Originally Posted by
trvlr64
Please don't speak of something you know nothing about. ENTIRE Radiology Departments are NOT SHUT DOWN when an x-ray tube goes bad.
I personally have BLOWN an x-ray tube while completing an exam. And it usually happens towards the end of life of an x-ray tube and using too high of a technique for too long for exposure in my situation.
We simply shut that room down until it can be replaced. Rampant out of control x-rays are not being created when an x-ray tube goes bad.
So don't go scaring the FT community.
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Trvlr64, I don't think he meant it that way... he meant that there is a strong culture of safety in medicine, not referring to the specific scenario of a tube "blown".
For example (in my field that I'm intimately familiar with) if there were unexplained geiger counts in our nuclear cardiology lab, the whole lab would most definitely be shut down until the radioactive material spill was located and cleaned. We would most likely be fined and have JCAHO and OSHA headaches for years, even if the spill was not significant to human life (say, one dose of tracer spilled somewhere). We would be penalized and audited for the future as it shows a sloppiness that is inexcusable.
The TSA has not shown that they audit the performance of these machines, or even demonstrated real-world third party data regarding output measurements in production units with effects on living tissue. Systematic low-dose irradiation of humans is not something to be taken lightly.