Intercomparison of secondary standard dosemeters in Latin America

The National Laboratory for Ionizing Radiation Metrology/IRD has promoted an intercomparison among secondary and tertiary dosemeters which have been used as national standards in Latin America. Thirteen therapy level and five protection level dosemeters were brought by representatives, of eight countries and were compared against two reference dosemeters brought by an IAEA staff member. As far as the stablished limits for discrepancies are concerned it was possible to detect that therapy level secondary standard dosemeters failed in 4 conditions when 46 were used; therapy tertiary dosemeters failed in 5 of the 15 test conditions and the protection level secondary dosemeters showed 4 discrepancies during the 21 test conditions. The exercise emphasized the importance of intercomparisons as part of a quality control programme to garantee the metrological quality and the coherency of standard dosemeters with international metrological system. (author)