Hello,

Just wanted to gauge opinion on the validity of some improvement notices issued recently on company X in relation to IRR17.

Company X has a site where it has an X-ray scanner for scanning items of air freight.  10 items per day, taking around 20 minutes of the operators working day scanning.

Company X received three improvement notices, one for failing to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, one for failing to appoint a Radiation Protection Supervisor, and the other for failing to implement Local Rules in relation to the use of the X-Ray scanner.

Now it appears that the heads of HSEQ in company X either cannot interpret legislation, or I am way off the mark.

This is where the HSE have stated that company X have breached legislation:

Regulation18 (1) states that:

For the purpose of enabling work with ionising radiation to be carried on in accordance with the requirements of these Regulations, every employer engaged in work with ionising radiation must, in respect of any controlled area or, where appropriate having regard to the nature of the work carried out there, any supervised area, make and set down in writing such local rules as are appropriate to the radiation risk and the nature of the operations undertaken in that area.

Regulation 18 (5) states that:

An employer must-

1. Appoint one or more suitable radiation protection supervisors for the purpose of securing compliance with these Regulations in respect of work carried out in any area made subject to local rules

Now in accordance with IRR regulation 17, the setting out of local rules and radiation protection supervisors is only required if the company has designated the work area as a controlled or supervised area.  As per here:

Designation of controlled or supervised areas

17.—(1) Every employer must designate as a controlled area any area under its control which has been identified by an assessment made by that employer (whether pursuant to regulation 8 or otherwise) as an area in which—

(a)it is necessary for any person who enters or works in the area to follow special procedures designed to restrict significant exposure to ionising radiation in that area or prevent or limit the probability and magnitude of radiation accidents or their effects; or

(b)any person working in the area is likely to receive an effective dose greater than 6 mSv a year or an equivalent dose greater than 15 mSv a year for the lens of the eye or greater than 150 mSv a year for the skin or the extremities.

(2) An employer must not intentionally create in any area conditions which would require that area to be designated as a controlled area unless that area is for the time being under the control of that employer.

(3) An employer must designate as a supervised area any area under its control, not being an area designated as a controlled area—

(a)where it is necessary to keep the conditions of the area under review to determine whether the area should be designated as a controlled area; or

(b)in which any person is likely to receive an effective dose greater than 1 mSv a year or an equivalent dose greater than 5 mSv a year for the lens of the eye or greater than 50 mSv a year for the skin or the extremities.

There are no special procedures required to prevent anyone receiving a significant dose.  Based on the frequent servicing and maintenance which is carried out, the operator will not be exposed to anything greater than 5 microsieverts in one year.  The exposure is 0.05 usv/h.  It has been established that even if an operator scanned themselves, they still would not receive a significant dose.  For a supervised area to exist, exposure needs to be an effective dose of 1mSv per year, and for a controlled area, even higher at 6mSv.  The exposure from operating the scanner is barely a fraction of this.

Therefore, local rules and RPS appointment do not apply, as company X has a non-designated area in accordance with Reg 17. 

However, company X have not appealed the notices from the HSE, and instead have set out local rules and are paying to train RPS's.  Personally I cannot comprehend why company X would not be appealing these notices, from a reputational point of view. 

Before you are able to establish if you require a controlled or supervised area, you need to conduct a suitable and sufficient risk assessment.  For me, this should have been the only notice raised from the visit.  It appears the HSE inspector has assumed that local rules and RPS requirement applies, where as far as I can see, they absolutely do not.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Edited by user 13 November 2018 12:00:27(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Without suitable & sufficient Risk Assessment the company has failed to identify the necessary controls AND critically by operating without the RA have failed to specify if an RPS is required and failed to identify if a controlled area should be in operation. This is where I see the inspector is picking up all three points - if there were an RA he would then have been able to consider its content regarding the other two points.

Even in a relativley low risk application (portable beta gauges for moisture determination) we had an RPS, a lockable storage room and a set of procedures relating to the maintenance and calibration of the equipment. When we decided to eliminate the risk it was an eye-opener to see that the "safe disposal" of the source (which was not an insignificant cost) was to puncture the foil cover and allow the gas to dissipate to atmosphere.

This is not an area I am familiar with, but my take on it is........

If you comply with IN (improvement notice) no.1, based on the details you have given, you will probably negate IN no.2 and No.3. BUT the HSE can't take a chance on this until you have done the assessment based on IN no.1 - supply the data.

So for example if the same person works 24hrs a day for 365 days, and every 10 minutes walks through the detector themselves - then there may be a possibility of exceeding the level - which is why they are still asking for an assessment, RPS, and local rules - the latter two being in place to ensure that you remain outside of the criterea by managing the risk.

Hope this makes sense.

Regards

James

I agree with Roundtuit and James Robinson. You'd need to do a RA to determine the other points, and for that, you would need some expert guidance. As a previous user of X-ray machines for various tasks (metal thickness measurement, determining cracks in ceramic components etc), I became an RPS because the company I worked for had nothing in place and a read of the regs pointed me in that direction.