

This monitoring facility could be quickly deployed to the scene of an incident as comparatively little equipment is required and operation does not require specialist skills.

An evaluation has shown the instrument can detect activities of caesium-137 in people which would result in committed effective doses of less than 1 millisievert assuming default intake parameters for times between intake and screening of up to 14 days.

Published 30 July 2015