Template:Radiation terms

From Embryology
Radiation Terms (expand to view) 
(based on Australian Standard - NOHSC:3022)
  • Absorbed dose - the energy absorbed per unit mass by matter from ionizing radiation which impinges upon it.
  • Accident - an unintended event which causes, or has the potential to cause, employees or members of the public to be exposed to radiation from which the individual doses or collective doses received do not lie within the range of variation which is acceptable for normal operation. An accident may result from human error, equipment failure or other mishap; it may require emergency action to save life or to safeguard health, property or the environment; it requires investigation of its causes and consequences and, possibly, corrective action within the program for control of radiation; and it may require remedial action to mitigate its consequences.
  • Action level - an intervention level applied to exposure to radiation; when a public exposure action level is consistently exceeded, remedial action to reduce exposure should be considered; when an occupational exposure action level is consistently exceeded within a practice, a program of radiation protection should apply to that practice.
  • Activity - the measure of quantity of radioactive materials (see Annex B), except when used in the term ‘human activity’.
  • ALARA - an acronym for ‘as low as reasonably achievable’, used in the context of optimization.
  • Alpha particle - a charged particle, consisting of two protons and two neutrons, emitted by the nucleus of a radionuclide during radioactive decay (α-decay).
  • Annual Limit on Intake - (ALI) that quantity of a radionuclide which, taken into the body during one year, would lead to a committed effective dose equal to the occupational annual limit on effective dose.
  • Approval - a written agreement by the appropriate authority that a plan or proposal meets the radiation protection requirements of the Recommendations.
  • Beta particle - an electron or positron emitted by the nucleus of a radionuclide during radioactive decay (β-decay).
  • Code of practice for radiation protection - a document prescribing specific requirements for radiation protection in a particular application.
  • Collective effective dose - a measure of the total radiation exposure of a group of people which is obtained by summing their individual effective doses.
  • Collective equivalent dose - a measure of the total radiation exposure of a specific organ type or tissue type in a group of people which is obtained by summing the equivalent doses received by those individual organs or tissues of the people exposed.
  • Committed effective dose - the effective dose which a person is committed to receive from an intake of radioactive material.
  • Committed equivalent dose - the equivalent dose which an organ or tissue is committed to receive from an intake of radioactive material.
  • Controlled area - an area to which access is subject to control and in which employees are required to follow specific procedures aimed at controlling exposure to radiation.
  • Critical group - a group of members of the public comprising individuals who are relatively homogeneous with regard to age, diet and those behavioural characteristics that affect the doses received and who receive the highest radiation doses from a particular practice.
  • Deterministic effect - an effect, such as partial loss of function of an organ or tissue, caused by radiation and manifest only above some threshold of dose, the severity of the effect depending upon the dose received.
  • Detriment - a measure, or measures, of harm caused by exposure to radiation and usually taken to mean health detriment; it has no single definition, but can be taken to be an attribute or a collection of attributes which measure harm, such as attributable probability of death and reduction of life expectancy.
  • Dose - a generic term which may mean absorbed dose, equivalent dose or effective dose depending on context.
  • Effective dose - a measure of dose which takes into account both the type of radiation involved and the radiological sensitivities of the organs and tissues irradiated (see Annex B).
  • Electron - an elementary particle of mass 9.11 x 10-31 kg having a single negative charge.
  • Equivalent dose - a measure of dose in organs and tissues which takes into account the type of radiation involved.
  • Excluded exposure - in the context of occupational exposure, the component of exposure which arises from natural background radiation, provided that any relevant action level, or levels, for the workplace are not exceeded and that the appropriate authority does not prohibit its exclusion.
  • Exposure - either the circumstance of being exposed to radiation, or a defined dosimetric quantity now no longer used for radiation protection purposes.
(The context in which the word is used should avoid ambiguity.)
  • Gamma ray - ionizing electromagnetic radiation emitted by a radionuclide during radioactive decay or during a nuclear (isomeric) transition.
  • Guidance level for medical exposure - a reference level of dose or of administered activity likely to be appropriate for average-sized patients undergoing medical diagnosis or treatment.
  • Half life - in relation to radioactive decay, the time required for the quantity of a radionuclide to decrease to one half of its initial value.
