Occupational skin doses in manual implantation of Cs and Ir sources

The manual handling of sealed 137Cs sources and 192Ir wires for brachytherapy could cause radiation doses to the hand of the operator in excess of 1/10 of the dose limits. This type of work has been monitored in a Radiation Therapy Department for four years using TL finger and wrist dosemeters. The measurements have been re-evaluated to find the average dose equivalent, H'(0.07), to the skin of the hands. The finger dosemeter consisting of two LiF chips in a sachet was calibrated on a Lucite slab phantom. The dose ratio of fingertip/wrist was estimated to be 5. In this type of work the skin dose measured was in the range of 0-43 mSv per month, 1.5 mSv on average. (author)