The Ministry of Health’s Office of Radiation Safety (ORS) administers the Radiation Safety Act 2016 and the Radiation Safety Regulations 2016 on behalf of the New Zealand Government. This legislation controls all dealings with ionising radiation. For information about non-ionising radiation and radiofrequency such as 5G, please visit Non-ionising radiation page under Environmental Health.
Key requirements of the Radiation Safety Act 2016
The legislation requires the following:
- Managing entities of radiation sources must hold a Source licence authorising them to manage and control those sources.
- Managing entities must register controlled radiation sources with the Office of Radiation Safety.
- Individual users of radiation sources must hold a Use licence unless their use is otherwise authorised by the Act or regulations.
- Consent is required for anyone who wishes to import or export radioactive material.
News
21 September 2020
Second round of consultation on the published Codes of Practice
Following the publication of non-medical codes of practice on 31 July 2020, the Office of Radiation Safety (ORS) received feedback on the appropriateness of the ISO/IEC17025 standard required for external service providers and a suggestion to ask the wider group for their view on the best approach to ensure reliability and uniformity of monitoring or testing outcomes provided by external service providers. Therefore, ORS has prepared for a second round of consultation seeking your feedback on this specific matter.
The consultation paper has been published on the Ministry of Health website at 9am on 21 September 2020 and submissions close at 12pm on 31 October 2020. Please visit here to participate in the consultation. General information on the codes of practice is available on our Codes of Practice page.
Database review
The Office of Radiation Safety is in the process of improving the accuracy of data that we hold in our database. The main components we're looking at are the current source licence status and radiation sources registered at each facility (ie, apparatuses such as medical CT scanners and instruments containing radioactive material such as nuclear density meters).
To update your data on your licence and to register as per section 31 of the Radiation Safety Act 2016, please email [email protected].