The quality of a supplier of a dosimetry service depends on both the characteristics of the approved (type-tested) dosimetry system1) and the training and experience of the staff, together with the calibration procedures and quality assurance programmes.
This document specifies the criteria and the test procedures to be used for the periodic verification of the performance of dosimetry services supplying personal and/or area dosemeters.
An area dosemeter can be a workplace dosemeter or an environmental dosemeter.
The performance evaluation can be carried out as a part of the approval procedure for a dosimetry system or as an independent check to verify that a dosimetry service fulfils specified national or international type test performance requirements under representative exposure conditions that are expected or mimic workplace fields from the radiological activities being monitored.
This document applies to personal and area dosemeters for the assessment of external photon radiation with a (fluence weighted) mean energy between 8 keV and 10 MeV, beta radiation with a (fluence weighted) mean energy between 60 keV and 1,2 MeV, and neutron radiation with a (fluence weighted) mean energy between 25,3 meV (i.e. thermal neutrons with a Maxwellian energy distribution with kT = 25,3 meV) and 200 MeV.
It covers all types of personal and area dosemeters needing laboratory processing (e.g. thermoluminescent, optically stimulated luminescence, radiophotoluminescent, track detectors or photographic-film dosemeters) and involving continuous measurements or measurements repeated regularly at fixed time intervals (e.g. several weeks, one month).
Active dosemeters (for dose measurement) may also be treated according to this document. Then, they should be treated as if they were passive (i.e. the dosimetry service reads their indicated values and reports them to the evaluation organization).