[Milsurplus] Milsurplus Radiation

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

The lab was in violation of numerous regulations letting you go out amongst 
the general public.  The general rule is that any source greater than 2 mR/Hr 
must be placarded and the 2 mR/Hr boundary must be marked and if not under 
direct observation, barricaded.  100 mR/Hr for a day amounts to about half a year 
of the allowable industrial exposure.  And it's allowable only to people who 
are monitored, which the general public is not.

In a message dated 8/3/2006 11:16:49 PM Central Daylight Time, 
die at dieconsulting.com writes: 
>     I've had a SPECT stress test and checked myself immediately
> after it with an old 60s yellow CD V-700 Geiger counter and man was I
> radioactive (the one and only time in my life I could actually be said
> to have a hot bod).   I could pick up the radiation from my body about
> 20 feet away with the counter - which is hardly a super sensitive modern
> detector device - and I read well over 100 mr/hr with the probe a few
> inches from my chest for almost a day.
> 
>     The radioactivity was pretty short lived, it only took about 4 or
> 5 days for it to decline to pretty close to undetectable even with the GM
> tube probe right on my chest.   Part of this is the natural decay of
> the isotopes used which have very short half lives (hours) and part was
> the natural process of elimination of the compounds involved (I'm sure
> the john in my house was mildly radioactive for a while).
> 
>     So I can imagine a variety of overt and covert detectors would
> get quite strong readings from someone just tested (and yes, they do
> inject radioisotope labeled compounds directly into ones veins and image
> the perfusion of the heart muscle by scanning it with a directional detector
> array and building a three dimensional image of areas with good blood flow
> and bad...).

Robert Downs - Houston
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