Why are x-rays allowed when it's been proven that they will cause cancer and more than likely shorten your lifespan by...

cont.

This bullshit about like "yeah dude, one single photon can trigger cancer so radiation from any source in any dose is dangerous" is 100% bogus and 100% retarded with the dumbest logic ever. This is assuming that you could get brain cancer just from a random photon going into your head and through your brain and freeing some electrons at ANY TIME IN YOUR LIFE, which we know is not the case. Our bodies repair DNA damage from ionizing radiation every single fucking minute we're alive. Getting a couple of milisieverts or 100 microsieverts isn't going to do a thing. Now, if we go up to say 20+ milisieverts, it gets interesting, but still less than a 1% incidence rate. It's just so NOT something to worry about that I personally think it's a bit criminal for doctors to say anything about it being dangerous or even hint to its dangers, because it just isn't and you scare the shit out of people who do not know anything about it. I've spent a year because of school researching this exact topic and there is not a single shred of evidence in the several decades we have been studying radiation induced cancer that any scenario where you are exposed to ionizing radiation doses under 100 milisieverts is going to kill you, not one single study. There have been a couple of studies from Chernobyl clean-up crews where they say that doses of 40 milisieverts gave some of the workers things like bone marrow cancer and that is a chronic increased dose, which is more dangerous for cancer formation.

>Why are x-rays allowed when it's been proven that they will cause cancer and more than likely shorten your lifespan by decades?
even the 5 Rem limit for radiation workers only correlates to less than a 1% increase in cancer risk.
you do realize radiation is used to cure cancer right? in like a shitton of different ways

A medical X-ray provides a fraction of the radiation that you would receive from walking around outside with exposed skin.

>you do realize radiation is used to cure cancer right? in like a shitton of different ways

Well yes, when you shoot it at the tumor, it kills the tumor. It's not like radiation has magical therapeutic properties. Usually, it just destroys your DNA.

>It's not like radiation has magical therapeutic properties.
Hormesis bb :^)

>A medical X-ray provides a fraction of the radiation that you would receive from walking around outside with exposed skin.

i think 4 bitewings is the same as being in a tanning bed for 20 minutes.

>trying to establish an equivalence between UV and X-rays

yes and typically in radiation therapy, it will end up causing a secondary cancer because the doses are extremely high, like multiple sieverts.

Not usually, not if performed properly. And remember the alternatives are usually removal of the organ/body part (removal of the eye, lobectomy, removal of the prostate, etc.) which come with worse complications.
and it's way more than a few seiverts, for prostate brachytherapy we're talking 125 Gray

What would you say to people that think their dental x-rays or CT scans are going to give them cancer?

They're wrong.

...

y tho

im going to keep spamming this at you. its the fundamental basis for all medicine.

statistically insignificant increase in cancer risk

>trusting statistics

>implying health effects from low dose rate exposure isn't stochastic

>Why are x-ray allowed

How the fuck are you going to ban a section of the em spectrum? How retarded can you get?

he mean in medical and dental imaging.

>Why is tobacco allowed when it's been proven that they will cause cancer and more than likely shorten your lifespan by decades?

>Not trusting bayesian stats

What, you don't like accurate predictions?

there is no proof that medical imaging causes cancer in the doses used.

There is a study for dental x-rays and brain tumor patients. They asked a control group(people who didn't have brain tumors) and the case group(people who did have brain tumors) whether or not they had dental x-rays in their life.

the result?

92.xx% of the control said yes

95.xx% of the case said yes

and they use this ~3%, this information to say that dental x-rays cause brain tumors.

That's how stupid these studies are.

but guess what, the study was blown up on loads of websites/blogs. It's the dumbest thing ever. of course dental x-rays don't cause cancer. they're totally negligible doses of radiation.

