Researcher is Concerned With Nuclear Effect

              2-A Sun., Nov. 30,1975 THE SHREVEPORT TIMES
(Times Photo bv Bob Reeder)
Dr. Henry W. Julius
Researcher Is
Concerned With
Nuclear Effect
By Elaine King
Of The Times Staff
Dr. Henry W. Julius of The
. Netherlands is concerned
about the effects of radiation
on humans, an interest he
shares with Dr. George R.
Meneely of Shreveport, with
whom he is visiting through
Tuesday.
Dr. Julius will visit
Louisiana State University
School of Medicine in
Shreveport, where Dr.
Meneely is professor of
physiology and biophysics
and medicine, and head of
t h e d e p a r t m e n t of
physiology and biophysics.
While in the United States,
Dr. Julius is visiting several
sites where work with
radioactive materials is
underway.
In The Netherlands, Dr.
Juilius is associated with the
World Organization for
Applied Scientific Research,
a special organization
involved in any field
involving society from "fire
prevention to cancer resear-ch
and many things in bet-ween,"
he explained.
His work is with the
Radiologic Surface Unit
TNO. The TNO is important,
he said, because it is the
abbreviation for the
organization in Dutch.
His native land is really
the only country with an
organization such as TNO,
he said, although Brazil is
interested in forming an
organization. His father was
director of TNO and visited
Brazil to discuss problems
involved with building such
an organization with
Brazilian officials, he noted.
The physicist works with
whole-body counting, which
determines the radioactivity
level in the human body.
"If you want to measure
radiation at a very low level,
you can only do so behind a
shield," Dr. Meneely
explained.
In whole-body counting, a
shield filters out extraneous
sources of radiation in the
environment to permit the
amount of radiation in the
body to be accurately
measured.
"Perhaps the main
activity of his unit, Dr.
Julius said, "is in the field of
personal monitoring."
Dr. Julius has been
involved in developing a
detector to serve as a per-sonal
dose meter.
In simple terms, the detec-tor
stores radiation and
when warmed it emits
sparkles of light. The
amount of light emitted is
proportional to the amount
of radiation that struck the
detector, Dr. Meneely said.
"We are doing all this for
the protection of personnel,"
Dr. Julius said. A secondary
benefit will be the statistical
information gathered from
the findings that will enable
the scientists "to get a firm
impression of what's going
on in nuclear power plants"
in regard to radiation
exposure.
The country has two
nuclear power plants and the
workers at one will begin
wearing the detectors by
January or February.
"Up to now we are still
using film badges in
Holland" to detect exposure
of workers to radiation. Dr.
Julius said. But it won't be
much more than a year
before the switch to the more
sophisticated cietector is
made, he predicted.
The detector "could be one
of the most sophisticated
available," Dr. Julius said.
In The Netherlands, the
law requires a check of the
detectors every two weeks to
determine exposure to
radiation. In most countries
the average time between
checks is a month, he said.
Although workers at a
nuclear reactor plant will
begin wearing the detectors,
the number of persons
working with radioactive
materials in nuclear reac-tors
is less than in other
areas such as medical fields.
Developing the detector is
a "rather high priority," in
his country the scientist
said.
And it represents a rather
advanced detection method
compared to the one he used
in 1937 when the custom was
to attach a piece of dental
x-ray film with a paper clip
to the clothing and if the
paper clip was visible on the
film it meant too much
exposure to radiation, Dr.
Meneely recalled.