Hell No, We Won't Glow
Dr. Emily Deans, @evolutionarypsy and Psych Today blogger tweets:
Dentist: "The x-rays are perfectly safe." Me: "Then why do you leave the room?"
Hell No, We Won't Glow
Dr. Emily Deans, @evolutionarypsy and Psych Today blogger tweets:
Dentist: "The x-rays are perfectly safe." Me: "Then why do you leave the room?"
1) Because the feds have very , very strict guidelines for short term, annual, and lifetime exposure
2) While the set of x-rays one receives over a year take up a large chunk of allowed exposure for civilians (and you can actually exceed that if the feds bothered to measure dosage from things like regular flights....), just a set or two a year is fine.
3) The doc OTOH does these over and over again. Depending on where he stands relative to the source, and how many a day are done, he may actually collect the allowed lifetime dosage after a few years. If unlucky, he may collect the allowed annual. If really unlucky, despite how conservative the fed limits are (they use the most conservative health model for lifetime exposure, ignoring the fact that we pick up background all the time) - he may even get enough over time to get sick.
Like all toxins, it's in the dose.
dg at April 16, 2012 12:54 AM
This is only a continuing issue because people won't learn about radiation - or even the least thing about actual risk. "Learning" is not "staring open-mouthed at the latest scare".
Radwaste at April 16, 2012 2:11 AM
Radwaste: Do you know the difference in terms of exposure between the backscatter x-ray devices used at airports and, say, a dental x-ray machine?
Reason I bring this up is, as we've observed, the backscatter operators at the airport security lines don't appear to be shielded. If I were operating the machine, would I want to be?
By the way, passing through security at DCA a week ago, I was able to get a look back at my picture on the monitor of the L3Comm machine at our checkpoint. This was one of the newer models: no nekkid RPM, just a vague outline of my body, and a highlighted area showing where my wallet was.
Old RPM Daddy at April 16, 2012 4:41 AM
Amy, if you're that passionate about avoiding radiation exposure, you'd have to kiss your cherished vacations to France goodbye, since flying from LA to Paris will give you a dose of about 7 millirem or so, compared to 0.5 millirem for a dental x-ray.
RPM, Rapiscan claims an exposure of about 0.01 millirem per scan. Good luck finding a TSA employee to whom that number means anything.
Martin at April 16, 2012 10:11 AM
> because people won't learn about radiation
Mostly, I loathe you for taking unremarkable, contextual truths and turning them into self-aggrandizing twaddle in the service of your darling little career. You insist on talking as if every other person is supposed to want to be you, even if they have to, y'know, take a 100-level physics class to do it. (Yes! The achievement is THAT meaningful!!!)
How did dg manage to get there so much more effectively, and so much less pompously? Why does dg reassure while others intimidate and condescend? Who's doing more for a rational appraisal of civilization's challenging but rewarding technologies?
dg is my new blog hero.
I'm going to hang a teen-style poster of dg in my bedroom, right next to David Cassidy. And Chuck Darwin. And Cammy Paglia.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 10:41 AM
And for the record, the layout of my new dentist's office is sort of an open area with a few scattered pillar-walls. Some of those walls are hollow, or hold the X-ray arm in a shared (non-leaded) cabinet. In other words, free line-of-sight to other patient care areas. When X-rays are taken, the op goes behind a wall to press the shutter (I presume; I'm usually trying to hold the pose and can't turn around to watch).
Point being, I'm quite certain that they're doing their God Damnedest to make sure the dose is as low as freaking possible for the required film exposure.
(It's very easy to imagine that a lifelong, three-pack-a-day smoker who gets cancer at age 65 would try to sue the dentist for his mysterious killer X-rays. Dental/medical professionals will do the maintenance schedules and record-keeping to protect themselves from that kind of attack.)
But the TSA? That new, imperious and impervious defender of public safety?
I don't see why they'd give a rat's ass, whether for the safety of the public, or of their own high-school-dropout employees, who spend their days feeling up bloggers and children.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 10:51 AM
Aren't the employees supposed to have a union or something that would care about that?
Old RPM Daddy at April 16, 2012 12:01 PM
Verily, IIRC the majority of union members are federal employees nowadays, which is an important consideration for the liberal adoration of labor.
On the other hand, how well did unionism work out for Detroit?
No, sorry... The TSA is a uniformly destructive, life-ending force. There's nothing good or competent about it.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 12:35 PM
Well, life-poisoning, anyway.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 12:47 PM
Crid, I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
If you have any evidence that people DO want to learn about radiation, well, bring it right on up. It can sit right next to your unending efforts to help San Onofre generate power safely.
Oh, wait...
Meanwhile, this has been done. It's not that TSA cares. It's what they bought, it's ineffective, and still your rights are being killed lots faster than you are.
Short story, backscatter vs dental: backscatter forms an image by detecting reflected x-rays. detail is not important. Dental forms the image by detecting penetrating x-rays. Detail is important. A dental x-ray is about 50 times the exposure per gram of body tissue of the backscatter machine. The detector configuration, not the beam, determines the detail.
