Radiation Ransack

By: Alissa Coschigano

When patients with cancer get their radiation treatment, they open up a whole world of of issues to everyone around them. Radioactive is highly dangerous and anyone who is around it is affected by it. Ann Maddox was told that she had thyroid cancer and needed to travel 500 miles away from her home in order to receive her treatment . Once she got it, she was able to be released. Issue with this being, everyone around her is no longer safe. In the car on her way home, Ann had to sit as far away as possible in order to shy away from contaminating her husband. She had to check into a hotel, in which others were staying in. She couldn't stay around her daughter because she was pregnant and radiation is extremely horrible for pregnant woman and the fetuses inside (Matthew Wald).
In 1997, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission eliminated a requirement that cancerous patients be kept in the hospital. Instead, patients can now be released right after their treatment, which ironically is at the time when they are the most radioactive. New York City has gone a step further though in attempting to fix this problem. Last June, it advised radiologists and endocrinologists, “Do not advise patients to go to a hotel, ”according to the New York Times article by Wald.
In order to reduce the risk of harming others, cancer patients can continue to stay several feet away from others, and keeping all body fluids to themselves until the Radiation decreases, from the iodine being flushed out and loosing its power.