Greenversations

The name sounds like it is all about pendulums and inclined planes, but it is really about radiation protection. The most entertaining story about the origin of the job description “health physicist” is that it came about during the “Manhattan Project” when scientists needed to protect themselves from the radioactive materials they used. According to the story, the term, “health physicist” was chosen to be an intentionally confusing description to disguise the work on the atomic bomb.

Over the last 60 years, health physics has developed into an important and complex scientific discipline and profession. There are entire university degree programs devoted to it as well as professional-level certification. In keeping with the confusing name, health physicists have many confusing terms and units such as rem, rad, roentgen, effective dose equivalent, and committed dose, just to name a few. If that weren’t confusing enough, health physicists also use the international system of units (kind of like the metric system).

Today many health physicists work in nuclear power plants, hospitals and industries, all places where radiation is used. Some also work at EPA, since EPA is the primary Federal agency charged with protecting the public from the harmful effects of radiation. Many of them became involved in health physics because they were interested in the science of radiation. I once had a manager tell me that health physicists were unique at EPA because they were the only ones who “thought their pollutant was cool.”

I think the hardest job health physicists have is explaining radiation to the public and to other scientists at the EPA. We know a lot about radiation, but for low level radiation exposure, there is a lot that we need to assume and estimate, and many areas where the science is not clear. I usually start out my discussions about radiation by reminding people that this is a radioactive world.

Did you know that the reason the Earth’s core is still molten after 4.5 billion years is that the long-lived radioactive decay in the core keeps it hot? Without that molten core, Earth would not have a magnetic field, and without a magnetic field the solar wind would have blown away our atmosphere long ago (like Mars). And of course without an atmosphere, Earth would be a lifeless rock. So in a way, radioactivity is the reason there is life on Earth. Health physicists think that is cool–just ask one.

About the Author: Richard Poeton is a health physicist. He started his career with EPA while studying for his MS in radiological science at Oregon State University. Richard is professionally certified by the American Board of Health Physics, and has more than 30 years of experience in radiation protection. He has worked in the EPA Region 10 Seattle office since 1991 and is currently the radiation program manager there.

Although I have been surrounded by radiation my entire life, it wasn’t until 2003, when I began my doctorate work, that I entered the “radiation world.” Since that time I have learned so much about radiation and realize there is much more to learn. I have also come to recognize a variety of challenges that exist in the radiation world.

Despite being surrounded by naturally occurring radiation, very few people really understand it. This is just one challenge we, radiation professionals, need to address. Other challenges include understanding the unique behavior of each radioactive element (or radionuclide), the various areas of study within the field of radiation, the multiple uses of radiation in our society, the fear of radiation, and the decreasing workforce knowledgeable in the field of radiation.

Some areas of radiation work include understanding: the fate and transport of radionuclides (how they behave in water, soil, air); biological effects of radiation (effects on human health); how to prepare, prevent and respond to radiation emergencies; how to set protective regulatory limits; and how to use radiation as a benefit to society (medicine, energy…).

Each radionuclide exhibits unique biological, chemical, and physical properties. What does this mean? It means that different radionuclides behave differently in various media (soil, water, air) as well as in the human body. Radionuclides also have unique radiological properties, such as the type of radioactive decay (alpha, beta, gamma) or the length of time they will be around before being transformed into a stable (non radioactive) element. Fully understanding the world of radiation means understanding all of these things for multiple radionuclides; what a challenge!

Another challenge is addressing the fear of radiation while improving the public’s general knowledge of radiation. EPA is meeting this challenge through various radiation education products like RadTown USA.

It will be increasingly difficult to increase public knowledge without the right staff. The number of radiation professionals is not growing at the rate it should be. More students need to be encouraged to not only study STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas, but also to specialize in one of the diverse fields of radiation.

As an Engineer at EPA, I look forward to meeting all of these challenges head on, learning more about radiation and working to get the word out about radiation, educating people about the role of radiation in their daily lives, and encouraging them to join the “radiation world.”

About the Author: Dr. Angelique D. Diaz joined EPA in June of 2008 after completing her Ph.D., where she studied the behavior of plutonium in the environment. Dr. Diaz is an Environmental Engineer working at EPA’s Region 8 office in Denver, CO, where she works on a variety of radiological-related activities, including regulating radon emissions from uranium mines and mills.

When people hear the word “radiation” or “radioactive” they generally get worried. Radiation is something that people can’t see, smell, taste, hear or feel, but is real which makes it very scary.

At my work at EPA, I deal with addressing technical issues associated with radiation sites from cradle to grave, performing human health risk assessments, providing technical support to emergency responses, participating in the development of national guidance, participating in counterterrorism emergency response exercises associated with Radiological Dispersal Devices (dirty bombs), such as the EMPIRE 09 exercise in Albany a couple of months ago, and participating in public meetings to address radiation technical issues. I couldn’t do any of this if we didn’t have devices and instruments that can “sense” and measure radiation.