1. literally every dentist would be immediately sued out the ass

2. literally every hospital/doctor/company creating any x-ray machines would be sued out of the ass because those obviously use higher doses of radiation and therefore should cause more cancer(newsflash, they obviously do not because this shit wasn't dangerous in the first place)

3. all medical physicists would be scratching their heads wondering how they let this happen, people with PhDs who have spent years studying and researching this shit

4. cancer rates would be way, way higher than they are if something so small such as dental x-rays or medical x-rays or CT scans were more likely than not to cause cancer

The world would be flipped upside down, basically. This is how you know it's not the reality. Yes, it is only logical to say your risk of cancer has gone up after receiving ionizing radiation, but that's about as far as it goes. The actual increase in risk is minimal. You'll probably die of heart failure, or a cancer that was in a totally different part of your body. Keep in mind, the average life span in a first world country is like ~80. This means that the average person lives to about 80. This means that your chance of getting cancer is really low already, and a minimal risk increase doesn't mean much.

My problem with people saying "there is nothing to worry about" is that what do they really care? It will be 1+ years before anything would manifest so this person will be long gone and not have to deal with it, and why would this person want to tell me that it is probably bad that I got the scan when they can just say "don't worry about it you'll be fine" just to calm me down and make it as if there is nothing to worry about so they don't have to have that confrontation with me.
It just can be that these doses are safe. They are so significantly above the background radiation dose that it just can't be safe. 2 mSv instantaneous dose IS a lot. I don't understand why everyone is shrugging their shoulders and acting like it's no biggie or something. It sounds crazy to say it's not bad. The logic is not there to me. I've looked at studies. I've seen how you can get cancer from doses all of the way down to 5-100 mSv according to the atomic bomb studies. Why would 2 mSv be any different? It seems like something that we will regret in a few decades or something as a big mistake.

cont.

Am I wrong? I don't know how you could look at someone who did get cancer because of their medical imaging and go "it was necessary and you knew the risks involved". You're killing someone because of preventative medicine. I don't see how that isn't grossly irresponsible.(i'm not directing this to you or anyone here specifically)
Hell, I just went to another doctor today and they told me a single CT scan isn't going to give me cancer. According to lots of studies and articles I'm reading, it's not so clear with some even claiming that they DO 100% increase your risk by a whole lot, yet everyone acts like it's ridiculous to even consider the idea or have any worries.
The idea that doctors could be giving who knows how many people brain cancer just because they didn't want to talk to the patient for five more minutes and find out that they probably DON'T need this head CT scan is extremely nauseating and depresses the shit out of me. You're supposed to be helping people, and something like brain cancer is a death sentence either literally or you will mentally never be as you were even if you survive. I'm not even talking about all of the chest and abdominal scans and the kinds of deadly cancers that could come from them.
If I am wrong, please explain. I don't get the casual answers I receive when I ask questions about this. People are scared of the radiation from regular x-rays and airport backscatter scanners for fucks sake, and everyone here is shrugging off CT scans and the huge doses they give you in comparison? It seems like a big, cruel joke.
Again, please explain how my outrage is unjustified.

recently went in for an upper body X-ray and I asked a lot of questions. Turns out it's totally fine if you get them every 5 years or so, but it's only dangerous if you're exposed to those rays daily.

think about all the radiation our bodies have to deal with on a daily basis and we're still fine aren't we

what do you mean by "all the radiation"

it's about 10 microsieverts per day. literally nothing in comparison to even a regular x-ray which can be 100 microsieverts in one blast no question, let alone a CT which can be literally 2,000 microsieverts for the lowest scan in like 10 seconds.

>It will be 1+ years before anything would manifest
try 10+
>you can get cancer from doses all of the way down to 5-100 mSv according to the atomic bomb studies.
>atomic bomb studies
>extrapolating data from high doses to get an equivalent risk from much, much lower doses
linear no threshold hypothesis a shit. google radiation hormesis.
>Am I wrong?
yes.
why do you think everyone saying it's fine is a sociopath with no ethical concerns about your well being, just lying to you?

>>extrapolating data from high doses to get an equivalent risk from much, much lower doses

the atomic bomb studies go all of the way down to 5 mSv, totally in the range of almost all CT scans.

