Ah McLovin, I believe that perhaps you were slightly confused about a few things. So, let's discuss further.
First:
but your "holier than thou" attitude automatically turns me off.
I wasn't at all trying to turn you on. I'm pretty sure there are other forums better suited to that end.
Second:
I don't know any business that would knowingly allow their employees to waste 10% of any company asset.
"Person-Rem" is not a company asset. It is an arbitrary indicator of how well you're practicing ALARA. Upper Management and auditors love stats, charts, and graphs. They can't show how conscientiously each of your rad workers and HPs actually practice ALARA in the field, so they love numerical indicators like "person-rem," uptakes, and skin [or personnel] contamination events. Personally, I've seen some really poor RadCon programs with great charts and graphs, as well as some very good ones with poor charts and graphs. My question is, "What are you emphasizing in your program?".
Third:
I will agree that ALARA is something that needs to be internalized by the site, but as far as I'm concerned, if you aren't willing to realize that nearly 30% of the American population dies of cancer and you need to do everything within reason to reduce your dose,
I challenge you to put your money where your mouth is. How well have you monitored the background radiation dose hazards that you and your family receive from natural and other nonoccupational sources? Personal radiation dose from unlicensed radiation sources can be decreased by over 100 mrem per year in many cases just based upon simple lifestyle changes. Have you given these any thought? As a Health Physicist have you made any lifestyle changes for yourself or family, or suggested any to your friends or community? Exactly how dedicated are you to ALARA?
I know it sounds like I'm trying to give you a hard time on this, but what I'm really trying to do is provide some perspective. I simply don't know any experienced dosimetrist or HP program managers who would try to make their ALARA numbers look better by playing games with their TLD racks or background [control] TLDs. It's a one time reduction that you'll simply factor into your ALARA budget for next year. The best that it could accomplish is to allow you to put a bullet on your performance eval that you reduced your cumulative dose by some percentage [for a single year, and without any real improvement to your program].
Lastly, something that I failed to mention in my original response is that there are two significant organizational advantages to programatically racking your TLDs each day:
(a) to ease with collection of TLDs for processing; and
(b) to allow for the bizare draconian practice of "pulling someone's TLD" as a form of access control.
The first can be a significant time savings for some programs. The second always struck me as a somewhat childish way of controlling access (e.g., I don't trust you to obey a direct order to stay out of an area, so I'm taking your TLD away to make sure that you do).
Best of luck to you man,
MGM