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Fukushima care worker exposed to internal radiation emitter

the worker in question, who is in her 40s, was found to have suffered more internal than external radiation exposure, with the internal exposure reaching 6.71 millisieverts.

She was providing care to workers who had become sick at a building on site that was being used as the operation center for the crisis, the utility known as Tepco said.

Second woman over legally set limit, Worker found overexposed to radiation, Japan Times, 2 May 11,  Kyodo, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday that a woman at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been overexposed to radiation, making her the second at the plant to be subjected to more than the legal limit.

…. The worker in question, who is in her 40s, was found to have suffered more internal than external radiation exposure, with the internal exposure reaching 6.71 millisieverts.

She was providing care to workers who had become sick at a building on site that was being used as the operation center for the crisis, the utility known as Tepco said.

Tepco said the woman may have inhaled particles of radioactive substances that got on the clothing of the other workers in the early stages of the crisis because most of the staff in the building at the time weren’t wearing masks. The woman left the plant on March 15, it added.

The announcement followed a similar one made by the utility on Wednesday in which it said a female radiation worker had been exposed to doses far above the limit for women.

That woman had absorbed 17.55 millisieverts of radiation by March 23, the day when all female employees were evacuated from the plant.

Tepco also mentioned Sunday that it has found that two of its four female employees who are not radiation workers have been exposed to 2.59 and 2.81 millisieverts of internal radiation, respectively.

….. Tepco is coming under fire from the government and the public for its lax radiation checks. The maligned utility started checking exposure levels for female workers on March 22 — 10 days after the plant ejected massive amounts of radioactive material into the sky when a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof of one reactor.

Meanwhile, two workers who were laying cable at the plant who were briefly hospitalized for alpha ray burns after stepping into puddles of highly radioactive water that no one warned them about, were revealed Saturday to have absorbed nearly 250 millisieverts of radiation.……. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110502a1.html

May 2, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011, Japan, safety