DOSIMETRIC ASPECTS OF OPTIMIZATION OF PROTECTION IN IRAN INDUSTRIAL RADIOGRAPHY PRACTICE

According to the worldwide reports, industrial radiography is one of the highest risk radiation practices due to handling high activity sources. Therefore, an optimization of protection along with appropriate investigation level and/or dose constraint is required to achieve appropriate radiological safety. This research, presents some statistical aspects of this optimization using frequency distributions and percentiles of individual recorded dose of industrial radiographers from the years 2002 to 2016 in Iran. The results show that, considering an investigation level of 4 mSv for bimonthly monitoring periods, 3-7% of population of workers has been investigated during these years. Moreover, an overall reduction on average annual and collective doses is observed, despite of the relative increasing in the number of workers. Since the frequency of periodical recorded dose at lower dose range (e.g. <4 mSv) causes greater impacts on the reduction of collective dose than the higher ranges, a retrospective average dose of non-investigated workers can also be substitute with a constant value as a dose constraint. It can be concluded that all the past measures of regulatory body and attempts of the employers have been effective improving the radiological protection in this practice in Iran. However, establishing a dose constraint seems to be essential to continue and improve this optimization of protection.