Posted By Rich T
He have an employee who is wishing to return to work with a low-level radioactive implant to treat a medical condition. His specialist is advising no contact with pregnant women, children, travelling on public transport or sleeping with (etc.) their partner (etc.)

He will be working in a general office environment (staffed mainly by women) with the usual problems of not knowing who actually is - may be, or may not know they are pregnant. There is also the prospect of his fellow workers taking the view of not wanting to work with him, and the prospect of latent claims at some point in the future, for a wide variety of illnesses alleged to stem from their "exposure" to radiation.

Now it would be easy to take a "knee jerk" reaction to this and temporarily suspend said worker until the radiation effects diminish (20 days or so). But has anyone any experience of either risk assessing or developing a SSOW for this situation?

Or would you just suspend him?

Long-shot, I know, but an interesting conundrum for a Tuesday afternoon and just bit out of the ordinary.

Posted By Rich T
I'm led to believe it's fairly routine, although my thoughts were initially the same. Doing a web-search on "Radioactive seed implants (brachytherapy)" gives more details.

I'm just trying to reconcile the "avoid extended contact with people" and letting them into a working environment. With today's compensation culture, you can see what might happen with some of our more "imaginative" employees...

However - would it be "conkers bonkers" just just suspend him over - what is in all probability - a very small risk?

As a side issue, I'm also wondering if the IRR regs would apply, with regard to our other employees, if we allowed him into work????

Posted By GLOW-WORM
Hi Rich T

I may be able to help if you have some more details on the treatment that your employee has received. Please e-mail me direct.

Thanks