A (G. P.): No test have been performed on the radiation hardness of the bakelite itself in hadron beams. We have irradiated some bakelite samples at a very intense gamma source integrating a dose of about 20 KGy and we did not observe any variation in the bakelite characteristics, especially in the resistivity.

A (G. P.): We clearly observe a large increase in the noise rate which was not present at the beginning of the irradiation and which is not present in the reference RPC. The chamber has been switched off several times for more than one day but it did not seem to recover from the noise point of view. However, we did not perform any systematic check in this sense.

A (G. P.): According to G. Aielli the main effect seems to be due to the graphite interface. We have not checked this hypothesis with our RPCs.