Although a variety of radiation-related education courses are provided in universities, information on faculty and student perceptions of radiation risk is limited. To obtain quantitative data on this issue, we conducted a written questionnaire survey at Nagasaki University on the perceived risks of 13 health hazards, of which six related to radiation exposure. The respondents were asked to estimate the risk of the various items to health on a rating scale of 1 to 5.‘Living near a nuclear plant’ received the highest rating of 4, followed by‘not using solar UV protection in midsummer’.‘X-ray diagnostic tests’were rated at only 2, which was lower than the rating for ‘ air travel’. Among the respondents, undergraduate students showed the highest average risk rating across all items followed by nurses, and staff and graduate students, with doctors and dentists producing the lowest scores. These results suggest that level of specialist knowledge is associated with risk perception, and therefore that radiation education should be carefully planned to improve levels of understanding.

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Under the Law Concerning Prevention from Radiation Hazards due to Radioisotopes etc., the radioactive dry solid waste is composed into drums at an on-site warehouse until collection and disposal at the storage facility of the Japan Radioisotope Association (JRIA). The radioactivity levels of such dry solid waste that have been previously assumed and recorded by the experimental researchers have sometimes been in error. A methodological approach was investigated for re-evaluation of radioactivity in dry solid waste, prior to shipment to the JRIA for future disposal at a landfill site. The radioactivity of ⁵¹Cr-and ¹²⁵ I-contaminated wastes generated from biomedical research was measured. In the ⁵¹ Cr-contaminated wastes, the measured radioactivity always showed higher values, ranging between 1.4 to 9.9 times that of the recorded radioactivity.In the ¹²⁵I-contaminated wastes, 4 of 5 combustible type 2 samples showed 4.1 to 28.6 times higher measured radioactivities than those initially recorded. The ratio of measured versus used radioactivity was also evaluated. This study may contribute a fair assessment of the radioactivity levels in biomedical waste prior to shipment to the disposal sites, and thus afford protection of human health and the environment.

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