NIH will start keeping track of patients' radiation exposure

TOXICITY

NIH will start keeping track of patients' radiation exposure

By Liz Szabo

Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-01-radiation01_ST_N.htm


Concerned that Americans may be accumulating too much lifetime radiation exposure from medical tests, doctors at the National Institutes of Health will begin recording how much radiation patients receive from CT scans and other procedures in their electronic medical records.

A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine in December estimated that radiation from such procedures, whose use has grown dramatically in recent years, causes 29,000 new cancers and 14,500 deaths a year.

A second Archivesstudy that month said the problem could be even worse, calculating that patients get four times as much radiation from imaging tests as previously believed. Children are particularly vulnerable because they're small and still growing.


For the full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-01-radiation01_ST_N.htm


Copyright 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Debate Still Raging over Cell Phone, Tumor Link

CANCER

Debate still raging over cell phone, tumor link
Results of major study not likely to quell fears

By Scott LaFee

San Diego Union-Tribune

Source:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/03/debate-still-raging-over-cell-phone-tumor-link

The final results of an international study intended to produce definitive evidence on whether cell phones cause cancer could be released any day now.

But those findings likely will just deepen an already acrimonious debate that has lasted about 20 years.

Nine years ago, the World Health Organization launched Interphone to determine whether brain tumors can be linked to electromagnetic radiation from cell phones. The researchers analyzed cell phone use by 14,000 people in 13 countries. Half of the participants had brain tumors; half did not.

For the full article:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/03/debate-still-raging-over-cell-phone-tumor-link


© Copyright 2010 The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. All Rights Reserved.