Recommended Precautions

Several important precautions should be observed when working at a shielding window work station or performing maintenance on the shielding window. They are:

1. Do not touch the leaded glass surfaces with bare hands or the tip of the nose. The resulting oily, corrosive residue can imprint the glass if not removed. Non-leaded glasses, such as cover plates, are not as sensitive to this type of blemish.
   
2. All window cleaning operations should be done by trained technicians wearing surgical rubber gloves with clean, white cotton gloves over the rubber gloves.
   
3. Use only approved cleaning solutions and soft lint free napkins or cotton towels for cleaning cold-side cover plates.
   
4. Maintain a distance of at least 200 mm (8 in.) between the window glass and the inspection lamp to preclude local heating and thermal stressing of the glass.
   
5. Place a protective covering over the cold side cover-plate whenever performing maintenance or installation work in the vicinity. The cover plates scratch and chip very easily, and can be damaged by actions that would not affect a normal plate glass window.
   
6. Any maintenance work on the in-cell alpha shield cover plate or primary gamma attenuation slabs requires special handling, and a time delay in handling the glass, if the glass has been exposed to high energy gamma sources; otherwise, a spontaneous electrostatic discharge could destroy the window slab and cause a very serious safety hazard.