Posted on 10/20/2010 5:46:39 AM PDT by nuconvert
WASHINGTON – Cancer patients sent home after treatment with radioactive iodine have contaminated hotel rooms and set off alarms on public transportation, a congressional investigation has found
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That should provide good cover for the terrorists.
This is true of most patients that have diagnostic nuclear medicine studies. In the case of Iodine, it has been going on since the 1940’s. There are state and federal regulations in place to ensure that the public is well protected.
The amount of radioisotope used is relatively small and poses no significant public risk.
I went on a week long cruise two weeks after I had a thallium stress test. Upon returning to Miami, I set off every agent’s detector, they stopped the lines, and we were pulled into another room. During the process, various agents would come by, apparently to test their devices, since this was probably the first time any of them went off.....Was an interesting day.
Alarms over radiation from thyroid cancer patientsWell, then the only 'logical' answer is to kill them.
So ... OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
(It's for, 'the public good'.)
They have been sending home patients like this for at least twenty years. I remember when my mother had this treatment. She was allowed to come home, but stay away from children and not sleep in the same bed with my dad for a week or so.
In the early months after 9/11, my friend’s aunt was pulled over while being driven home from her cancer treatments in a large east coast city. A radiation team arrived 10 minutes later to confirm it was her, not a weapon. The detectors were that sensitive.
My mother-in-law has had this treatment. I believe that afterwards she stayed home for days. It wasn’t just because of radioactive material, but from feeling worn out from all of the proceedures she has had to endure lately.
Pretty much a useless congressional investigation.
Don’t they have anything better to do? I’m surprised they haven’t had a few more investigations of people getting burned when they touch hot stoves.
The genesis of the stuned beeber.
Iodine 123 for testing is not Iodine 131 for treatment. They are talking about patients not following instructions to avoid public transportation and small children. The dose used to kill off thyroid tissue in cancer patients "radioactive ablation" does pose a risk to others and does contaminate linens and trash.
LOL
They may have incorrectly attributed this to thyroid cancer. Instead, in most cases, radioactive iodine is given to those with a hyperactive thyroid, called Graves’ disease. It kills just enough of the gland so that its operation is at normal, or slightly below normal levels, requiring the patient to take a thyroid hormone supplement for the rest of their lives.
That being said, radioactive iodine is not something to mess with, and it is not frivolous that such patients should be kept in hospital for a few days, and their urine collected, to be disposed of as radioactive waste.
Such treatments are made with Iodine-131.
Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days.
Furthermore, the treatment can target the thyroid, thus small dosages are used. After three days, the patient emits negligible radiation. If the patient does contaminate a hotel room, any radiation would fall to background levels within 5 half-lives, or about 40 days.
This is a lot of scare about nothing.
Furthermore, federal law already recognizes medical radiation treatments.
They will have to find something else to investigate under 0bamacare.
The Death Panels will do away with nuclear medicine.
This is typical of newspapers and the US these days. Radioactive iodine (notice the radiation levels were not mentioned, but they are VERY low) set off radiation detectors and we get a lot of coverage. However 400 people/day are killed on highways and it is rarely reported, and people are shot in NYC, Chicago, LA, Philadelphia and we rarely hear about it because it is so routine.
The government’s all over this, but they haven’t done anything about the Santa Susana field lab, home of one of the worst meltdowns in US history. A lot of people, including one of my best friends, have gotten thyroid (and other types) cancer, and it looks like that meltdown is the reason.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory:
“United States, concluded that contamination at the facility resulted in between 0 and 1,800 cancer deaths (the average estimate was 300 deaths). The report also concluded that the SRE meltdown caused the release of more than 458 times the amount of radiation released by the Three Mile Island accident.[1]”
Please read the below.
http://tech.snmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/4/165
You obviously didn't read the report. The report stated the best estimate was 260 deaths in a population of several million. It said that this number was statisictically small considering the number of unrelated cancers in a population of several million was much larger. The risk to any single person would have been less than a typical dental x-ray at the time.
They correctly attributed this to thyroid cancer. Radioactive iodine is the treatment of choice for thyroid cancer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.