LOVERS can be too hot, it seems. 快猫短视频s are calling for stricter
guidelines to prevent patients treated with radiation irradiating their
partners.
Thousands of people worldwide are given the radioisotope iodine-131 every
year to help combat overactive thyroid glands and thyroid cancer. Their thyroid
glands become radioactive and can endanger anyone who is close to them for long
periods.
Radiologists in Japan measured the contact times and distances between 14
patients taking iodine-131 and 39 members of their families over three days.
They then estimated levels of radioactivity in patients that would ensure the
doses they gave their family remained below the international safety limit of 1
millisievert a year. In Radiation Protection Dosimetry (vol 83, p 233),
they argue that the level of radioactivity recommended by the International
Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) below which patients can be safely
discharged from hospital鈥560 million becquerels鈥攊s five times too
high. The limit should be reduced to 97 million becquerels, they say.
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Even then, they argue that discharged patients should sleep more than 50
centimetres from their partners 鈥渋n an adjacent room or twin beds鈥 and should
not go near babies under one year old. Only when patients鈥 radioactivity has
dropped to 42 million becquerels鈥攚hich might take a week or
more鈥攕hould such restrictions be lifted. 鈥淭he current ICRP safety limits
for protecting the family members of patients treated with iodine-131 should be
investigated,鈥 concludes team leader Kichiro Koshida of Kanazawa University.
But his findings are criticised by Keith Harding, a nuclear medicine
consultant at the City Hospital in Birmingham and ICRP adviser. He says that
estimating radiation doses from contact times tends to exaggerate exposure, and
that direct measurements of radiation given to families by patients suggest
current guidelines are adequate.