Provision of dosimeters by official monitoring services for eye lens dose estimation

Recent epidemiological studies are implying that the radio sensitivity of the eye lens is much higher than supposed in the past. International recommendations and standards demand to lower down the annual limit of the eye lens organ dose to 20 mSv. Since about 10 years German monitoring services offer partial-body dosimeters fixed on the head or on glasses for monitoring the eye lens dose. These dosimeters are optimized to measure the (surface) personal dose equivalent Hp(0,07) from 0,5 mSv up to 10 Sv, which clearly overestimate the organ dose of the eye lens. With special features like different calibrations partial-body dosimeters should be applicable for legal dosimetry to avoid the development of special Hp(3) dosimeters. Accepting the right way for wearing these dosimeters it is important to get the right results. Practical experiences are shown with measuring results and the difficulties of rounding the exact measuring values to discrete dose steps. Closing this article we point to still missing legal basis and open questions regarding to type testing procedures. (orig.)