Do you think the NRC limit of 5 Rem for radiation workers is unjustified and dangerous?
if you evenly distribute the allowable radiation dose allowed to rad workers, you average 137 microseiverts per day. that's an x-ray every day in addition to background contributions.
it's not an issue.

If you have a medical physicist explain it to you, you would understand why it's not a problem. It's the equivalent to having a bucket of water over your head, and someone asked "what would make you drown, pouring all of the water over your head all at once(a CT/x-ray) or pouring an equal amount each day for 365 days so the bucket empties on the last day(your natural yearly exposure)?

The choice you make is irrelevant because neither will make you drown. The average dose from the atomic bombs was 200 mSv.

Pros vs. Cons. It's perceived to have saved more lives than it ruins. Until we have something better that's what we do

just add that pouring the whole bucket on your head may trigger a water damn breaking in the future and drowning you in its path, at a date you cannot determine and have zero control over, and yes you would be correct.

>why do you think everyone saying it's fine is a sociopath with no ethical concerns about your well being, just lying to you?

because it doesn't look like it's fine at all. That's a high dose. 2 mSv in 10 seconds when you typically receive that in one fucking year? yeah dude, totally fine.

who the fuck would believe that?

>you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting in a fatal car crash every time you drive

if you said 1 in 100 lifetime, that'd make a lot more sense. 1 in 100 every single time you drive sounds a bit much.

it's a really good way to compare the risk though. 1 in 100 chance of dying from driving in your lifetime, versus this 1 in 169 brain cancer risk + the 1 in 5000-10,000 increase from a scan. it's really not that significant at all...

i had a head CT that was totally unnecessary. i was really mad about it for months afterwards but mostly because it wasn't needed, not because i think it's going to kill me. the risk is too low.

everyone ITT is going to be really pissed when they die and realize they wasted lots of their time worrying about something they can't change.

This is like worrying about something genetic. It already happened and it's at the cellular level. You can't control it at all. The only thing you can do is eat well and exercise and hope you live to an old age, and according to uhm, humanity, the average person from a first world country lives to about 79 or so.

The risk is really low anyway. I really don't get the worry here. Smoking or drinking is probably way more dangerous.

Forgetting these scans even happened is the only real thing you can do that I think would actually help anyone here, because I don't think any amount of evidence short of something totally objective would convince anyone that it won't do something to them specifically.

Stop
Listening
To
Alex
"The Cuckmesiter"
Jones

I've never listened to them. Why? Do they have some weird ass conspiracy with doctors and x-rays and them wanting you to get cancer or some shit like that?

of course it's dangerous you dumb fuck. why wouldn't it be? that's a shitload of radiation

You can look at cancer statistics and literally everything has gone down or been the same for at least the last 10 years. This means that CT scans couldn't possibly be causing all of this cancer that you retards are talking about as they have been around for 4 decades. If what everyone ITT is saying is true, where are the increased rates and all of these people dying of radiation induced cancers? I'll wait. I've had a head CT scan, and brain cancer rates have not moved for quite a long time so I don't see any reason to worry.

seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/ld/brain.html

if what everyone ITT says is true, then you would see that rate skyrocketing after several decades as it starts right when the CT scanner was used publicly so that rate from 1975 or so should be the "no radiation induced cancers" rate. It'd be very obvious if the radiation from medical imaging caused cancers. These secret, invisible excess cancers, it just doesn't add up to me to say that it causes cancer when there is no actual proof.

unless someone can show the flaw in this, i'd have to agree. i've seen zero evidence showing that x rays or ct scans cause cancer, but quite a lot of stuff against it including this which seems really hard to attack.

What is this, a fallout thread?

Why are french fries allowed when it's been proven that they will cause cancer and more than likely shorten your lifespan by decades?

If all medical procedures were as dangerous as driving I think that would be pretty bad.

