Roger D. Caldwell Archives  

fancy horizontal bar
  • Roger Dale Caldwell, Ph.D., was a pioneering health physicist who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in the Health and Safety Group at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania, during the 1960s and into the 1970s. Roger struggled with the challenges of protecting workers from intakes of uranium and plutonium and measuring how well protection had succeeded using bioassay, air samples, and workplace indicators. He showed that traditional indicators were not adequate, and developed new means to monitor workers that were adequate.
  • He received the Health Physics Society's Elda E. Anderson Award in 1973. Dade W. Moeller's Citation for Roger Dale Caldwell appeared in Health Physics 25(3): 216-218, and it contains biographical detail about Roger.
  • Roger Caldwell left NUMEC in the early 1970s and joined the faculty of the Department of Radiation Health at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Some of the papers linked below were salvaged from the trash at Pitt in the early 1990s when the department began relocating off-campus. Others listed can be found in publications. The unpublished papers are reproduced here out of respect for the legacy of this forward-thinking individual. Most of the papers below were contributed by Thomas E. Potter, who co-authored several of them. Tom has several fond memories of working with Roger.
  • Roger Caldwell died in 1974 at the age of 39.
  • Please contact the webmaster if you have any other Roger Caldwell papers to contribute to this archive.
  • Caldwell RD and RF Crosby. 1967. Environmental Monitoring Near a Multi-Stack Uranium Plant. Unknown - date is estimated based on complete 1966 wind rose, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania. A variety of innovative approaches to air monitoring around a uranium nuclear fuel fabrication facility. The stack height for stacks with caps is very low. Atmospheric dispersion models were tried without a lot of success. Fallout collection trays and sticky paper on telephone poles can be useful for finding unintended releases, but do not correlate well with air samples.
  • Caldwell RD, TE Potter, and E Schnell. Bioassay Correlation with Breathing Zone Sampling. UCRL-18140. 1967. Berkeley, California, U.C. Berkeley. Proceedings of the 13th AEC Bioassay and Analytical Chemistry Conference at U.C. Berkeley. This is Caldwell, Potter, and Schnell's groundbreaking examination of the correlation of bioassay with air sampling. Roger Caldwell introduces the "Pig Pen Effect" wherein a worker creates the aerosol, so that breathing zone air sampling becomes critically important and general area air samples are shown to be not representative.
  • Brodsky A, J Schubert, SS Yaniv, K Lamson, N Wald, R Wechsler, L Gumerman, and R Caldwell. Deposition and Retention of 192Ir in the Lung After an Inhalation Accident. Abstract. Health Physics 13[6], 938. 1967.
  • Potter TE, D Sgarlata, R Atkins, RD Caldwell, H Glauberman, and E Katine. 1968. A Technique for the Disposal of Highly Contaminated Glove Boxes. Presented at Health Physics Society 13th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, June 16-20, 1968, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania. The NUMEC plutonium-238 facility contained 6 glove-boxes that had high levels of alpha contamination. Decontamination was deemed impractical, so they were to be disposed of. These glove boxes were decommissioned by filling them with fire-retardant polyurethane foam, and putting each in a steel drainage culvert. The void space in the culvert was then filled with foam. They were shipped on 3 flat-bed trailer trucks to Nuclear Fuel Service, West Valley, New York with an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) escort. The trip was safely accomplished in 7 hours on snowy and icy roads.
  • Caldwell RD, T Potter, and E Schnell. 1969. Radiological Emergency Experience in an Industrial Plutonium Plant. Date estimated from latest reference. Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania. NUMEC had four serious incidents at its plutonium plant near Leechburg, Pennsylvania. These were 1) a dry box explosion on January 17, 1966 involving alpha contamination (239Pu and 241Am);2) a peroxide glove box explosion on November 30, 1966 involving 239Pu and 241Am; 3) an 192Ir hot cell release on January 13, 1967; and 4) a hand amputation in a plutonium glove box on December 14, 1967 (the paper describes decontamination so a surgeon could re-attach the hand; alas, it has been reported later that the reattachment surgery was not a success). Lessons learned are detailed in the paper.
  • Caldwell RD and TE Potter. 1968. The Solubility of Inhaled Particles. Presented at the 14th AEC Bioassay and Analytical Chemistry Conference, Oct. 7-8, 1968, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania.
  • Caldwell RD, RF Crosby, and MP Lockard. 1968. Radioactivity in Coal Mine Drainage. Presented at the 1968 Midyear Topical Symposium of the Health Physics Society, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Pennsylvania. Extensive environmental sampling (the authors describe canoe trips to collect the samples) shows that alpha radioactivity in the Kiskiminetas River near Apollo, Vandergrift, and Leechburg, Pennsylvania derives primarily from coal mine drainage that contains uranium leeched from the overburden of the coal seams. The technique of comparing samples upstream and downstream of coal mines is very cogent. The casual tone of this work makes it particularly delightful reading.
  • Caldwell RD. 1972. "Evaluation of Radiation Exposure." in Health Physics Operational Monitoring, Vol. 1, eds. CA Willis and JS Handloser, pp. 563-612. Gordon and Breach, New York. This paper is a classic!
Green diamond bar
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory  

Return to: BIDUG Home Page 
Contact: Dan Strom 
Read about: Security & Privacy
Revised: 28 December 2004