Occupational exposure recorded before and after new radioprotection regulations

Radioprotection regulations contained a lot of rules and rational explanations in order to protect occupational exposed workers, patients undergoing radioactive procedures and the environment, too. Since radiation harmful effect has been discovered and until today, the radioprotection rules were changed and improved. In Romania the new radioprotection legislation began to emerge in 2000 and in 2002 the first new rules of radioprotection were issued. This paper presents the new radioprotection legislation effect on the doses recorded by the occupational exposures from research area. In this way, it was calculated the annual collective effective dose and individual doses over the period 1990–2000 for workers who activated in nuclear research laboratories and then compared with the similar radiological statistical data obtained over the period 2001–2010, the number of workers on dose range over the studied period. The mean number of workers who recorded doses over minimum detection limit was about 404 from 843 total number, during 1990–2000 and about 170 from 430 researchers, over 2001–2010. It was observed that the individual and collective doses achieved by the workers in the period 1990–1999 were higher than those recorded after 2000.