Hand equivalent doses of nuclear medicine staff in Jordan: Preliminary experimental studies

The aim of this study is the investigation of the extremity exposure of nuclear medicine staff using radionuclides 131I or 99mTc or 18F-FDG. The doses were measured using TL dosimeters, TLD-700H (7LiF:Mg,Cu,P) chips. It is found that the most exposed to radiation in nuclear medicine field are the technicians then the physicists. Also, it is found that there is no relation between the magnitude of hand dose and both skin and whole-body doses. By applying the result of recent studies (Martin and Whitby, 2003 and Vanhavere et al., 2006), nuclear medicine staff will easily exceed the yearly dose limit. A proposed method for calculating the effective doses for nuclear medicine staff is also suggested.