Pioneer Lab, Now On Digital X-Ray

Pioneer Lab is gearing up to its full procedural automation, to ensure optimum accuracy and faster Turn-Around-Time of results.

RADIOLOGY: QUICK FACTS

What is a radiation? www.osha.gov

• Radiation may be defined as energy traveling through space. Non-ionizing radiation is essential to life, but excessive exposures will cause tissue damage. All forms of ionizing radiation have suffering energy to ionize atoms that may destabilize molecules within cells and lead to tissue damage.
• Radiation sources are found in a wide range of occupational settings. If radiation is not properly controlled it can be potentially hazardous to the health of workers.

Non-Ionizing Radiation?

• Electromagnetic radiation ranging from extremely low frequency (ELF) to ultraviolet (UV) comprise non-ionizing radiation.

What are the types?

• The two types of ionizing radiation are particulars (alpha, beta, neutrons) and electromagnetic (x-rays, gamma rays radiation.)

A person can safely get up to 300 simple X-rays a year

Source: www.perlong.com by Ron Kurtus.

X-Ray Safety

X-Ray radiation is a form of ionization radiation that is potentially very hazardous. The most intense and therefore dangerous part of the instrument is the path of the incident X-ray beam. Thus care should always be exercised to know the expected path of the incident beam. Scattered radiation is typically of such reduced intensity that it poses a much smaller health risk to the researcher.

There are several properties of X-rays that make this type of radiation particularly dangerous to use in the laboratory. X-Ray radiation cannot be sensed by a human! Some people feel a tingling sensation on their skin when they are around X rays from an analytical instrument. They are not feeling the X-ray beams, but rather they are feeling charged air particles produced by the interaction of the ionizing X rays with air. If you ever feel a tingling sensation when working around any analytical X ray instrument, immediately turn off the instrument and contact the Radiation Safety Office and Crystallography Lab manager. Since only some people feel this tingling sensation, do not assume that if the sensation is not present, that the instrument cannot hurt you. xrayweb.chem.ou.edu/notes/safety.html

How does lead (PB) protect you from X-rays? By iman_college

• X-ray is an electromagnetic wave.it means that its energy is proportional to its frequency. When an electromagnetic wave collides to a material several phenomena occur.one of them is absorption. The amount of absorption depend on mass absorption coefficient and thickness of material.as density increase , this coefficient will increase and energy of transmitted beam decrease.
• X-ray has very high frequency (very high energy) that is harmful for human tissue. Consequently lead outfit or barriers is used to absorb high fraction energy of x-ray beam. Lead density=11 mean mass absorption=340 compare with Aluminum density=2.7 mean mass absorption=77.

When X-rays can be dangerous for pregnant women source: www.familydoctor.org

• X-rays exposure can be dangerous to pregnant women, but not all exposures can be harmful. The danger depends on the amount of exposure. There is a misconception that all X-rays in pregnancy can be dangerous. A dental X-ray involves your teeth alone and is not dangerous as the X-ray exposure limits to the teeth alone. However, an exposure to stomach and abdominal region can be quite dangerous to the developing fetus. X-ray exposure of pregnant women may not result always in abortion. But malformations of the developing organ can occur. Cell division occurs at a faster rate in the fresh in the fetus, but cell division can be affected by X-ray exposure. This can lead to deformed organs and an increased risk of cancer later in life. The red blood cells can be affected causing anemia and white blood cells can be affected affecting the immune system impairing the defense mechanism of the unborn.

The good news is that, most X-ray has significantly much lesser radiation.