Speaker
Description
Lead has always been used at CERN for various reasons, mainly for shielding in experimental areas and laboratories, and highly misused in workshops (e. g. used as counterweight). An existing safety guideline concerning lead was already present at CERN, but it was poorly distributed to the users, that were not fully aware of the risks they were exposing themselves to. With an increased awareness of the dangers related to lead, it became clear that an action was necessary to better frame a safe usage of this material.
This talk presents the lead safety campaign carried on in the CERN Experimental Physics (EP) Department.
A detailed procedure (based on the existing guideline) for a safe handle, transport, storage and painting of lead has been written and circulated around the users of the department. After that, a survey has been done in experimental areas and workshops to understand exactly where and in which quantity lead was used/stored; the non-used lead has been radiologically checked and, depending on its state, properly stored or sent as chemical waste.
In the workshops, a sampling campaign has been done to evaluate the lead contamination level (based on the existing guideline) and it is now in progress a cleaning campaign, where necessary. The same procedure will be applied also for the laboratories; for the presence of radiologically contaminated dust, it is more difficult to implement this process in experimental areas.
At the same time, different meetings have been organized with the main stakeholders involved to increase the awareness on this topic.
In the future, a CERN wide common strategy about lead should be implemented and it is now under discussion with the other departments and units.
