Most modern textbooks have sections on the proper protections and measures to take, although the information may be dated. See chapter 6 in Volume III of the International Tables for X-ray Crystallography. With the modern equipment and regulatory measures in most countries, you really have to work hard to be exposed at dangerous levels (which can lead to skin lesions and burns). However, you can get yourself exposed if you intentionally circumvent the safety measures and interlocks. In my experience, X-ray exposure in crystallography labs is very low and not dangerous. Our radiation safety people find our labs to be very "clean" with respect to scattered radiation around the sample compared to medical X-ray labs. Talk to your institute's safety people for advice.
For in-house equipment, you are most at risk of exposure during aligning the equipment. If you talk to the old crystallographers (or their students who are now +50 year old), you might hear stories of aligning collimators and cameras by the "tingle" on your eye as you look into the beam. By the time protein crystallography came around (50s-60s), phosphors and film were used for alignment so the "danger" comes mostly from scattered radiation and poor shielding. In all the years I have worked with X-rays without protection (I only wore a lab coat to prevent film developer from staining my clothes), neither I nor my colleagues have ever had X-ray exposures above background as determined by film badges and ring badges. In fact, we once exposed a film badge intentionally to see if anyone cared. We caught hell for doing that.
For synchrotron sources, chances of being exposed as a general user are now nil unless you really work hard to subvert the safety measures (which will get you kicked out).
On Jul 12, 2013, at 11:14 AM, diptimayee mishra wrote:
Dear All,
Can anyone please tell me regarding the harmful effects of X-ray , we are using for protein crystallography, on human being and what are the precautions we should take.