Re: Thalium Stress Test (fwd)

[Jim Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Bruce Busby wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Ok.. as long as we are doing doses, any one have a good estimate for
> this:
> 
> Subject: Thalium Stress Test
> 
> Last month I was doing a basics of radiation presentation at a
> municipal
> emergency management agency and was discussing contamination vrs.
> exposure using a coleman lantern mantle (thorium).  Using a volunteer
> from the audience, to my surprise, when I removed the sorce the ludlem
> frisqer continued to peg the meter at the 10 times scale.  Upon
> further
> investigation we found that the reading was coming off the hand of a
> man
> four rows back in the audience who had had a heart thalium stress test
> earlier in the week.  Of course the question came up on what was the
> approximate exposure for an individual who receives a stress test and
> is
> their any exposure to others.  Can you help me out???
> 
> Thanks....
> 
> -Bruce Busby
>  bbusby@umich.edu

My personal measurements maxed about 20 mr/hr contact following the test, and
able to move the meter at 20-30 feet. Was still able to more than double
background about 10-days-2 weeks later.

There was a long discussion of power plant experience with workers setting off
alarms 3 weeks later. 

I'm curious about estimates of total internal dose (rate initially, compared
to 20 mr/hr external - I didn't look up the Tl-201 decay energies to estimate
shielding effects; and integrated dose) from the medical physics perspective.

Of course this leads to considering again the silliness of many extreme rad
protection standards, especially 15-30 mr/yr cleanup by EPA, NRC, and DOE (to
the tune of $100s Billions) not to mention the vitriolic name calling and
ranting between EPA & NRC about 15 vs 25, with EPA calculating the number of
peole NRC would be killing with it's standard!  

Let's see, if we have 1 million Tl-201 stress tests per year, at __ rem each,
how many does EPA say we are killing?

Regards, Jim