Aging facilities, human error add radiation risk

China is facing a growing problem with more and more accidents in the workplace involving radiation exposure, experts have said.

"Radiation accidents occur five to six times in 10,000 sources of radiation in the (radiation technology) sector every year in China and most of them are due to human error," said Wang Zuoyuan, former chief of the radiation protection and safety department under the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He was speaking to China Economic Weekly in an article published yesterday.

Transportation errors, equipment failure and radiation sources that were stolen or abandoned were among the main causes of the accidents, Wang said.