We use state of the art technologies for radiation site investigations and emergency responses. Some of the instruments are stored within our region. We can get larger specialized equipment from our EPA colleagues in Radiation and Indoor Environments National Laboratory located in Las Vegas, the National Air and Radiation Environmental Laboratory in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Environmental Response Team and National Decontamination Team located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Such technologies include everything from handheld devices for surface and subsurface investigations, to larger monitoring vehicles like the RIENL Scanner Van and Environmental Radiation Gamma Scanner (ERGS), to NDT’s airplane, the Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT). These instruments provide data that help us answer important questions, like those on the amount of radiation, the type of radiation and the location of the radioactive material.

Recently the ERGS, which measures gamma radiation several feet below the ground surface, was utilized to survey approximately 200 acres of land. This provided the project with both cost and time savings. The ASPECT was recently deployed to support the EMPIRE Exercise and also conducted gamma radiation flyover survey over two radiation sites in my area.

Explaining radiation is sometimes challenging, yet essential for public awareness. At times, the challenge is encountered because some of the audience is working off assumptions and has their mind set before coming to the meeting as opposed to others who are willing to listen and learn. Regardless of the different types of audience, I believe that we need to reach out further in educating the public in radiation because it is hard to understand something that requires special instruments to detect.

About the Author: Nidal Azzam joined the EPA Region 2 New York office in 2003 as a senior health physicist. Nidal provides technical support on radioactively contaminated sites, radiation emergency responses, and on the development of multi-agency guidance to protect the public and the environment from the harmful effects of ionizing radiation.

I started out as a radiation “novice” and had to be trained; therefore I understand the difficulty in explaining radiation concepts. I always try to make explanations as simple and as accurate as possible given the complexity of and mythology behind radiation.

As a regional member of EPA’s Radiological Emergency Response Team, my role as a Regional Liaison is to enhance coordination and communication between my region and the rest of EPA’s responders during a radiological emergency. One of my responsibilities will be to help staff members who are not familiar with radiation concepts to understand them and to communicate them to the public. You might think that since many of our people are scientists or engineers, that they would already understand radiation. That’s not the case. Often, radiation is just as mysterious to many of our staff as it is to the public. That’s where we come in.

Unfortunately, most people just don’t know much about radiation. Our movies and comic books, which present radiation as being able to create monsters or superheroes or to be deadly in even the smallest amounts, have created a great misunderstanding about what it is and what it isn’t.

We had an exercise recently in which we pretended that a “dirty bomb” spread radioactivity over an area. One part of the exercise had people saying that they had “radiation sickness” (i.e. they had been exposed to an amount of radiation which would make them sick to their stomachs). I had to explain to our staff that this was impossible. The amount of radiation we had determined to have been released could not have created that effect – it was just too small. However, people could be so worried about getting sick that they could indeed have made themselves sick. My statements were greeted skeptically until I showed them the tables describing that radiation sickness symptoms occur at radiation levels thousands of times greater than had been released in our pretend situation.

There are many other concepts people need to understand as well, such as: being exposed to radiation doesn’t make you or your possessions radioactive forever; you can remove radioactive contamination by washing with soap and water; and that being exposed to radiation won’t turn you into a monster or a superhero. I think that Spiderman is everyone’s favorite character who got his powers from radiation. I know that I would like his powers, but I’m afraid of heights so I could only swing from short buildings!

About the Author: Shelly Rosenblum started out in Marine Biology and Engineering. The engineering took him to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay where he was trained in principles of radiation, radiation protection and measurement. Shelly works in Region 9, where he began his work speaking to the public about radon and developing the Radionuclide NESHAP program.

I love to climb up on roofs. I must have been a mountain climber in a past life. But, since I live in Chicago (where the land is about as horizontal as a thin crust pepperoni pizza), rooftops are about the only thing that can satisfy my need for altitude. However, this addiction to heights is a good thing, because one of my jobs is to get radiation monitors installed on rooftops around the Great Lakes.

EPA’s national radiation monitoring network is called RadNet. RadNet monitors are near-real-time radiation monitors providing baseline data on background (a.k.a. normal) levels of radiation in the environment. In the event of a radiological incident, EPA will initiate RadNet’s emergency mode, allowing us to get a lot of data very quickly. We also have monitors that can be deployed to the immediate vicinity of the incident to assess the spread of contamination.

When we are finished installing monitors, RadNet will provide coverage for more than 70% of the geographic area in the United States. EPA has specific criteria for the placement of these monitors. In urban areas we often have to place these monitors on roof tops. I have had the pleasure of climbing roofs in Chicago, Toledo, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit, Des Plaines, Bay City, and Champaign. But I’m not finished yet. I still have a few more roofs to scale.

