New organizational framework of the radiation protection in the Czech Republic

The first administrative acts concerning Radiation Protection were issued on the territory of today's Czech Republic already in the times when it was part of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. They delt with the regulation of the medical application of radon waters and radioactive mud used in spas. Between the World War I and the World War II the activities related to Radiation Protection covered only some particular facets of the challenge. Two outstanding personalities contributing to the progress in this field are worth mentioning. Prof. Teisinger, founder of occupational medicine in Czechoslovakia with high reputation also in the then Yugoslavia, started to follow-up the health status in radiation workers and strongly supported the idea of personnel monitoring. Prof. Frantisek Behounek - physicist and well known participant of the general Nobile's expedition to the North Pole - performed investigations in dosimetric methods and started to study the radon problems in uranium mines. A systematic approach to Radiation Protection has been adopted from the early nineteen-fifties. In 1956 the Department of Radiation Hygiene was established within the Institute of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Diseases, headed by Prof. Teisinger. The staff of this Department increased during years from 30 to almost a hundred, and finally, in 1965 an autonomous Research Institute of Radiation Hygiene was created. New tasks related to Radiation Protection arose also at the regional level and not all of them could be handled from this central establishment. Following the model of the Soviet Hygiene Service the Czechoslovak Ministry of Public Health set up in 1957 a network of Stations of Hygiene and Epidemiology in the country. At the level of Regions - the higher level of administrative areas that time - the groups for Radiation Protection were formed to conduct the daily work at workplaces and in their environment