Students and faculty are required by New York State Department of Radiation Protection to wear "dosimeters" which are radiation monitors.

Their job, as is sounds, is to monitor radiation we are exposed to both in lab and out at clinical. We are also required to have dose limits, an alert system and procedure for students who reach a certain exposure rate. This is extremely important for pregnant works and students as radiation can negative effects on a fetus, especially in the first trimester when pregnancy can be unknown for sometime. These individuals get separate "fetal badges" with specific dose limits for duration of pregnancy. 

Currently students pay money into an account and department orders badges which takes about a week or two to arrive. They are good for 4 months, after which badges are collected and sent back to the company to have readings processed. Once the badges are read, we get a dose report per student which all takes about 3 weeks or more. We get new badges from the company in the meantime to re-distribute to students and faculty. The process continues every 4 months.

When a student loses a badge, a replacement must be sent overnight which is high cost and prevents the student from attending lab or clinical without it. When a student or faculty member become pregnant we need to order a fetal badge which can take about 2 weeks for the department to receive and is an additional cost to the pregnant student. Yearly dosimeters cost about $1,300. 

New technology exists which alleviates a lot of the problems associated with this process such as; frequent payment to the bursars office (including summers when students are not on campus), badges being turned in late, time to receive new badges, time to receive a fetal badge, time it takes for a report to generate and to then notice a reading is at exposure limit and so forth. 

With new technology the department can order badges once which last 5 years (roughly) and are read right here on campus. They work off battery and Bluetooth to send dose report signals to a reader that would be installed right on the wall in the lab. The reader has yearly fee of $80 and the only cost associated with the reusable badge is when the battery dies and is about $25 to replace. The system also comes with computer software and alert system for real time monitoring and alerting when a dose limit has been reached. It would send a message directly to the Radiation Safety Officer (chair) and the student notifying both a dose limit has been reached. One can imagine how important that is for the pregnant worker or student. 

Of course there is the issue of cost- the fee is about $5,200 which the department only has about $1200 in our badge fund at any given time. Although the cost is a lot up front, in the long run it saves money and has numerous benefits.