The Ministry of Health’s Office of Radiation Safety 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
March 25 2020
Office of Radiation Safety response to COVID-19
Licences and consent requests
The entire staff of the Office of Radiation Safety (ORS) will work from home to process your applications or other requests as business as usual. Please make sure that your applications or requests are emailed to orsenquiries@health.govt.nz so that there is no delay in receiving authorisation. It is important that you email your requests to the ORS inbox rather than to the specific officials' inboxes just in case some of the staff are away. We are anticipating a little bit of slowing down in our response time as we are not as equipped as we are at work at our individual homes. However, the ORS inbox is being monitored by the ORS staff from 9 am to 4 pm every workday, and therefore we don't expect any significant disruption caused by this change.
Any applications or correspondence sent in the mail to the Ministry of Health building will be processed when the staff can go into work. So please expect delays for those who submitted applications or other requests in the mail.
Compliance monitoring inspections
As of 20 March, ORS stopped its visits to the licensed facilities due to the Health and Safety of our inspectors and licensed facilities until further notice. We are currently developing alternative ways of compliance monitoring that are possible without physical visits. Those facilities are up for inspections this calendar year will be contacted once ORS has developed such alternatives.
How to contact ORS
The best and quickest way of obtaining information you need is to email to orsenquiries@health.govt.nz. This is because there is a possibility that each official's land line might not work from work.
For emergency, please contact the Radiation Emergency (24 hours) number at 021 393 632.