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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

bedbugs? i've got something better

i've worked for 38 years in an industry where radioactive materials are part of our daily surroundings. protections are in place to keep from releasing any to the general public, and they work pretty well. we've even had to keep people from coming to work if they've had a medical procedure requiring isotope injection, because there would be no way for us to determine if they were contaminated by something that happened at work, or if it was residual radioactivity from a test. so this article at MyWay kind of struck a funny bone, and also made go go "Whaaaaa?"
worried about bed bugs in hotels? there may be other bugs (that's what we call contamination) in that bed! the headline says "Alarms over radiation from thyroid cancer patients". yeah, i knew most of the things they allude to, but did you know that there are radiation monitors at landfills? actually, i did. but how about radiation monitors in the Lincoln Tunnel, sensitive enough to trigger on a medical procedure dose administered to a person traveling at speed through the tunnel in a vehicle?
i bet there are other places too, but weren't mentioned in the article. i'm guessing airports and other mass public transportation hubs have them as well.