Radiation

Everyone working in the state health department's sixth-floor radiation lab in Baltimore knew it was only a matter of time before fallout from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants in Japan finally reached Maryland. But on March 23, when the signature of radioactive iodine 131 turned up in an air filter tested in one of the state health lab's gamma-ray counters, Abudureheman Abulimiti, a senior scientist in the lab, wasn't ready to believe it. Although the radiation lab has been monitoring the state's air and water for decades, this was the first time its current employees — too new to recall the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 — had seen a radioactive byproduct from a reactor accident.

Several articles about utility smart meters, most recently the profile of a retired EPA attorney who has concerns about them ("At the center of smart-meter fight," March 24), indicate that those opposed to the devices are mostly concerned about possible health risks of non-ionizing wireless radiation as smart meters send readings over the cell phone networks. If there is something to worry about with wireless radiation, look to your cell phone. It is used much closer to your body than a smart meter is going to be. In addition, the smart meter is outside your house, adding a further level of attenuation.

Several articles about utility smart meters, most recently the profile of a retired EPA attorney who has concerns about them ("At the center of smart-meter fight," March 24), indicate that those opposed to the devices are mostly concerned about possible health risks of non-ionizing wireless radiation as smart meters send readings over the cell phone networks. If there is something to worry about with wireless radiation, look to your cell phone. It is used much closer to your body than a smart meter is going to be. In addition, the smart meter is outside your house, adding a further level of attenuation.

Have you heard of a smart meter? I hadn't until I received a notice from Baltimore Gas and Electric advising that it will be installing them in Anne Arundel County soon, so I searched for it on the Internet. Wow, there are a bunch of "Stop Smart Meter" groups all over the U.S. Why? A "smart meter" is a wireless electric meter designed to transmit two-way radio communications between your house and BGE so that BGE can track your energy use. What's wrong with that, you ask? The meter emits radiofrequency (RF)

The Maryland Department of the Environment announced Friday that it fined the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital $370,000 - the largest such penalty ever paid by Hopkins - after finding problems related to how the university and hospital handled radiation materials, maintained radiation machines and administered radiation to one patient. The bulk of the 19 alleged violations, found between May 2007 and September 2009, deal with security issues, not public health, said Dawn Stoltzfus, a spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment.

Skyrocketing numbers of expensive medical imaging procedures - from CT scans to nuclear stress tests - are not just straining the nation's health care system, but are exposing patients to significant amounts of potentially cancer-causing radiation even though little research has been done into whether those tests actually make people healthier, a new study suggests. The tests, say the study's authors, may be doing more harm than good. "One reason why these tests are being used more is they're getting better and better and they're an extremely helpful part of diagnosis and treatment," said Dr. Reza Fazel, a cardiologist at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and the lead author of a study in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

Radiation is a doubled-edged sword: It can be our deadly enemy, as when it leaks out of a nuclear reactor and harms innocent people; yet it can also be our friend, as when it leaks out of a nuclear reactor and harms Donald Trump.Another example: Dentists use radiation, in the form of X-rays, to determine which of our teeth are still real, so they can grind them into stumps and cover them with improved space-age materials costing thousands of dollars per ounce. Yet those very same X-rays, if we are overexposed to them, can cause us to look like Willie Nelson.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department disclosed yesterday that over a 45-year period the United States conducted 204 previously unreported underground nuclear tests and deliberately exposed at least 18 Americans to dangerous levels of nuclear material.Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary said she planned to release more information in June about experiments conducted on 18 people in the 1940s to assess effects of plutonium radiation.Those tests were among an estimated 800 radiation experiments conducted on more than 600 individuals over the years.

County officials were caught by surprise last week when they learned of radioactive contamination on the 85-acre tract of land where County Executive Robert R. Neall had hoped to build a new Detention Center.After all, they received assurances from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when they bought the property on New Ordnance Road in Glen Burnie 12 years ago that it met all standards. And it did, according to an NRC survey done at that time.But back in 1977, when the NRC performed the survey and cleared the land for sale, there were no guidelines for radiation in the soil.

Dental X-rays taken during pregnancy can significantly impair the health of the fetus even though it does not receive radiation directly, according to a study by researchers from the University of Washington. Pregnant women who were exposed to dental irradiation were nearly four times as likely to have a low birth weight baby, though their pregnancies went full term, the team reports today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Low birth weights have been widely associated with developmental and behavioral problems in infants.

