Someone needs to learn about cumulative effects.
thanks. I was not sure how to respond to this. I suspect they understand that doctors or more likely the nurse or tech would be exposed to dozens of xrays a day instead of less than one a year but you never know.
Also we probably shouldn't tell them about background radiation.
For the curious a chest X-ray is about 0.02 mSv where your annual dose from background is about 2.4mSv, but this easily can be twice this if you live at high altitude or in an area with a higher level of radioactive minerals. Or if you are very lucky somewhere where both are a problem.
Hell airline crews are classified as radiation workers because the higher doses of cosmic radiation puts them over the threshold of on job exposure .
after the 4th opinion, and a leg grows out of your chest
"Couldn't find any broken bones but we were alarmed to find a leg growing out of your chest."
People are upset when I throw a single pebble but when I throw a hand full they suddenly get really mad 🤷♀️
Is it cumulative? Or is it probability — which of course goes up if you shower yourself in radiation multiple times a day?
It is cumulative.
https://ionactive.co.uk/resource-hub/glossary/accumulated-dose
Radiation is not a matter of chance, but a matter of how much.
Every day, your body will probably generate at least one cell that would be cancerous if it wasn't for your immune system. If that probability goes up slightly as a result of mildly increased radiation that day, it likely won't overload the immune system's capacity to deal with it. If it is overexposed to radiation, eventually the greater probability of cancerous mutations exceeds the immune system's capacity.
It's probabilistic when it's 1 particle at a time.
At these rates of exposure from radiation it becomes primarily cumulative because at some point it's not a question of if you'll damage some cells or not, it's a question of if you're damaging them faster than they can repair or not.
There's still a probabilistic factor in when it leads to medically relevant damage and of what type, but it follows a pretty predictable scale dependent on prior dose
Imagine you're a bartender, and every time someone orders a shot, you have to take one too. One? Totally fine. Two? No problem. A hundred? You're gonna want a bucket (or a lead shield) to dump that shot (or radiation) in
Tbf they are taking a lot of X-rays throughout the day with multiple patients. You’re but just one of them.
Eat one meatball sub and you're fine.
Eat 20 meatball subs a day, 5 days a week, for your entire professional career? Not medically advisable.
You're not the boss of me!
I just said medically advisable, I fully support your right to eat as many meatball subs as you feel is right for you.
*Rad techs/radiographers
Also. 1 x-ray no biggie. 10000 x-rays real shit.
Cause for you its probably your only xray for that year.
For the doctor its probably the 50th, of 500, that day.
So they go behind shielding to protect themselves from their massively higher than yours exposure.
So you're saying it'll hurt you a bit. But as long as it's not a ton of bits it doesn't really matter.
Exactly
And they give you a lead vest to cover Your balls, but nothing to cover your head.
It's actually really logical.
Your Balls constantly store and generate new DNA, which can easily be destroyed by X-Rays. Your Brain doesn't really.
So your Balls are really vulnerable to X-Ray, while your brain isn't
Gotta protect vital organs.
Bones block x rays better than the thin skin around your nuts
I recently got my hips xrayed and I got zero protection for the boys.
They stay back as much for radiation protection as for protection from screaming patients being twisted into pretzels for clearer shots of your scoliosis
everyone has already covered the obvious here, but another important protocol for dealing with radiation, particularly the spicy kind. Is to incur as low a cost of exposure as possible. I.E. if you don't need to be in front of the spicy particles. Don't be.
Also doctors: ..... we're not using an x-ray ... Instead we're giving you a CT scan, which will give you 50 to 70 times more radiation exposure than one x-ray.
Which isn't very much
It kind of helps to have a 3D image sometimes, especially if you can use radiation-shielding or radioactive substances to contrast veins or organs. They are rarely used for bones of course.
From a comment above "a chest X-ray is about 0.02 mSv where your annual dose from background is about 2.4mSv, but this easily can be twice this if you live at high altitude or in an area with a higher level of radioactive minerals"
So you get a choice between half the radiation from existing on Earth for a year, and a high tech diagnostic image, or... die from whatever disease you might have?
If the medical outcome from better planning due to having the higher resolution image increases your survival chances enough then it compensates for the radiation exposure.
Like say, the medical outcome of bleeding out internally vs being saved because the scan showed the doctors where the bleeding is.
Being a radiation free corpse doesn't sound great to me
https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging
I do believe this is the most ironing boards I've seen in one picture (that doesn't have to do with ironing boards).
I was unaware they are apparently sought after for cover?
Dentists too!
It's all fun and games until they yell "fire in the hole!"
