More Studies on Radiation and Full-Body Scans
February 8, 2010
Bloomberg.com
By Jonathan Tirone
Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.
A more accurate assessment about the health risks of the screening won’t be possible until governments decide whether all passengers will be systematically scanned or randomly selected, the report said. Governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers, and should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”
President Barack Obama has pledged $734 million to deploy airport scanners that use x-rays and other technology to detect explosives, guns and other contraband. The U.S. and European countries including the U.K. have been deploying more scanners at airports after the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a Detroit-bound Northwest airline flight.
“There is little doubt that the doses from the backscatter x-ray systems being proposed for airport security purposes are very low,” Health Protection Agency doctor Michael Clark said by phone from Didcot, England. “The issue raised by the report is that even though doses from the systems are very low, they feel there is still a need for countries to justify exposures.”
3-D Imaging
A backscatter x-ray is a machine that can render a three- dimensional image of people by scanning them for as long as 8 seconds, the report says. The technology has also raised privacy issues in countries including Germany because it yields images of the naked body.
The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Most of the scanners deliver less radiation than a passenger is likely to receive from cosmic rays while airborne, the report said. Scanned passengers may absorb from 0.1 to 5 microsieverts of radiation compared with 5 microsieverts on a flight from Dublin to Paris and 30 microsieverts between Frankfurt and Bangkok, the report said. A sievert is a unit of measure for radiation.
European Union regulators plan to finish a study in April on the effects of scanning technology on travelers’ privacy and health. Amsterdam, Heathrow and Manchester are among European airports that have installed the devices or plan to do so.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has said that it ordered 150 scanners from OSI Systems Inc.’s Rapiscan unit and will buy an additional 300 imaging devices this year. The agency currently uses 40 machines, which cost $130,000 to $170,000 each, produced by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. at 19 airports including San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington D.C.
Click here for the full report.
Mammograpy Screening Radiation Linked to Cancer
December 15, 2009
NaturalNews
by Mike Adams
A new study presented on December 1 at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) verified that annual mammography screenings may be responsible for causing breast cancer in women who are predisposed to the disease. Epidemiologist Marijke C. Jansen-van der Weide from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands suggests that doctors should be very cautious when screening younger women, especially those under age 30.
There are many conflicting reports about the benefits of mammography screenings, particularly among younger women below the age of 40. Because there is a high risk among women with genetic or familial predispositions to breast cancer when getting mammograms, Dr. Jansen-van der Weide and her research team are suggesting that these women get an alternative screening. Ultrasounds, MRIs, and heat thermography screenings are some alternatives that do not expose patients to radiation.
The study evaluated women in the high-risk group and determined that low-dose mammography radiation increased these women’s risk of developing breast cancer by 150 percent. Women under 20 who have had at least five mammograms are 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer than high-risk women who have never undergone low-dose mammography screenings.
Study authors emphasized the fact that doctors should be cautious in administering mammograms to younger women, especially those with a family history of breast cancer. Moderate- to low-risk women were not evaluated in the study. Alternative screening methods were encouraged in order to reduce the risk of women in high-risk groups from being harmed by radioactive exposure.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
What this study really reveals is that there is no reason for any women to ever receive a mammogram ever again. Ultrasound and thermography should now be the new standard for breast cancer detection screenings, as they do not subject women to excess radiation.
More CT Radiation Overexposure in U.S.
December 8, 2009
Reuters
by Lisa Richwine
U.S. regulators are probing more cases of patients who were exposed to excess radiation from brain scans performed with equipment from General Electric and Toshiba, government officials said on Monday.
The Food and Drug Administration said some patients received up to eight times the normal amount of radiation. High doses of radiation can cause cataracts and increase the risk of some forms of cancer.
In October, the FDA said it was investigating 206 cases of patients being overexposed to radiation during CT perfusion scans of the brain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles during an 18-month period.
The FDA said on Monday it had identified at least 50 more cases at Cedars-Sinai and two other California hospitals. Cases also have been reported in Alabama, FDA officials said.
The excess radiation caused skin redness and hair loss in some patients, the agency said.
The agency has not determined if there were problems with the machines or with how they were used, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, acting director of the FDA’s device center, told reporters on a conference call.
The FDA issued guidelines on Monday meant to help avoid future problems.
