Chemotherapy Patients Set Off Subway Alarms!

Radioactive patients set off subway alarms

NewScientist.com news service

Americans undergoing radioactive medical treatments risk setting off anti-terrorism sensors in public places, and subsequent strip searches by police, warn doctors at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

A 34-year-old patient who had been treated with radioactive iodine for Graves disease, a thyroid disorder, returned to their clinic three weeks later complaining he had been strip-searched twice in Manhattan subway stations. Christopher Buettner and Martin Surks report the case in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Police had identified him as emitting radiation and had detained him for further questioning. This patient's experience indicates that radiation detection devices are being installed in public places in New York City and elsewhere," the doctors write

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