B2B sfyh.comWASHINGTON – Cancer patients sent home after treatment with radioactive iodine have contaminated hotel rooms and set off alarms on public transportation, a congressional investigation has found.
They’ve come into close contact with vulnerable people, including pregnant women and children, and the household trash from their homes has triggered radiation detectors at landfills.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., says the problem stems from a decision years ago by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ease requirements that thyroid cancer patients remain in the hospital a few days after swallowing doses of radioactive iodine to shrink their tumors.
“There is a strong likelihood that members of the public have been unwittingly exposed to radiation from patients,” Markey wrote Wednesday in a letter to the NRC that details findings by his staff. “This has occurred because of weak NRC regulations, ineffective oversight of those who administer these medical treatments, and the absence of clear guidance to patients and to physicians.”
About 40,000 people a year develop thyroid cancer, which generally responds well to treatment. Certain types are treated by swallowing radioactive iodine, or iodine-131. It concentrates in the thyroid, but small amounts are excreted through urine, saliva and sweat.
People given high doses may be kept in the hospital, but many patients are sent home with instructions on how to minimize exposure to others over the next few days. Most of the radiation is gone in about a week, says the National Cancer Institute’s website for patients.
About 7 percent of outpatients said in the survey they had gone directly to a hotel after their treatment, most of them with their doctors’ knowledge. Hotel stays are a particular concern, since the patient can expose other guests and service workers. In 2007, an Illinois hotel was contaminated after linens from a patient’s room were washed together with other bedding. The incident would probably have gone unreported but for nuclear plant workers who later stayed in the same hotel and set off radiation alarms when they reported to work.
• About one-fourth of outpatients said in the survey they never discussed with their doctors how to avoid exposing pregnant women and children to radiation. The survey found 56 cases in which a patient shared a bathroom or bedroom with a pregnant woman or a child, or had other close contact, which is strongly discouraged in medical guidelines.
Markey scolded the NRC for its previous assurances that current regulations are adequate to protect the public. “It is difficult to conclude based on the survey results that this belief is justified,” he wrote.
The congressman urged the agency to revise its rules so that more patients are kept in the hospital. Patient advocates say insurance companies routinely refuse to pay for a hospital room because it’s not required.
Markey also urged a ban on releasing patients to hotels and letting them take public transportation. And he called for tighter government oversight of medical facilities that provide treatment with radioactive iodine.