title: Contaminating incident investigation in medicine and biomedical research.
abstract: Regardless of how well trained, experienced and careful individuals are, if they handle radioactive materials often enough they will eventually have a contaminating incident. When the incident occurs it is imperative that the proper actions are taken to control the incident, minimize contamination and exposure, assure that proper remediation is implemented, assure that the incident remains confined, that no others become contaminated or exposed and that effective remediation is documented. This paper discusses our approach to such incidents and discusses the incident report form and our philosophy of information recording.
authors.affiliation: Penn State's College of Medicine and the Director of the Health Physics program at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, USA. kmiller@psu.edu
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Erdman
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: King
mesh_terms: D003666:Decontamination; D004630:Emergencies; D006283:Health Physics; D006801:Humans; D018788:Radioactive Hazard Release; D012106:Research; D012308:Risk Management / Q000379:methods