Setting Off the Airport Alarms

A lingering dose of a radioactive medication may be a little-known cause of setting off an airport radiation detector. A report in the British Medical Journal describes the fate of a man who had been given radioactive iodine to treat his overactive thyroid gland. He was carrying a card describing the precautions he might need to take, but there was no mention on it of the risk of being radioactive at the airport. So after he flew to the USA, he set off the machine on checking in for his onward flight in Florida; the security people went into action. The man was detained, strip-searched, and sniffed at by sniffer dogs. Finally, when he showed the guards the card he’d been given, they let him go.

Apparently, patients can trigger a radiation detector for up to 95 days after dosing – of course, it depends on the actual radioisotope given. Four cases have been reported in the medical literature, so far.

Interestingly, this suggests that the radiation detectors are set to a more sensitive level in Florida than in the UK . We may expect further such events in the future, it seems.