The official did wrong. However, I think the text miststates what he was trying to communicate.
It implies he was threatening them with some sort of blacklist, as in, “you’ll never work in this industtry again.”
In fact, the limited quotes imply that he was stating, quite accurately, that if these individuals get to the limit in 3 months, they’ll be out of a job for the rest of the year. Not because the company will fire them, but because regulations will projibit them from going near a plant for the rest of the year.
Fairly obviously, what the company should have done was either provide more effective protective equipment to limit exposure, or rotate people into the hot zone and then out to work somewhere else.
Also, the dose limits are all based on the Linear No Threshold (LNT) Model. There is some evidence that this model may be correct, but there is roughly equivalent evidence for two other models: the Threshold Model, by which there is no effect at very low doses (below the threshold); and the Radiation Hormesis Model, by which doses below a certain level actually have a positive tonic effect.
The choice of LNT for safety regulations has been made for esentially two reasons: Err on the side of caution, and political concerns.
The first reason is perfectly valid till definitive evidence is produced. The second is scientifically indefensible.
FWIW, I worked three years in Los Alamos in the 80s. Met a lot of the old guys who had actually built the first Bombs, machinists and such. Many of them complained of the health effects of the relatively high (compared to accepted levels today) they had been exposed to.
Out of politeness I never shared my thoughts at the time. If they were still around to be complaining about these effects 40 years later, those effects just could not have been that great.
The National Academy Of Science BEIR reports have, for some time, provided the medical evidence to support LNT. They state in one of their summaries (paraphrasing) “Despite what the nuclear energy industry would like to believe, the LNT model correctly reveals that damage occurs at very low levels etc.”
It’s not erring on the side of caution. Congress enacted legislation in 2000 to protect Defense workers from litigation if they file medical health claims for illnesses resulting from their exposure to radiation. Their ‘badge’ rating indicated that they did not receive dosage beyond the safety limit and yet they were prone to higher incidence of radiation related illnesses. Until legislation was enacted, the Defense department sued them if they filed a medical claim. In approving the legislation, Congress specifically stated that medical damage, to include cancer, can occur below the safety limit.
Reading the documentation coming out of Chernobyl, there are a host if illnesses which do not really lend themselves to disease names. It’s as if you took a very elaborate circut board (the human body) and disabled a few links so that a person can’t produce a little known, but required protein, or they can’t metabolize something they need to metabolize. Their immune system is damaged so they struggle more with routine illnesses etc. Most depressing was early dementia and accelerated aging - so that those working the Chernobyl cleanup were mentally and physically ‘older’ in terms of debility by the time they were in their 50’s.