Patients trigger border radiation alarms

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Patients trigger border radiation alarms

New devices are incredibly sensitive. Catch even wads of gum chewed by 

patients undergoing radiation treatment for cancer

http://snipurl.com/6adq



MARGARET MUNRO

CanWest News Service

Monday, May 10, 2004



Jean Perley and two girlfriends were headed for a shopping mall just 

across the Ontario-New York border last month when a U.S. customs 

officer asked the trio to get out of their car and step inside.



The officers quickly dispensed with questions about where they were 

going and homed in on Perley, 64, with a hand-held monitor. To Perley's 

amazement, she was emitting radiation. "I was dumfounded," she says.



Then it dawned on her that she had had a heart test the day before. "All 

I knew is that it was a stress Myoview, but no one at the clinic said 

anything about radiation," she says. "I had no idea I'd light up at the 

border."



Myoviews involve injection of medical isotopes, temporarily rendering 

people radioactive.



U.S. Customs and Border Protection is installing "radiation portal 

monitors" at every point of entry, says spokesperson Jim Michie. So far 

a few hundred are in place, but more than 2,000 will eventually be 

installed.



The devices can pick up radioactive molecules from several metres away, 

like the ones in Perley's bloodstream as her car passed a roadside 

monitor at the crossing near Cornwall, Ont.



The guards deliberated almost two hours before deciding Perley posed no 

security risk.



Doctors say more and more people treated with radioactive compounds are 

setting off monitors. Last month, Hamilton doctors reported a cancer 

patient was pulled aside by U.S. customs at an international airport 

after radioactive "seeds" embedded in his prostate set off alarms.



Last fall, a wad of radioactive chewing gum, believed to have been spit 

out by someone who had undergone treatment for thyroid cancer, set off a 

radiation device scanning a truckload of Toronto-area garbage bound for 

Michigan. Another load - containing a radioactive diaper worn by a 

cancer patient - also tripped a monitor, closing the border to Canadian 

garbage for 18 hours.



Michie says the monitors can also pick up low levels of radiation common 

to kitty litter and ceramic tiles.





************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To

unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the

text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,

with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/