>you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting in a fatal car crash every time you drive
Lol what the fuck are you talking about

I guess he's a pretty bad driver

Can anyone show the flaw in this reasoning? I had a CT scan from a really bad doctor and I've been worrying about it for a long time.

this is because it's so rare to get cancer from a ct scan that it possibly doesn't even happen.

seriously, the only thing i can conclude is that maybe, maybe if you're a small child and get a lot of scans, you're at risk. everything else is a total wank, of course you aren't at risk. maybe if you had a shit load of scans to one spot, and i mean like 10+ in a year or something.

If x-rays caused cancer, cancer rates would be really high. lol. debunked you in one sentence faggot OP

Why is going out allowed although it is proven sunlight causes cancer? Why is living allowed although it is proven it will cause death?

You're not supposed to be in direct sunlight for that long because it will give you cancer. You're literally wrong. Any agency will tell you that.

x-rays are indirectly ionizing, meaning you need two x-rays to hit the same cell for a double strand break to be possible. That's really hard to do at the doses being used in medical imaging. Once you hit like 100+ mSv, it becomes possible but pretty unlikely. Once you hit 1 Sv, it's totally possible but still not that likely.

The point is that, there is a reason that it is so hard to show that these scans cause cancer, because biologically, it's just really, really hard to do at these low doses. Try hitting an atom with x-rays simultaneously, I would gladly bet $1,000 that you can't do it. An x-ray is 0.01 to 10 nanometers, and an atom is 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers.

So, this would be sort of like having to hit a dime with two bullets at the same time from very far away with no scope. This is why you need a whole lot of radiation to do this. Your body needs to be basically bombarded with x-rays in the range of 100+ mSv for us to have any possible inkling that it will do something to you.

That's another thing. CT scans aren't that dose hitting you in one spot. They are cut up into ~27 slices, so in reality, you're receiving 1/27th the dose to that area. When you look at it like that, it helps illustrate how insignificant these scans are. My head CT, per slice, was almost .05 mSv body equivalent, adjusting for brain tissue weighting factor, it was 0.0005 mSv per slice in actual dose. literally 0.5 microsieverts per slice in actual dose, and i am not even accounting for skin/skull. It's just not high enough of a dose to do anything to anybody. That's silly.

Now, once you hit 100+ mSv, you're getting like 1 mSv just to your brain, and even in a CT scan with 27 slices, that would be 0.01 mSv per slice. Now, that's obviously not how it'd be IRL because it'd be a big blast and not in a nice controlled modern CT scanner, but it helps you get an idea of what is actually dangerous and what isn't. 100 mSv can be dangerous. 1 Sv and 3 Sv is dangerous. 5 mSv is not dangerous. .5 mSv is not dangerous. 2 mSv is not dangerous. Really, anything under 5 mSv is automatically just not dangerous according to all research ever done unless you are getting chronic doses every day/week for a year straight or something. At those doses, the deterministic risk is non-existent(because it's so little radiation it barely interacts with our body and what does is repaired automatically if damaged at all), and the stochastic risk is minimal to a point that we can't even quantify, to not statistically significant at all.

no because it's the truth

If you live in an area with granite formations you get more radiation per year than if you have a couple of x-rays.

Fuck, if you're a fan of brazil nuts you get more radiation. You'll be fine you wuss.

>granite formations

the natives of places like that have radiation resistance so that doesn't matter at all.

Radiation exposures are considered under the ALARA principle.

>As
>Low
>As
>Reasonably
>Achievable

When you have a broken bone, the judgement is that the (stochastic) risk of cancer from the X-ray is outweighed by the (deterministic) risk of setting a bone incorrectly.

Likewise, people who work with radiation take reasonable steps to minimize exposure (PPE, safe work procedures, engineering controls, etc) but accept that some exposure is necessary to conduct their work.

who gets a CT because they broke a bone lol. get a plain film

Who said anything about CT scans?

that's like the entire thread. the guy got a CT for his broken ankle.

This has to be one of the most reliable bait threads on Veeky Forums

Doesn't know anything: the post.

Many fractures are not visible on plain film, especially of the small bones in the foot.