For several days after thyroid cancer patients receive treatment with radioactive iodine — the goal is to kill any thyroid tissue that remains after surgery — «their body fluids are radioactive, and they pose a risk to other people,» says Jessica Clements, medical physics manager and radiation safety officer at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Dallas (a part of the Texas Health Resources hospital system). (sciencemag.org)
Walter Wagner, a former radiation safety officer and cosmic - ray physicist living in Hawaii, raised similar concerns in 1999 over an accelerator in Long Island, N.Y., that ended up not destroying the world. (scientificamerican.com)
«It was nowhere near as complex of a release as Chernobyl, which was everything from the core of the reactor,» says Peter Caracappa, a radiation safety officer and clinical assistant professor of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. «This was a slow release,» he adds, and it was limited to a few radioactive materials, including iodine 131, which has a half - life of just eight days and therefore does not lead to long - term contamination. (scientificamerican.com)