|  | Public Health Safety | Public Health

Radiography Myths

During the 1950s and 1960s, fear of radioactive fallout from nuclear attacks was prevalent in the United States. People feared that any exposure to radiation was dangerous and possibly lethal. Radiography is the process of taking pictures of the tissues and bones using X-rays that penetrate below the surface of the body. These radiation concerns have had a continuing impact on decisions about the desirability of radiography for medical and travel purposes.

  1. Radiation Exposure Information

    • There is a great deal of information available about the health issues surrounding radiation exposure. Japan has been tracking the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings for more than sixty years and recording health data in the Radiation Effects Research Foundation database. The United States National Cancer Institute has assessed Americans' exposures to radiation from nuclear bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s. Researchers are also adding information from former Soviet studies on radiation exposure from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident to the database.

    Medical Radiography

    • Natural exposure to background radiation in the home and workplace ranges from 1 to 10 miliSieverts per year. Among medical radiography procedures, a whole-body CT scan is 12 mSv, a mammogram 0.13 mSv and a chest X-ray 0.08 mSv. By comparison, the 10-year cumulative level of exposure for survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident ranges from 10 to greater than 100 mSv. Since that accident, fears of catastrophic health problems from fallout have proven to be greatly overestimated. Studies by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation show that there has been little illness that can be directly attributed to nuclear fallout among Chernobyl survivors.

    Dental Radiography

    • Fear of radiation exacerbates many people’s fear of the dentist. The concern for many dental patients is that radiographs (X-ray images) require placing the X-ray machine very close to the patient’s mouth, which they fear could pose a radiation danger to the brain. Patients also show concern with dental radiography fearing risk to reproductive systems. These concerns are unfounded because of modern standards of dental radiography. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Report 145 sets standards for patient and operator exposure levels. These standards mandate that equipment be operated in such a way that limits exposure to less that .0.008 mSv per treatment, which is significantly lower than natural background exposure.

    Prenatal Radiography

    • Pregnant women and new mothers have expressed concern about the possible risks of prenatal radiation exposure from diagnostic X-rays. Researchers have investigated the matter and determined that there is a slight increase in possible risk to fetuses of cancer from radiation at doses lower than those associated with commonly used procedures such as CT scans. The findings indicate the need for some caution in the use of diagnostic radiation imaging procedures to the abdomen/pelvis areas of pregnant mothers and in neonates and infants.

    Airport Security Radiography

    • Environmental health groups have voiced concerns over the risks from exposure during pre-flight security screening in airports. Health-care researchers have determined that the radiation doses emitted by the scans are no more than the amount of radiation naturally received from 3 to 9 minutes of normal daily life, and less than 1 percent of the dose a flyer will receive during flight. The cancer risk, therefore, is extremely small -- even for frequent flyers. Airport personnel groups have also questioned the safety of daily exposure to radiation from scanner equipment. Analysts estimate that flight attendants and pilots may receive up to 300 mSv per year; however, that was with older X-ray “backscatter” scanners. These scanners are being replaced with safer millimeter-wave scanners that use low-energy radio waves to produce more detailed images than backscatter technology.

    Radiography in Other Countries

    • Standards for radiation protection from medical radiography and security scanner may be different in other countries. For example, in Italy there has been a steadily-increasing cumulative estimated effective dose in hospitalized patients with ischemic heart disease. In the U.S. the annual per-capita dose from medical procedures is around 3.0 mSv while the worldwide annual dose is about 0.6 mSv per year. This is a result of increased use of diagnostic radiography in the U.S. Airport X-ray scanners in Germany show dose values ranging from 0.00007 mSv to 0.006 mSv.

Public Health - Related Articles