On October 20, 2015, Japan’s health ministry announced that a worker has been diagnosed with acute leukemia because of his exposure to radiation while he was cleaning up the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima. He is the first worker to be diagnosed with cancer related to the nuclear disaster. The now 41-year-old man was part of the cleanup effort at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station from 2012 and 2013. In that time, he accumulated 15.7 mSv of radiation—more than double the dose the average person receives per year (6.2 mSv) in the United States—despite the monthly dose limit set
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Fukushima Ambassadors Program Helps Students Learn Implications of Nuclear Accident
On March 11, 2011, the citizens of Fukushima, Japan experienced a nuclear accident as a result of a tsunami and and earthquake on the same day. To help spread awareness about the status of the prefecture, Fukushima University founded the Fukushima Ambassadors Program, bringing university students all over the world to Fukushima to learn about the the implications of the accident. Among this year’s participants, Colorado State University (CSU) sent the largest number of international students to Fukushima. “The purpose of the program is to provide students with hands-on learning opportunities that focus on physical, financial, and social consequences of
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Invasive Cardiologists Are Exposed to Greater Left-Sided Cranial Radiation
According to research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), interventional cardiologists receive higher radiation exposure to the left side of their heads than the right side while performing fluoroscopically guided invasive cardiovascular (CV) procedures. The study followed seven cardiology fellows and four attending physicians who performed diagnostic and interventional CV procedures while wearing non-lead, XPF (barium sulfate/bismuth oxide) layered caps to attenuate radiation. Dosimeters were placed inside and outside of the caps at the left, center, and right sides of the operators’ heads to measure exposure. The researchers found that radiation levels at the outside
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Growth of Global Medical Imaging Systems Market
With the prevalence of chronic disease, a growing geriatric population, high patient awareness, and the introduction of advanced medical imaging systems and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), the medical imaging systems market is expected to grow through 2020, according to market research organization Hexa Research, Inc. An aging population becomes more susceptible to illness—especially chronic diseases, which accounts for the majority of deaths worldwide—and need to be diagnosed and treated with the help of medical imaging. The adoption of PACS, which stores and transfers medical images such as CT scans and X-rays, helps drive the growth of the market
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Fukushima: Japan ends evacuation of Naraha as ‘radiation at safe level’
Recently, radiation levels in the Japanese town of Naraha have fallen to safe levels following decontamination efforts, allowing the town to lift the evacuation order on its 7,400 residents. Naraha was the first municipality to evacuate after the nearby Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant suffered from an earthquake and tsunami that led to a meltdown and contamination. However, only about 100 of the nearly 2,600 households have returned since residents remain cautious about health concerns and lack of infrastructure. To accommodate their concerns, the town is running 24-hour monitoring at a water filtration plant, testing tap water for radioactive materials.
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Radiation Safety at Fukushima Site
After a quarterly progress report from the independent Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced that the company has made progress in processing highly contaminated water with only a small amount remaining to be dealt with. TEPCO was also able to seal the vertical shafts in the trenches, which were the source of some of the most significant leaks to the sea. As another measure of improvement, workers now only need to wear full face masks at 10% of the Fukushima Daiichi site because of the reduction in ambient radiation, the progress of general cleanup, and management
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The Importance of Radiation Safety for Healthcare Workers as Well as Patients
Over the years, we have gained better understanding of the uses and dangers of radiation. While radiation has many applications in the hospital, its invisible and odorless nature may sometimes lead healthcare workers to become complacent in handling it safely. There are two main reasons excessive radiation exposure arises in hospitals. The first reason is that healthcare workers who work with radiation have received only basic radiation training. Because they are unfamiliar with radiation safety practices, they do not employ the best risk-reduction techniques. Secondly, we often use far more radiation than necessary. Opting for higher imaging quality, for example,
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Long-Term Low-Dose Radiation Linked to Higher Leukemia Risk
Researchers found that high doses of radiation can cause Leukemia. However, in a new study, researchers found that long-term low-dose radiation exposure may also increase Leukemia risk. In this study, researchers followed 308,297 nuclear energy workers whose radiation exposures were monitored. At the end of the 27-year follow-up, about 22 percent of the workers died. Among them, 531 died from leukemia and 814 died from lymphoma. In the U.S., the average person’s yearly exposure to ionizing radiation increased from 0.5 mGy in 1982 to 3 mGy in 2006 largely due to medical exposures. The researchers also calculated that a worker’s
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Real-Time Radiation Monitor Can Reduce One-Third of Radiation Exposure for Medical Workers
In a study sponsored by the North Texas Veterans Healthcare System, researchers found that medical workers significantly reduced their radiation exposure while administering cardiac catheterizations, a type of procedure that often involves X-rays or fluoroscopy, when a real-time radiation monitoring device with auditory feedback was used. Of the 505 patients who participated in the clinical study, half were randomly assigned to wear a device that beeped with increasing frequency—varying between once every 15 minutes, once every 20 seconds, and continuously—depending on the level of radiation it detected, while the other half went without the device. Medical workers in both groups
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Combined PET-MR: A Technology Becomes Mature
Researchers examine the use of combined PET/MR in their study published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine run by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). With breakthroughs in finding new detectors to replace photomultiplier tubes (PMT) in traditional PET, such as avalanche photodiodes (APD), Geiger-mode APDs (AKA silicon PMTs or solid-state PMTs), and silicon photomultipliers (SiPM), tolerance to magnetic fields and time-of-flight PET scans became possible. X-Z LAB’s Basic Detector Module (BDM) | PET Detector Module utilizes this technology and enhances it with our patented multi-voltage threshold (MVT) algorithm. Although the researchers do not see combined PET/MR
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