Radiation protection, sometimes known as radiological protection, is the science of protecting people and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation.
It includes occupational radiation protection, which is the protection of workpeople; medical radiation protection, which is the protection of patients; and public radiation protection, which is about protection of individual members of the public, and of the population as a whole.
There are main three principles to radiation protection, those of time, distance and shielding. Radiation exposure can be managed by one or more of these:
- Reducing the time of an exposure reduced the dose proportionally.
- Increasing distance reduces dose due to the inverse square law.
- Adding shielding can also reduce radiation doses.
Practical radiation protection tends to be a job of juggling the three factors to identify the most cost effective solution.
An example of reducing radiation doses by reducing the time of exposures might be improving operator training to reduce the time they take to handle a source.
Distance can be as simple as handling a source with forceps rather than fingers.
Shielding included having the operator of an x-ray set stand behind a leaded glass screen.
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