[IP] more on BBC: Therapy 'sets off airport alarms'
Begin forwarded message:
From: David Josephson <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 5, 2006 12:59:46 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] BBC: Therapy 'sets off airport alarms'
Bob Rosenberg wrote
I got particular joy from the irony of this paragraph: "Patients
who have received
treatment involving radioactive particles are already advised to
avoid public
transport for two weeks so that they do not expose nearby
passengers to
radioactivity."
Please, someone, tell me how that patient avoids exposing him/her
self to
radioactivity?!?
Of course, this lunacy is 'protecting' us from ??? Oh yeah, I got
it --- rationality.
Sorry, this is not lunacy, but requires a bit more objective thought
than is usually found in the public on issues of "radiation."
Someone may be cured of cancer for the remainder of their life
through the administration of a high dose of radiation. The same dose
spread out over time is enough to significantly increase the risk of
cancer in a young person, particularly thyroid cancer. So the
prostate cancer patient with an implant sleeps in a room by himself
for a few weeks, until the implant has decayed to safe levels.
At a geophysical instrument company where I was an engineer many
years ago, we all started scurrying around when the background
radiation levels spiked and then remained elevated at 4x normal one
morning. Turns out that our purchasing chief had just come back from
having a radioactive implant installed to treat a cancer in his
throat (and he had walked through the test area on the way to his
desk). Relatively short half-life isotopes are used, but for the
first few hours or days, that person emits a lot of radiation.
Hospital procedures (see www.ehs.ucsf.edu/Manuals/RP/
Rad_Protection.pdf for example) require that a patient not be
discharged until the radiation has decayed to acceptable levels --
which are higher if there are no young people (<45 years old) in the
household. The radiation dose we all received that day was roughly
equivalent to an x-ray followed by a long airplane flight.
What are the airport monitors protecting us from? Think about small
"dirty bombs." A terrorist's object is to create hysteria, and we are
certainly ready to be hysterical. Being knowledgeable about radiation
safety is probably a more effective defense than any. We understand
from recent studies that there is no safe exposure to ionizing
radiation -- any increase is shown to cause a statistically small but
measurable increase in disease risk. Yet we all are exposed to
radiation every day. It is hard for people to get the concept of "as
low as reasonably achievable" until they take the time to think about
it. If you care, try this homework assignment. What's the single
largest source of radiation that people are exposed to on a daily
basis? Hint - some people have this exposure -- by choice -- and
others have little or no exposure to this radiation source.
--
David Josephson
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