Radwaste at April 16, 2012 2:38 PM
> I can explain it to you
And you want to so badly... With a ferocity deeper than any lovesickness, you ache to be consulted by the little people!
Who, as it turns out, aren't interested in hearing it from careerists.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 3:09 PM
I'm with Radwaste on this one. It's one thing to complain about something, it's another to complain about said thing that you know nothing about, and steadfastly refuse to actually learn anything about it too.
Too many people just see the word radiation as BAD. Run, it'll get you.. aahhhhh! Just like nuclear is nothing but bad/scary/evil.
Sadly, plenty of these people have power and tons more vote for those that will/do.
It's not like he's saying you have to get a degree in nuclear physics. Just that people should learn a few basics about what radiation means... stuff that should be (used to be?) taught in basic school anyway. I know I learned about a lot of this stuff before I graduated High School. Granted, I then went out and read a lot more then the basics myself.
Miguelitosd at April 16, 2012 3:43 PM
> people should learn a few basics about what
> radiation means...
Done!
Next?
Nope, this Raddy feller won't be happy until everyone sees things precisely his way (and he gets appointed chair of the NRC). If you disagree with him, it's because you just haven't heard him talk enough, or haven't done the reading... You're just a rube. Yeah, THAT's the ticket! You just don't UNDERSTAND....
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 5:45 PM
PS- Than the basics.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 5:45 PM
Rad,
Is this radiation chart relatively accurate?
Truly wondering.
Jim P. at April 16, 2012 8:21 PM
Just as an FYI, if you go to a dentist who has a direct digital xray system, they use about a 1/10th of the radiation of old film xrays. Better living through technology.
ZombieApocalypseKitten at April 16, 2012 8:29 PM
ZAK-
Thanks, good to know.
Also... I read some of your blog. As rule, I think conservatives are funnier than liberals. Lefties, especially wool-dyed ones, can't laugh about ANYTHING unless it has a poignant, fairy-tale morel about how someone has disappointed them... Their jokes are always a backhanded affirmation of their own sensitivities and excellence... But they're not funny or meaningfully ironic, and that's a serious character flaw. Real decency and humor require humility.
(That link has plenty for the haters from both perspectives, I promise.)Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 9:00 PM
With respect to TSA backscatter machines, I've noodled around with some numbers and concluded that the dose to a passenger is probably negligible.
First of all, the radiation used is fairly low energy, and won't penetrate very deeply into the body.
Secondly, the amount of radiation needed to get a good backscatter reading is much less than what it takes to blast through a body to a piece of film or a digital receiver.
While the specifics of the units I googled were secret, I think you could make the case that you get a few dozen times more radiation, and that radiation will penetrate deeper into the body, than what you encounter at the airport.
Karl at April 16, 2012 10:04 PM
Martin's point above:
> flying from LA to Paris will give you a dose of
> about 7 millirem or so, compared to 0.5 millirem
> for a dental x-ray.
is noteworthy. I've heard this often enough to wonder whether anyone's done solid epidemiology on international pilots, stew's, and other professional flyers.
I hereby withdraw the sarcasm to Miguel and apologize.
Yet I got no faith that energetic (and professionally interested) partisans will acknowledge when others have 'learned' enough, even in matters of life and death.
Just f'rinstance... Didja hear the one about PETA?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 16, 2012 10:50 PM
Yes. With IIRC fully invoked, pilot's and flight attendants have roughly a 1% higher incidence of cancer than the rest of the population.
Jeff Guinn at April 18, 2012 2:27 PM
Sophie's Choice, then: A career in Heaven with a slight chance of early termination.
I've just read, for about the tenth time in 30 years, that aspirin's benefits are not to be ignored.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 19, 2012 1:15 AM
Jim P.: Yes!
This stuff is only a secret to... Crid, who says things like, "Who, as it turns out, aren't interested in hearing it from careerists."
Following this line of thinking, we should never ask an architect how buildings are made, a shipwright how ships are built, a doctor for advice about our body, a civil engineer about concrete... {ad infinitum}
Apparently, making things up is a superior tactic. It's mental homeopathy.
Radwaste at April 20, 2012 6:48 PM
> Following this line of thinking, we should
> never ask an architect how buildings are made
We should never let them tell us precisely which buildings are worth living in, especially when they're angling for a commi$$ion.
Get the picture? It's an integrity thing.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at April 21, 2012 2:01 PM
"Get the picture? It's an integrity thing."
No, it's a "Crid's ego" thing. Now, it's so important to be right in the absence of actual knowledge that it's time to start smearing others.
You're the perfect ass, here - implying that some kind of payola is keeping me from telling you the truth, when in fact what you think is simply popular nonsense.
Geez, what an idiot. I'm not in the scanner business, but I'm apparently a borderline criminal for knowing how they work. Wow, that's some serious crack consumption in Crid-land!
Radwaste at April 26, 2012 10:16 PM
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