A PORTABLE SURVEY METER METHOD FOR LOCATING AND QUANTIFYING REMOVABLECONTAMINATION AFTER I-131 THERAPIES

Identifying I-131 surface contamination and decontaminating the remova ble fraction from rooms where patients have received iodine therapies is a common task at many hospitals. The current regulatory preferred m ethod for this task is wipe testing for removable contamination. The p urpose of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of a sensitive sur vey meter for this task. Both methods and their detection systems are evaluated in the laboratory as well as in a clinical environment. The results indicate that the portable survey meter method is better at bo th locating and quantifying removable contamination. An additional ben efit of the survey meter method is the ability to clean rooms promptly for reoccupancy.