The Connexion between Roentgen Ray Risks for Workers and Changes in their Blood Pictures

Introd ixct ionA great number of authors point out that in radiological work severe injuries to the blood often do not appear until a very long time, after 15-20 years or more, and then often very rapidly change for the worse.Long before that, however, premonitory changes in the blood picture should be observable.So far, the attempts made to ascertain what these premonitory changes are, are as a rule founded either on experience from patients undergoing roentgen treatment or on a comparatively small material.To be on the safe side we might say that rather little is known of the influence of very small doses or intensities on the normal blood picture.This has also been pointed out by various authors.The Swedish Roentgen Ray Protection Law of 1941 aims a t preventing injuries t o patients, to roentgen personnel and other persons living in the risk zone of the roentgen establishment, e.g.people in the neighbourhood.One link in the supervisional work provided for in the law is repeated inspections of the establishment, equipment and conditions of work, coupled with annual investigations of the blood pictures of the staff, partly in order to avoid physically determinable obviously bad conditions, which with some reason may be called obnoxious, and partly in order t o check the efficacy of these inspections and investigations by the determination of any subsequent changes in the blood picture and so ward off in time any incipient dangers.Some of the factors taken into consideration in surveying an establishment are: the competence of the leader of the radiological work, the technical standard of the equipment in use (roentgen ray set with the requisite auxiliary apparatus), its aptness for the