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Americans See 600% Radiation Increase Since 1980, Study Shows

by Tim Stevens on March 5, 2009 at 11:22 AM

Americans Receiving More Radiation, but For a Good Reason

A recent study of Americans' exposure to radiation reached a startling conclusion: On average, we're now subjected to six times the amount of radiation that we were subjected to back in 1980. On hearing this, everyone's first thoughts go to fears of cancer caused by cell phones or Wi-Fi, but now doctors and professors are saying that there's no reason to fear, because all that extra radiation is being put to good use.

For one thing, the increase is almost entirely due to the increase in radiation-related procedures being performed on Americans. Despite how it may look, though, the increase isn't due to radiation's becoming more pervasive so much as it's due to radiation treatments' becoming more intense. Averaging those figures out over every American causes misleading results. Cynthia McCollough, a radiological physics professor at the Mayo Clinic , told Live Science:
Adding up all the doses and then spreading out the total over the entire population, no matter a person's age, occupation, location, or health status is not appropriate for assessing risk to the general population.
CT scans, which take multiple X-Ray images to form a 3-D picture inside the body, are being used more frequently, but are actually far more efficient than before, and are still only being used on those who are at high risk. In other words, while there's more radiation being dealt out, most people are not seeing an appreciably higher amount of radiation, themselves, which means that we've got to put our dreams of radioactive super-powers back on the shelf. [From: Live Science]

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Tags: cancer, chemotherapy, ct scan, CtScan, health, radiation

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