🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <+btn-xl.badboy@netcom.com> badboy@netcom.com (Jay Keller) writes:

>I have some more facts to add to the discussion.  The isotope in question is,
>as many have suggested, I-131 with a half-life of approximately 8 days.  The
>cat is first injected with a small dose of Technetium which allows a scan to
>be done to evaluate the situation.  Then the Iodine dosage is determined and
>it is administered.  At this point the cat remains in the hospital for about
>a week.

>I am told that the state of California forbids them to release the cat until
>it is emitting less than 2 mR/hr.  

Interesting.

>What that means I don't know, but I'm sure someone here will.  Is it
>milliRoentgens, milliRads, milliRems, or milli-something-elses?  I suspect that
>it is nothing to worry about.  The people working at the clinic are exposed to
>several of these hot cats every day and seem to feel that they aren't in any
>danger, based on monitoring their personal dosages.

That's 2 mR/hr as in _milli-roentgens_.  This is roughly equivalent to 2
millirem/hr.  (Roentgen is a measure of absolute exposure, rem is a unit
of dose.)  To give you a comparison, in the United States, radiation
workers are allowed to recieve 5,000 mrem in a year.  It is assumed that
at or below this level of exposure, no deleterious health effects will
be observed.  To give you another comparison, we all recieve about 150 -
200 mrem per year from background radiation sources (even up to 270
mrem/yr in Denver, Colarado).

You also have to bear in mind that we're dealing with an 8 day half-life
isotope, if we take excretion into account, the _effective_ half-life is
even less than this (probably a lot less).  So, kitty won't be reading 2
mR/hr for long after she leaves the hospital.  Additionally, you'd have
to be hugging your cat all the time to constantly recieve 2 mrem/hr.  I
assume that they measure the cat at contact, not at a distance.  You'll
probably be several feet or even yards away most of the time and
radiation intensity drops off as 1/distance^2.

Basically, don't sweat it.  The rules are pretty strict on these things
and they wouldn't be giving you a pet back that was going to threaten
your health.


>I will ask about taking iodine supplements to avoid any uptake of the I-131.
>Thanks to the person who suggested this.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary L. Schroeder  		|  
schroede@bnlux1.bnl.gov         |             Boo. 
Brookhaven National Laboratory  |