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Pressure Washing Surfaces Contaminated with Fixed or Loose Radioactive Material: Best Practices for Urban Surfaces
Citation:
Magnuson, M., M. Kaminski, AND K. Hepler. Pressure Washing Surfaces Contaminated with Fixed or Loose Radioactive Material: Best Practices for Urban Surfaces. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/S-23/042, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
This technical brief provides information for using common pressure washers to decontaminate urban surfaces using tap water following a radiological contamination incident. These urban surfaces include porous, hard surfaces such as brick, concrete, granite, limestone, and their composites; non-porous surfaces such as glass, metal, and painted metal; and semi-porous surfaces such as asphalt. Vegetation and wood are not addressed. This brief provides general operating procedures, as well as estimated time, personnel requirements, and approaches for minimization and management of generated waste.
Description:
This brief provides operating information based on reviewed field experience [1] and laboratory experiments [2-5]. While it discusses general safety, this technical brief does not discuss the safe operation of pressurized sprayer equipment to avoid physical hazards which are typically covered in the user’s manual. It also includes but does not detail issues related to operation of the equipment to avoid unnecessary exposure of the equipment operator to radioactivity.