I do want to say that - next to getting up on the tops of buildings - the best thing about the job is meeting all the great people who operate the monitors. State, local and tribal government volunteers operate most of these monitors. Without the great work and dedication of all our volunteer operators, the program simply wouldn’t work.

I remember standing on a roof in Cincinnati one very hot day. Heat waves were visibly shimmering off the black tar and my shoes stuck with every step. I don’t know how warm it gets in Hades (not yet, any way), but that Cincinnati roof couldn’t have been more than a few degrees cooler. I was working with folks from the health department and our EPA laboratory to get the RadNet monitor installed and operating. I looked out over the City of Cincinnati, wiped the sweat from my eyes and thought to myself, “I have just about the best job on Earth.”

About the Author: Jack Barnette is a senior scientist with EPA’s Region 5, Air and Radiation Division. Jack is a former Federal and State (Illinois) On Scene Coordinator. He currently is the preparedness coordinator for the Air and Radiation Division, and serves on the Response Support Corps and on the Regional Incident Coordination Team.

About the Author: Mike Boyd joined EPA in 1988 as a health physicist in what is now the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. Health physics is the profession of radiation protection. Mike’s work at EPA focuses on radiation risk assessment.  He helps develop federal guidance, the rules and regulations that protect the American public from the harmful effects of radiation.

Health physics is a term most people don’t understand. People often guess that my job has something to do with physical therapy. Actually, the term was coined during the Manhattan Project – a national effort to develop the first atomic weapon during World War II.

There are several stories about how the term originated. I like the one that says that “health physics” was chosen over “radiation protection” because it “conveyed nothing.” The Manhattan Project was very secretive, so a name that disguised any association with radiation would be appropriate. I imagine someone in charge saying, “Some of you physicists need to design the protective shielding for this project and some of you need to monitor worker exposure. Raise your hand if you want to be our health physicists.” Maybe it didn’t happen just that way, but it could have!

As fascinated as I am by the challenges facing these first health physicists, their work has little resemblance to what I do today with EPA. Radioactive elements are commonly found in nature. Since there is no such thing as “zero radiation,” how do we determine how safe is “safe” and how clean is “clean?” These are the questions I deal with.

This raises an interesting question. After a radiological emergency, should “clean” be a constant, or should it depend on a larger context? Is “clean” the same for a major nuclear incident in a large city as for a small scale event in a rural area? What if it means abandoning a city? Will people accept an increased lifetime cancer risk to be able to get back to their homes and livelihood? There is no easy answer.

Chernobyl teaches us that some people will try to go back home no matter what the radiation levels and risks. Others will stay away, no matter how low the levels eventually reach. My personal opinion is that it is best to approach such situations on a case-by-case basis, hoping, of course, that there is never even one such case. We have benchmarks to begin the process of determining clean-up levels, including the history of what was achieved at radiation-contaminated sites around the country.

We cannot know in advance what emergency managers may face in the future, but we know that no decision regarding cleanup will mean anything without serious public involvement. These are just some thoughts of one EPA health physicist. I’d like to hear what you think!

About the Author: Jessica Wieder is a communications specialist with EPA’s Radiation Protection Program and member of EPA’s Radiological Emergency Response Team. When not doing emergency response work, she helps develop radiation education products like EPA’s RadTown USA.

It is 2004 and I am a proud University of Maryland Terrapin senior, majoring in communications and minoring in British and American literature. I am jumping up and down in my dorm room because I just got an offer to work for EPA’s Radiation Protection Division.

Did I ever think I would work for EPA? No.
Do I know anything about radiation? No.
Do I care at this moment? No. I GOT A JOB!

My very first assignment is to “play” in an emergency response exercise called Ruby Slippers. The exercise scenario involves a satellite crashing in Kansas (hence Ruby Slippers) and scattering pieces of its radioactive power source across the state. The power source is called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. (Try saying that five times fast)

My role in this exercise is Assistant Public Information Officer. My job is to help communicate EPA’s role during a radiological emergency, potential health effects from radiation exposure, and protective action decisions.

NOW do I care that I don’t know anything about radiation? You better believe it!

With two weeks to prepare, I turn to my new coworkers for help. This is what I learned: 1) Many radiation health physicists communicate well with each other - not so well with non-techies, 2) My coworkers have amazing patience for, what I assume are, some pretty stupid questions, like “What is a gamma spectrometer and do I really need to know this?” 3) Radiation is a difficult topic to understand and even harder to explain, and 4) This job isn’t going to be easy.