Computed tomography (CT) perfusion scans are used to evaluate blood flow in the brain to diagnose strokes, and also are used to examine the heart.
GE Healthcare spokesman Arvind Gopalratnam said while the company continues to investigate, “we confirm that there were no malfunctions or defects in any of the GE Healthcare equipment involved.”
Toshiba said the FDA had informed the company of one site where potential overradiation occurred with the company’s equipment. “We are cooperating fully with the FDA and working with them to investigate this matter,” said Paul Biggins, head of regulatory affairs for Toshiba America Medical Systems.
Cedars-Sinai spokeswoman Simi Singer said the hospital had documented 260 cases and had disclosed the total in November. The hospital adopted policies in September that were similar to the new FDA guidelines for preventing future cases, she added.
“We continue to work with the FDA and other regulatory agencies to help identify the root causes of this issue,” Singer said.
In the new guidelines, the FDA urged imaging centers to review protocols for CT perfusion scans of the brain and heart and advised technicians to check the display panel before use to make sure the right amount of radiation would be delivered.
Children exposed to harmful radiation
October 12, 2009
Natural News
By S. L. Baker
If a child is accidentally hit in the head with a baseball or kicked in the forehead during roughhousing, it can be scary for the youngster and the parents, too. After all, traumatic brain injuries are sometimes serious. They result in about 7,400 deaths a year to American kids 18 years old and younger. So it makes sense to have children checked out for a concussion or other signs of brain injury if they’ve experienced head trauma, especially if they were knocked unconscious. But far too many kids with knocks to their “noggins” are being routinely treated as if they had serious brain injuries — even if they don’t have significant symptoms of a neurological problem — and given unnecessary, radiation-loaded computerized tomography (CT) scans.
That’s the conclusion of a study just published online and slated for an upcoming edition of the print version of the medical journal the Lancet. Nathan Kuppermann, of the University of California at Davis Departments of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, and colleagues found there are validated ways doctors can identify children at very low risk of clinically important traumatic brain injuries (ciTBIs). That’s important because these simple, non-invasive findings on an exam should keep the vast majority of youngsters with head trauma from having CT scans which expose them to potentially cancer-causing radiation.
The study investigated the records of more than 42,000 children, including CT scans that had been performed on 35 percent of them. About 25 percent of the youngsters were under the age of two, and the others were three to 18 years old. Out of this group, ciTBIs had occurred in only 376 (one percent) and just 60 (0.1 percent) underwent neurosurgery for their injuries.
The researchers found there were specific clinical findings that turned out to be strong predictors indicating a child under two did not have a ciTBI. Normal mental status, no scalp swelling (except frontal), no loss of consciousness or loss of consciousness of less than five seconds, non-severe mechanism of the injury, no palpable skull fracture, and the child appearing, according to parents, to be acting normally were signs that correctly predicted 100 percent of the 1176 toddler patients who ended up not to have a ciTBI. Almost a fourth of the children younger than two who were in this low-risk group had, however, been subjected to CT scans and exposed to ionizing radiation, a well-known risk factor for future cancers.
The researchers also came up with another prediction rule to identify children older than two who did not have ciTBI. Those without a significant brain injury had normal mental status, no loss of consciousness, no vomiting, non-severe injury mechanism, no signs of a fracture at the base of their skull, and no severe headache. This list of signs and symptoms correctly predicted 99.95 percent (all but two) of the 3,800 patients who did not have a ciTBI.
Once again, however, the researchers found that a large number of these youngsters, 20 percent, had been given CT scans even though they were actually at low risk for brain trauma. Bottom line: if doctors used the prediction rules listed above most children with bumps to the head would avoid CT scans and the accompanying radiation exposure.
“In this study of more than 42 000 children with minor blunt head trauma, we derived and validated highly accurate prediction rules for children at very low risk of ciTBIs for whom CT scans should be avoided. Application of these rules could limit CT use, protecting children from unnecessary radiation risks. Furthermore, these rules provide the necessary data to assist clinicians and families in CT decision making after head trauma,” the researchers conclude in their paper.
As NaturalNews has reported previously, many scientists are starting to question the medical industry’s push to use CT scans widely, even on the healthy and non-injured. In fact, Americans’ radiation exposure has soared 600 percent over the last 29 years due to the enormous use of scanning technology.
