Protection and Working Conditions in X-ray Departments

Abstract

The Second International Congress of Radiology which met at Stockholm in July, 1928 adopted a set of International Recommendations for X-ray and Radium Protection, proposed by the British X-ray and Radium Protection Committee. A standing International Protection Committee was also constituted. The event provides a convenient occasion for reviewing the situation.* It will be recalled that in 1921 a succession of deaths of X-ray and radium workers from aplastic anaemia stirred public opinion. More specific precautions were asked for, and accordingly as the result of co-operative action between various radiological and physical institutions, a representative committee of radiologists, physicists and manufacturers, was set up in April, 1921, under the chairmanship of Sir Humphry Rolleston, then President of the Royal College of Physicians. Three months later the committee issued a series of recommendations. These recommendations (which have been twice revised and extended), though naturally they have not wholly escaped criticism, have, in the main, been very favourably received and widely adopted. They have undoubtedly led to a great improvement in the working conditions of X-ray operators in Great Britain, and, with the co-operation of the manufacturers, have influenced beneficially the design of much British-made apparatus. Similar recommendations have since been made in a number of other countries, and a considerable literature has resulted; over 120 papers have, I find, been published on the physics of protection alone.