7/2/2012 i am radioactive! or: my PET/CT scan - F-18 DOPA (fluorodopa)

Source: bionerd23
Date: 7/2/2012
Editor's Note: I was a bit shocked when I saw this video, poor lady allowed herself to be turned in to a human guinea pig. ;'(

Video Description
my brain is now running on radioactive dopamine...

i was injected with 200 MBq F-18, a radioactive isotope of fluorine, in the chemical form F-18-DOPA.
200 MBq means 200 million decays, resulting in 400 million gamma rays (annihilation photons) every SECOND.
this again resulted in an acute dose of about 5 mSv (including the 0.5 mSv CT scan prior to the PET scan) to me.

this was a scientific study (ethics-commission approved) to study the mechanisms of learning.
studies like this are performed on healthy test subjects on a daily basis.
i'm curious to hear your opinion on the matter...

but anyway, i am not ill, i am a healthy test subject...
or: my PET CAT is chasing the radioactive LAB RAT! =) 

7/25/2011 Japanese Nuclear Emergency Director: You Have No Right to a Radiation-Free Life

Source: Gizmodo
Date:  7/25/2011
by: Sam Biddle


This footage, from a recent meeting of indignant Japanese citizens and feckless Japanese government types should be a little shocking. Sadly, it's just more of the same—ineptitude and inaction. Buy denying the right to avoiding radiation? OK, shocking.

The Tokyo meeting was meant to broach the push to expand the evacuation zone around Fukushima—a zone that's proven inadequately and dangerously narrow. One Fukushima resident asks, "As other people do, people in Fukushima have the right to avoid the radiation exposure and live a healthy life, too. Don't you think so?"

A Nuclear Safety Commission Of Japan rep, when pushed to go beyond his canned non-answer, deadpans "I don't know if they have that right." The crowd reacts as you would expect when told they nuclear-threatened welfare isn't a concern. After being jeered at by the understandably outraged audience, and ignoring requests to test the radioactive content of young residents' urine, the government panel packed up and left.
If you could compress the past four months' anxiety, tension, crisis, inaction, confusion, and stifled anger into one meeting room, you'd produce the above, this smoldering radioactive diamond of national failure. [via Boing Boing]

Editor's Note: Here is a plea from parents in Fukushima City for an official evacuation order from the Japanese government. A must read if you have not already.

7/17/2011 Residents of Fukushima trapped in dangerous radiation contaminated areas due to lack of government evacuation order/aid

6/26/2011 Fukushima residents' urine now radioactive

Source: The Japan Times
Date: Monday, June 27, 2011 JST

Kyodo

More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.
...
Read full article here