title: Sensitivity of portable personnel portal monitors: potential problems when dealing with contaminated persons.
abstract: Health physicists are usually concerned with small amounts of radioactivity and strive to develop techniques to measure them; however, following a terrorist attack involving radioactive materials the converse might be the case, and exposed persons may be heavily contaminated. The Human Monitoring Laboratory (HML) has field tested its Portable Personnel Portal (P3) monitors using sources up to 1,700 MBq (47 mCi) to determine the alarm distance as a function of activity. The results show that the P3 monitors are highly sensitive, so much so that siting will be a problem for multiple units if multiple alarms are to be avoided. Building materials will shield the monitors allowing units to be placed closer together than in the open where there is no shielding, but windows and doors reduce shielding and complicate the siting of multiple units. In either situation, careful prior thought should be given to siting the monitors and the logistics of crowd control techniques.
authors.affiliation: Human Monitoring Laboratory, Radiation Surveillance and Health Assessment Division, Radiation Protection Bureau, 775 Brookfield Road, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 1C1, Canada. gary_h_kramer@hc-sc.gc.ca
authors.forename: Gary H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Capello
authors.forename: Barry M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Hauck
authors.forename: Jason T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D016477:Artifacts; D004868:Equipment Failure; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011834:Radiation Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D011835:Radiation Protection / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D011848:Radioactive Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D011868:Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014915:Whole-Body Counting / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D011848:Radioactive Pollutants; D011868:Radioisotopes