RE: Patients trigger border radiation alarms

[Dimiter Popoff <tgi@cit.bg>]

Clearly there is little if any use of such detection - similar to, say,

speed limit signs every 10 metres all over the place.



 I wonder which of the short lived nuclides used for medical purposes is

considered a terrorist (or whatever) danger, though. Why do they not set

the devices to detect only nuclides of interest?



Dimiter



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Dimiter Popoff                                    ++359/2/9923340

Transgalactic Instruments, Gourko Str. 25 b, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria

http://tgi.cit.bg       tgi@cit.bg     dimiter.popoff@firemail.de

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> From: Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>

> To: RadSafe <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 1:33 AM

> Subject: Patients trigger border radiation alarms

>

>

> 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.

> 

> 



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