Smart meters are an insidious, violating and dangerous technology being ushered in at a speed the public cannot fathom ("BGE to begin smart meter installation in May," March 18). They are a health and privacy disaster in the making. Smart meters are currently mandatory, relying on radio frequency radiation or RF/wireless signals. The utility asserts that it will only transmit your personal data two minutes a day. In reality, to maintain the entire mesh network, all meters will be talking with one another 24/7, engulfing our homes and neighborhoods continuously with RF radiation.

You're in an emergency room. You're worried. OK, maybe that's an understatement. Maybe you're terrified. This may not be the setting in which you always make your best decisions. But you won't get to take back any of the decisions you make in an ER, so you have to make the best decision you can the first time. Assuming that you don't have an immediately apparent catastrophic illness, here are four questions you can ask your doctor that may save you time and money - and perhaps even spare you or your child one of the complications that are sometimes associated with medical care.

What Dr. Sandeep Rao did not mention in his op-ed ( "Risk of radiation," April 25) is that American doctors order twice the radiation-intense imaging of the next industrialized nation per capita and that imaging causes 2 percent of all cancer. If we had tort limits like public health services, halving imaging would immediately prevent 1 percent of all cancer. Don't expect insurers to be thrilled about paying for a more expensive, radiation-free MRI in place of every CT. Adequate reimbursement of primary care would give physicians time to explain the risks and benefits of imaging to their patients.

The nuclear disaster following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has Americans worried about the risks of exposure to radiation. The Food and Drug Administration has begun screening imported seafood after a number of nations banned Japanese imports following public concerns over radioactive materials entering the food supply, and talk about radiation preparedness in states with nuclear power plants has taken on a sudden urgency. While environmental radiation exposure has captured the attention of the nation, the public faces the far more realistic prospect of exposure to medical radiation.

Wow, there were lots of unlicensed doctors and other medical professionals on the list of those sanctioned in February by the Maryland Board of Physicians. Check out other Naughty Businesses of the Week by clicking through the link. Adebowale I. Ajayi, M.D. Area of Practice: Internal Medicine (College Park, MD) Reprimand. The Board found that the physician failed to meet the standard of quality medical care. Date of Action: February 2, 2011 Abeda Ali-Khan, M.D. Area of Practice: Internal Medicine (Columbia, MD)

Everyone working in the state health department's sixth-floor radiation lab in Baltimore knew it was only a matter of time before fallout from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants in Japan finally reached Maryland. But on March 23, when the signature of radioactive iodine 131 turned up in an air filter tested in one of the state health lab's gamma-ray counters, Abudureheman Abulimiti, a senior scientist in the lab, wasn't ready to believe it. Although the radiation lab has been monitoring the state's air and water for decades, this was the first time its current employees — too new to recall the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 — had seen a radioactive byproduct from a reactor accident.

Veteran Mount St. Mary's basketball coach Jim Phelan is expected to miss his second straight game tonight at Quinnipiac University after experiencing "a little bit of side effects" from the radiation treatment he underwent for prostate cancer. Phelan's wife, Dottie, said yesterday he has been "encouraged not to make the seven-hour drive" to the game after also skipping the Mount's 91-86 Northeast Conference loss to Central Connecticut State in New Britain, Conn., Thursday. "He finished his radiation Wednesday and did very well, but he wasn't feeling well Thursday," Mrs. Phelan said from Emmitsburg yesterday.

CHECHERSK, Belarus -- The aims are decidedly modest: to mow overgrown grass in front of weathered, long-abandoned houses; open a bakery to provide fresh bread to children at village schools; plant small gardens to yield fruit and vegetables free of radiation. Those small steps are part of the latest chapter of the long recovery effort in this part of the former Soviet Union 20 years after an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, the deadliest accident in the history of nuclear power.

Maryland officials say they've detected little or no trace of radiation in the state from the Japanese nuclear reactor accident, though federal agencies are reporting slightly elevated levels of radioactive iodine in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Maryland secretary of health and mental hygiene, said that monitoring by state agencies of air, water and food supplies has found "no reason for public health concern. " The Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Sunday that "very small amounts" of radioactive materials might be detected in air and precipitation across the country using very sensitive equipment.

—When the massive, magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan to its core hit my neighborhood of Yokohama, 250 miles south of the epicenter, it registered an upper 5 on the shindo scale. Shindo, literally meaning "degree of shaking," is the official seismic intensity scale used in Japan. Ranging from 0 to 7, it factors in a host of tangibles and intangibles — including the sense of fear — as well as more easily observable physical phenomena like falling dishes, cracking walls and toppling structures.