The Defense Nuclear Agency Intermediate Dose Program: an Overview (effects of Total-body Irradiation on the Performance of Personnel in Army Combat Crews)

J^* The objective of this research-was to provide the C3 quantitative basis for predicting performance ^3 decrement in Army crewmen irradiated with less than (^ 4500 rads (cGy). -^ince the data necessary for these I predictions do noK,, exist and cannot be obtained Q directly by human tes'ting due to the deadly nature of ionizing radiations, this^^ffort involved not only the ^T collection of data, but^-tlje development of a methodology to indirectly obtairr-the-data*__-'The data were obtained using a questionnaire derived from detailed information on radiation sickness and analysis of 15 combat crew tasks. The questionnaire, which asked for quantitative information on the impact of radiation sickness symptoms on the performance of sub-tasks, was administered to experts in the performance of the combat tasks. The results obtained in this effort clearly demonstrate that this methodology can be used to obtain meaningful estimates of the Impact of very hazardous environments on performance. Comparison of the results from this study with those from studies which have directly assessed the effects of sickness on performance suggests that this questionnaire approach could successfully be applied to the evaluation of other hazardous environments in other military systems.