You will be happy to know that I survived the exercise and have been with EPA for almost five years. Communicating radiation information to the public continues to be rewarding and challenging. Just last week I learned that “to frisk” in radiation terms means to use radiation detection instruments to scan a person for contamination, as opposed to an intrusive pat down. (I would hate to be the nuclear power plant worker to make that mistake.)

Looking back, it was my first assignment that made this job a career. I learned that the question isn’t “Do I care?” but “WHY do I care?” The answer is why I love my job: Because it is the knowledge of the experts, the science behind decisions and the technology we use that protects the people. It is communicating that information that empowers people to protect themselves.

About the author: Jed Harrison’s research background dates back to 1974, starting in agriculture, then indoor air quality. Since 1992, Jed has been Director of EPA’s Radiation & Indoor Environments National Laboratory (R&IE) in Las Vegas. Jed oversees several programs including the western contingent of the EPA’s Radiological Emergency Response Team (RERT).

One of the things that makes us special as a Radiation Laboratory and Response Team is that we’re radiation measurement specialists. In the event of a radiation incident, our lab has an important role in determining the extent of the contamination, characterizing that area, and ensuring a successful decontamination and cleanup. We do this by using our specialized field and lab-based measurement capabilities.

Responding to a radiation disaster, we may be working on a scale that exceeds anything that EPA has ever experienced. We will be under great pressure to work quickly and effectively so that people’s lives can get back to normal as fast as possible. Our goals will be to get people back in their homes with access to safe food and water and to see local businesses reopen so that people can return to work and school. The ability of local economies to recover will depend upon the success of small businesses to get back on their feet, and time will become an enemy.

So, a large focus of the R&IE laboratory has been on developing methods, tools, and capabilities that can increase our speed and efficiency, without sacrificing the measurement quality needed to make good decisions. I believe that EPA will have the greatest success by shifting the proportion of our measurement efforts toward field-based analysis using real time instruments, and rapid methods using field lab capabilities.

Decades of field experience – at contaminated sites and emergency responses – has helped us evolve. This yields capabilities like R&IE’s scanning systems that integrate real-time radiation monitoring systems, G.P.S., and wireless data communication. Mounted in trucks, all-wheel drive tractors and portable “buggies,” these systems allow us to cover large areas quickly, collecting a great “density of data” which can be viewed in a map format and superimposed over aerial images. This greatly simplifies data interpretation, allowing us to make better decisions faster.

As a Lab Director, it’s my job to keep our laboratory capable and relevant. We’re always looking for better ways to do our work, and opportunities to partner with others. We may never have all the resources that we would like to have; we realize we have to “work smarter.” By partnering with our colleagues on the RERT, EPA’s On Scene Coordinators, and EPA’s Environmental Response Team and National Decontamination Team, good ideas are created. These ideas are based on real world experience and foresight which become seeds of continual improvement and innovation.

About the author: Gregg Dempsey is an EPA Radiological Emergency Response Team commander and has been with EPA more than 21 years. His job involves being an internal consultant to EPA on radiation issues and being a field response person for radiation emergencies.

If you’ve ever worried about some of the strange new terms that have been in the media since September 11, 2001, like ‘dirty bomb’, ‘radiation dispersal device’ and ‘improvised nuclear device’, you’re not alone. I worry about them too. But my worry is probably a little different than yours; I am part of a group of people who might have to monitor and cleanup the radiation from these types of events.

EPA deals with small radiation problems across the country all the time. They range from transportation accidents to cleanup at abandoned facilities. We work well with our state and local counterparts, and other Federal agencies to get the job done and remove dangerous radiation from our environment.

The smaller problems turn out to be mostly local issues, but they provide valuable lessons for larger accidents and incidents. You learn just how complicated measuring radiation can be, and how complicated it is to determine when you must act and when you might not need to act. Everyone agrees that high levels of radiation exposure are dangerous. It’s the lower levels that spark a huge debate. The debate ranges from questions such as ‘is my health at risk?’, ‘do we leave it here or must we clean it up?’ or ‘are these low levels still a danger?’ Depending on who you talk to, the answers are quite different. In my job, I try to help answer these questions.

I am unfortunately fortunate; I’ve been to and worked at a vast number of radiation cleanup sites across the United States, and I’ve participated in so many emergency response exercises that I’ve lost count. I’ve also been up close and personal at the Chernobyl accident site in Ukraine several times, and I have seen the devastation of wide spread contamination in the environment and how that accident affected its citizens. I try to bring that experience back to EPA.

The Radiological Emergency Response Team (RERT), of which I am a member, is one of many specialized technical teams in EPA. I’m often asked to provide help and advice on radiation issues in the field. That is, how to prevent, measure, clean up and protect people from needless radiation exposure. We train a lot, we maintain a good response capability, and we help where we can.