It is widely accepted that radiation causes cancer. It is known that the greater the exposure to ionizing radiation, the greater the risk and amount of DNA mutations and, therefore, the greater the risk of developing cancers, illnesses and diseases from DIRE.

Often, we hear the term “low dose” to describe

medical diagnostic tests, but we aren’t informed of the actual radiation dose. Further, the clinician and/or practitioner is, most often, unaware of the dose. This leaves patients

uninformed and concerned about the health risks associated with radiation exposure.

Patients are becoming more aware of the harms of radiation with increased access to medical information. When patients are more aware of the risks of radiation in medical tests than their physician, they lose trust. When a physician is trained to routinely state that the diagnostic examination is “low dose” without actually having anyknowledge of the actual dose, it becomes a liability. The patient can verify the dose which can actually be very high in comparison to other studies leading to increased liability. When a patient is diagnosed with cancer after having numerous radiation exams, they can claim that the exposure may have caused it.

We rarely hear about healthcare being a culprit in climate change, yet medicine is leaving one of the largest carbon footprints due to diagnostic tests and interventional treatments. Radiation treatments, surgeries, diagnostic tests and medical facilities are producing excessive and unnecessary greenhouse

gases.

The current gold standards of medical practice eliminate the patient’s right to choose what diagnostic test they will receive. For example, mammograms, CT and CT/PET scans are the gold standards in breast cancer diagnosis and follow up, yet the accumulation of ionization radiation in breast cancer diagnosis is never taken into consideration as a potential cause for cancer.

A person can be exposed to one CT scan in a year or 20. There is currently no monitoring system. They often see varying clinicians that don’t have records of prior diagnostic exams. Lack of radiation monitoring increases the patient’s risk for being one of the statistics that develop cancer from DIRE.

The majority of ionizing radiation on our planet is man-made. The two primary sources of man-made ionizing radiation are nuclear and medical. Nuclear includes reactors, weapons, weapons testing and accidents. Medical includes CT, CT/PET, Flouroscopy, Angiography and Radiography, etc. The amount of DIRE, (not including exposure in radiation treatments) exceeds all of the nuclear radiation on our planet combined by greater than 200 times.

Lead shields used to be provided to all patients when radiation was involved in medical diagnostics. Now, radiation protection is primarily provided for the technicians and physicians performing the procedures while the patient is left completely exposed to direct gamma rays slicing through their bodies and particles of radiation scatter that linger after the examination is complete. The DIRE act would mandate lead shields to protect every area of the body not being examined.

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