Another female worker at nuke plant exposed to radiation above limit

TOKYO, May 1 Kyodo -
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday that a second female radiation worker at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been exposed to radiation exceeding the legal limit, after news of the first was reported Thursday.
The worker has no health problems so far and will be seen by a doctor on Monday, it added.
The woman in her 40s has been exposed to a total of 7.49 millisieverts of radiation, against the legal limit for female workers of 5 millisieverts for a three-month period, when she was working at the six-reactor complex following the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami which hit the plant, the utility operating the plant said.
Under Japanese law, nuclear plant workers cannot be exposed to more than 100 millisieverts over five years and more than 50 millisieverts in one year. However, the limit for female workers is set at 5 millisieverts for a three-month period, taking the chance of pregnancy into consideration.
The woman concerned was found to have suffered more internal than external radiation exposure, with the internal exposure reaching 6.71 millisieverts, while she was providing care to workers who had become sick, at a building on-site used as an operation center to deal with the crisis, the utility known as TEPCO said.
TEPCO said that the woman may have inhaled radioactive substances which had been attached to the clothing of other workers in the early days of the crisis because, for some time after the accident, workers were not wearing masks inside the building. The woman worked at the Fukushima plant until March 15, it added.
The latest revelation comes after the utility's announcement on Wednesday of the first female radiation worker to be exposed to doses far above the limit for female workers. She was exposed to 17.55 millisieverts of radiation by March 23, when all the female employees left the plant.
TEPCO also said Sunday that it has found out that two of its four female employees who are not radiation workers were exposed to 2.59 and 2.81 millisieverts of internal radiation, respectively, against the legal limit of 1 millisievert per year for the general public, excluding exposure from medical procedures.
The total amount of radiation doses of the two, who were also working at the on-site building after the incident through March 23, came to 3.37 and 3.42 millisieverts.
A TEPCO official said, ''We must reflect on the situation where we let non-radiation workers take part in such emergency operations.''
TEPCO has been criticized for its lax radiation management as it only started checking the exposure of its female workers on March 22, 10 days after the plant apparently spewed massive amounts of radioactive materials in a hydrogen explosion.
On Saturday, two workers at the plant, who were previously hospitalized for possible radiation burns, were revealed to have been exposed to radiation levels close to the limit of 250 millisieverts.
Under Japanese law, radiation exposure of each nuclear plant worker is limited at 100 millisieverts a year in an emergency situation, but the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare set up an exceptional limit of 250 millisieverts to cope with the Fukushima crisis on March 15.