However, scintillation probes can be affected by high gamma background levels, which must therefore be checked by the skilled operator to allow the instrument to compensate.

Gamma rays are highly penetrating and some can pass through metals, so Geiger counters or a scintillation probe are used to measure gamma ray exposures when monitoring for NORM.

For this reason, an instrument such as the dual phosphor scintillation probe, which will discriminate between alpha and beta, is used where routine checking will come across alpha and beta emitters simultaneously.