By Maegan Murray, ���سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – Past and ongoing efforts to address radium contaminated sites in Pennsylvania, which influenced future protocols and uses for radium around the world, will be discussed as part of a Herbert M. Parker lecture that will take place at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21, via YouTube.

The lecture will be presented live on the Washington State University Tri-Cities YouTube channel at . It is free and open to the public.

David J. Allard, director of the Pennsylvania State Bureau of Radiation Protection, will address the historical benefits of radium, as well as its health effects on workers and members of the public. The presentation will also illustrate how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has led in radium-related research and controls, including the ongoing efforts to monitor and mitigate radon in buildings from natural-occurring radium in soil, as well as a recent extensive evaluation of radium that returns with oil and gas production.

“David will address the question of whether radium has been a miracle or a menace,” said Wayne Glines, president of the board of trustees for the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. “Radium has had many benefits in treating cancer and other areas, but it has also served as a detriment in others. This presentation will provide a great look into the origins of the use of radium and its impact on our world.”

As the Pennsylvania state director for the Bureau of Radiation Protection, Allard is responsible for accelerator, X-ray, environmental surveillance, nuclear safety, radiological emergency response, radioactive materials, decommissioning and site clean-up, low-level radioactive waste and radon programs. He is the governor’s official liaison to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and technical lead on oil and gas radium, as well as industry-generated naturally and technologically-enhanced radioactive material issues.

To learn more about the Parker Foundation and the lectures, visit

 

Media contacts:

Wayne Glines, president of the board of trustees for the Herbert M. Parker Foundation, 509-366-8382 (cell), wglines34@charter.net

Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� director of marketing and communication, 619-403-3617 (cell), maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Maegan Murray, ���سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – Luiz Bertelli, internal dosimetrist with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, will speak on a radiological incident that occurred in Goiânia, Brazil, that led to four deaths and how officials dealt with the incident, as part of a Herbert M. Parker Lecture Series on Oct. 21.

The presentation will take place from 5 p.m. – 6 p.m. via the Washington State University Tri-Cities YouTube channel at . During the event, attendees will be welcome to ask questions via the chat function as part of the YouTube stream.

The free public presentations are offered by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation in partnership with ���سԹ�.

What happened in Goiânia?

In late 1985, a private radiotherapy institute located in Goiânia moved to a new facility, taking their cobalt-60 teletherapy unit, but leaving in place a cesium-137 unit, without notifying the Brazilian licensing authority as required by law. The old building was then partly demolished, but left the cesium- 137 source unsecured.

On Sept. 13, 1987, two people entered, found some scrap metal value, removed the source assembly from the radiation head, took it home and tried to dismantle it. As a result, the source was ruptured, causing environmental contamination and external and internal exposure of several persons. Four people died due to very high radiation doses.

This lecture will describe how the accident was discovered, how it has evolved, and how it was controlled, according to official sources in the literature. It will also include personal experiences by Bertelli, who participated as a lead member of the radiation dose assessments team, as well as aspects of individual monitoring and medical care to the victims.

���سԹ� the speaker

Bertelli has worked in internal dosimetry modeling and interpretation of monitoring of radiation workers for over 40 years, including 18 years in Brazil. He has worked as an internal dosimetrist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2013 and previously worked at Argonne National Laboratory. Bertelli has been a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) since 2019, and served on NCRP’s Program Area Committee 6 on Radiation Measurements and Dosimetry since 2013.

Bertelli previously served as a member of Committee 2 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection from 2013 to 2017, and has been a member of the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registry’s Scientific Advisory Committee since 2018.

To learn more about the Parker Foundation and the lectures, visit .

 

Media contacts:

Wayne Glines, president of the Herbert M. Parker Foundation, 509-366-8382 (cell), wglines34@charter.net

Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� assistant director of marketing and communication, 619-403-3617 (cell), maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Elinor Lake, intern, ���سԹ� communications

RICHLAND, Wash. – Former professor and long-time ���سԹ� donor Ronald Kathren and his wife Susan have donated a huge collection of radiological books to ���سԹ�.

The 3,400-item collection of books, valued at more than $250,000, details subjects from radiation biophysics, to toxicological profiles for ionizing radiation, to how radioactivity impacts health.

Ronald Kathren said he wanted to donate the collection to ���سԹ� because it would serve as a research resource to students, faculty and professionals in radiological, engineering and other related industries. It also serves as a useful historical collection, he said.

Kathren taught radiological and environmental sciences at ���سԹ� and served as the director of the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registries at WSU. He currently serves on the Herbert M. Parker Foundation board, a partner of WSU, which is committed to educating the public on radiological sciences. The Parker Foundation also hosts two lectures a year to provide renowned professionals of the radiological sciences an educational platform.

The collection is incredibly valuable to ���سԹ� as a resource, as the university has many research and professional ties to the Hanford Site, in the radiological cleanup effort of the site and generally in the study of how radiation impacts health and other areas, said Karly Bailey, development coordinator for the WSU Foundation.

“The collection contains unique materials relating to studies of radiological effects, including works by such scientific luminaries as Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, as well as the library of the radium dial painter studies,” he said. “As such it will be of value to students and researchers in medicine, physics, environmental sciences and especially the Hanford History Project. Looking down the road, I see many scholarly publications that would benefit from it.”

Kathren is a graduate of UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh, is board certified in both health physics and environmental engineering and is a past president of the Health Physics Society and the American Academy of Health Physics.

 

Contact:

Steve Bisch, ���سԹ� library circulation supervisor, 509-372-7313, sbisch@wsu.edu