Journal of Health and Safety at Work

Introduction: Possible contamination in nuclear medicine centers, in addition to health problems, affect the tests and much effort and cost is required for decontamination. Given the effects of ionizing radiation on human health, rules and regulations have been enacted to avoid contamination, that in working with radioactive materials should be followed to minimize them.

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Material and Method: After mapping of nuclear medicine centers in the province, areas that should be studied for measuring the amount of radioactive contamination were determined. The site selection for the tests were based on the area in which the possibility of further contamination were existance. After measuring the background count rate the radioactive contamination in studied areas were performed using Wipe Test.

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Result: The mean level of background contamination in centers 1, 2 and 3 were 1.75±0.150 μCi, 4.43±0.615 μCi and 2.47±0.055 μCi, respectively. In center 1, only region of Hood pollution was much higher than the permissible limit. In center 2, radioactive contamination of the waiting room, patient rooms, warehouse radiotracer, control room, hood, desk and floor center was exceeded. Also, in center 3, contamination of the doorway, hallway patients, control room, hood, desk, sink, cabinets, room and floor imaging injection (control), respectively, were higher than the permissible limits.

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Conclusion: In centers 1 and 2, most of the radioactive contamination occurred under the hood due to labeling of radiopharmaceuticals activity. Also, in center 3, the highest contamination rate belonged to patients’ corridor that could be due to frequent the area. According to this subject, necessary measures in this regard should be considered by the department responsible for health physics.