Some years ago I had a cat that developed hyperthyroidism. The medications the vet gave her didn’t work so I took her in for very expensive radioactive iodine therapy – which by the way did work. I dropped her off in the morning and picked her up the next afternoon.
When I came to pick her up I was given a lengthy list of instructions which I had to not only read but also sign.
Among the instructions were to avoid any prolonged contact with the cat – no petting or letting her sit on my lap, to keep her in a closed off room isolated from other pets and small children for the next 48 hours, to obtain a disposable cardboard litter box and not to handle any feces or urine without rubber gloves or to flush any contents down the toilet (this was IIRC, an EPA regulation) but to use rubber gloves and a plastic garbage bag to dispose of the box and all its contents and dispose of them in the trash.
After I read through all this, I looked at the gal in horror and asked “Just how radioactive is my cat? And she just laughed. She told me that the NRC and the EPA mandated that I had to be given these instructions and precautions.
She said, “Your cat has only very miniscule amounts of residual radiation left over from yesterdays’ procedure. You would be exposed to more radiation from eating a banana than from petting your cat right now.” And in fact she showed me her radiation alarm badge while she picked up my cat and it didn’t’ register anything, and that in all her many years of working there and handling the cats during and right after their radio iodine therapy, that her radiation badge had never gone off.
But she told me that just the week before, she had left work to pick up her daughter at a tanning salon and that she forgotten that she was still wearing her radiation badge. She said that as soon as she walked in the place, it went off for the first time in years.
That is funny.
I believe that the iodine used for medicine has a very short half life, and will be completely gone within a few weeks.
Very often, the level of fear and hysteria over radiation is far more damaging to health than an actual radiation exposure. We are exposed to radiation of all kinds all the time, and we do just fine with it.
I had to get a bone scan, which involved injecting me with several millicuries of a radioactive substance. I was given a card to carry for a couple of days, just in case I set off a radiation detector somewhere. Other than that, there were no special measures.
I have a cat with thyroid disease, but we manage it with pills.