IAEA Publications
One way of managing exposures of the various groups is to control when patients are released from hospital. While they are in hospital, it is relatively easy to control exposure. Once they have returned to their family in the community, they must be advised on how to restrict the exposure of those people that they will come into contact with. Until recently, the International
Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) did not provide specific advice in this area, and relied on the application of dose limits and constraints. However, regulators in some countries took a prescriptive approach, often using estimates of retained activity as a release criterion. These only loosely relate to dose limits. This publication attempts to bring newly available advice from the ICRP to bear on providing a more consistent approach in this area.