  • Incident - an event which causes, or has the potential to cause, abnormal exposure of employees or of members of the public and which requires investigation of its causes and consequences and may require corrective action within the program for control of radiation, but which is not of such scale as to be classified as an accident.
  • Intervention - action taken to decrease exposures to radiation which arise from existing situations.
  • Ion - an atom in a charged state following ionization.
  • Ionization - the process by which one or more electrons are removed from, or sometimes added to, an atom leaving the atom in a charged state.
  • Ionizing radiation - radiation which is capable of causing ionization, either directly (for example: for radiation in the form of gamma rays and charged particles) or, indirectly (for example: for radiation in the form of neutrons).
  • Justification - the notion that human activities which lead to exposure to radiation should be justified, before they are permitted to take place, by showing that they are likely to do more good than harm.
  • Licence - a written authorization issued to an operator which allows the operator to carry out an operation legally.
  • Limitation - the requirement that radiation doses and risks should not exceed a value regarded as unacceptable.
  • Medical exposure - exposure of a person to radiation received as a patient undergoing medical diagnosis or therapy, or as a volunteer in medical research, or non-occupational exposure received as a consequence of assisting an exposed patient.
  • Muon - an elementary particle of mass 1.88 x 10-28 kg having some properties similar to the electron; muons form a major component of cosmic radiation.
  • Neutron - an elementary particle of mass 1.675 x 10-27 kg having some properties similar to the proton but carrying no charge; neutrons are constituents of all nuclei except for the stable isotope of hydrogen.
  • Occupational exposure - exposure of a person to radiation which occurs in the course of that person’s work and which is not excluded exposure.
  • Positron - an elementary particle of mass 9.11 x 10-31 kg having a single positive charge; the anti-particle of the electron.
  • Practice - a type of human activity; in a radiological context, a human activity which may result in exposure to ionizing radiation and to which a system of radiation protection applies.
  • Program of radiation protection - an instance of a system of radiation protection, designed for a particular operation.
  • Proton - an elementary particle of mass 1.673 x 10-27 kg having a single positive charge; protons are constituents of all nuclei.
  • Public exposure - exposure of a person, or persons, to radiation which is neither occupational nor medical exposure.
  • Radiation - electromagnetic waves or quanta, and atomic or sub-atomic particles, propagated through space or through a material medium.
  • Radiation weighting factor - a factor which modifies absorbed dose in an organ or tissue to yield equivalent dose and which is determined by the type and energy of the radiation to which the organ or tissue is exposed.
  • Radioactive decay - the spontaneous transformation of the nucleus of an atom into another state, accompanied by the emission of radiation; for a quantity of such atoms, the expectation value of the number of atoms present decreases exponentially with time.
  • Radioactive material - material which spontaneously emits ionizing radiation as a consequence of radioactive decay.
  • Radionuclide - a species of atomic nucleus which undergoes radioactive decay.
  • Radon - used generically, all isotopes of the element radon, having atomic number 86, but typically used to refer to the radioactive gas radon-222.
  • Radon progeny - the short-lived products of the radioactive decay of radon, namely polonium-218, lead-214, bismuth-214, and polonium-214.
  • Risk constraint - a restriction applied to potential exposure (see dose constraint).
  • Specific activity - the activity of a radionuclide per unit mass of the element, or the activity of a radioactive material per unit mass of that material.
  • Stochastic effect - an effect known to occur sometimes as a consequence of exposure to radiation, but which may or may not be expressed in a particular exposed person, the likelihood of the effect occurring being a function of the dose received.
  • Supervised area - an area in which working conditions are kept under review but in which special procedures to control exposure to radiation are not normally necessary.
  • System of radiation protection - a generic process of radiation risk management designed to limit the health risks arising from exposure to radiation to acceptable levels in a manner which takes economic and social considerations into account.
  • Thoron - the radioactive gas radon-220.
  • Thoron progeny - the short-lived products of the radioactive decay of thoron, namely polonium-216, lead-212, bismuth-212, polonium-212, and thallium-208.
  • Tissue weighting factor - a factor which modifies equivalent dose in an organ or tissue to yield effective dose and which is the partial contribution from the organ or tissue to the total detriment resulting from uniform irradiation of the whole body.
  • X-ray - ionizing electromagnetic radiation emitted during the transition of an atomic electron to a lower energy state or during the rapid deceleration of a charged particle.
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