"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
This book is not a text book, but a very useful and unique reference book entitled Radiological Protection and Safety – A Practitioner’s Guide designed to guide people, who are interested in radiological protection, Health Physicists (HPs), Radiological Safety Officers (RSOs) and Medical Physicists, operators, regulators, or anyone responsible for radiological protection of the workers, the patients, the public and the environment.
Radiation protection is a multi-disciplinary subject. The concepts of radiological protection, radiation protection standards, regulations, types of radiation sources and the applications are continually changing over time. There are newer challenges to practitioners and facility management to ensure radiological protection and safety of the personnel and the environment, during normal operations and in emergency situations. There is a need to update their overall knowledge while developing processes/technologies in public domain on peaceful applications in medicine, research, industry and agriculture.
Optimization of protection is the key to keep the exposures low. Public safety is of prime concern. This reference guide is written by a practitioner who has decades of experience in radiological safety and regulation. The guide is organized in about 300 pages and in 18 chapters, is intended to serve the purpose of finding all radiological safety related topics in one place, including the biological effects of radiation exposure, along with the recent references. It also covers the updated status on issues and topics of concern in natural radiation sources, nuclear fuel cycle operations and in the wide variety of applications of radiation and radioisotopes. Nuclear and Radiological emergency is considered important and is separately covered in the chapter on radiological protection in emergency exposure situations.
Decades of operational radiation protection experience gained is transformed selectively to create knowledge to educate and train all those who are involved in the specialized topic of radiation protection, which is not taught in all colleges. The gap in the knowledge is expected to be filled to a great extent by this this reference book. It is invaluable and for keeps.
Read this book to learn how the radiation hazards control measures like monitoring of the individuals, the workplaces and the environment demonstrate that the occupational exposures are low, and the environmental impact is negligible during normal operations. I dedicate this book to all the stakeholders in ionizing radiation utilization, including the radiation protection community.
PUSHPARAJA
Dr. Pushparaja served Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, in the Health Physics Division / Radiation Safety Systems Division, for over 36 years.
He is a thorough radiation protection professional and worked in various nuclear fuel cycle and isotope production/application facilities and carried out extensive R & D in the radiation protection related areas. He retired as Head, Radiation Hazards Control Section, BARC, Mumbai. He has served in many regulatory committees meant for, design safety review, safety assessment, waste safety, review of safety documents.
He served as the Editor of the quarterly journal: Radiation Protection and Environment (RPE), being published by Indian Association for Radiation Protection (IARP), for 15 years. He is a blogger: http://radsafe.blogspot.com/and http://praja2007.blogspot.com/ to express his opinions on Radiation Protection Issues and Nuclear Issues respectively.
He has wide experience in radiological protection and safety, including operational radiation protection, radiation dosimetry, radiation safety audit, documentation; and regulatory activities such as safety review/assessment, peer review of facilities, preparation and editing of regulatory/safety related documents. He has actively participated in human resource development programs of Department of Atomic Energy, which includes prestigious BARC Training School. Participated in public awareness programmes conducted by NGOs / Associations related with radiation protection and applications.
With active interest in the field, post-retirement, he continued to serve in various Safety review committees of BARC, BARC Safety Council (BSC) and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in various capacities. He has authored over 100 publications.
He served as Consultant/technical editor to IAEA, Vienna. One of the major contributions was review Safety Guide on Occupational Radiation Protection (ORP) in 1999 and again reviewed its revised version, GSG-7, 2018. He reviewed and edited an IAEA Handbook in 2013 and IAEA ORP Conference Proceedings in 2014.
