PREVENTION AND PROTECTION

The current Italian legislation on radiological protection does not give any specific prevention and protection guideline. However, general criteria might be adopted:

• Selecting raw materials with a low content of natural radioactivity: sometimes, minerals imported from different countries might have significantly different radiological characteristics.
• Analyze and, where needed, modify the industrial process of interest in order to ensure workers are subject to the lowest achievable exposure to ionizing radiation.
• Where the production process is not modifiable, all available devices and/or procedures shall be adopted to protect workers’ health.

In this context, the adoption of the proposed methodology or specific operational protocols (link) can help to identify the most critical exposure situations and the sources providing the greatest contribution to doses received by both workers and members of the public. The above-mentioned methodology allows the undertaking to identify all criticalities in the production process and correct them. The current legislation (D.lgs 101/20) explicitly requires that corrective measures are applied, where feasible, as preventive and protective tools.