Worried about getting breast cancer from your shower curtain? Don’t be. Instead, worry about getting it from your doctor’s willy-nilly use of radiation.
This month’s Archives of Internal Medicine includes a special report penned by the smart folks at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and paid for by the deep, politically dubious pockets of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. In a nutshell, the experts said, stop sweating bullets over the noxious chemicals in everyday stuff (ie: bisphenol A in plastics and phthalates in perfumes). Instead, start sweating doctors writing scripts for radiation-based diagnostic tests like it’s a goddamn ticker-tape parade and cancer is the grand marshall.
The IMO starts by stating the obvious. Radiation causes cancer. Um…yeah. Tell it to Madame Curie. And then comes the forehead-smacking stuff. The IMO estimates that “2,800 future breast cancers would result from 1 year of medical radiation exposure among the entire US female population, with two-thirds of those cases resulting from CT (computed tomographic) radiation exposures.” Ironically, many doctors order CT scans to look for cancer. So, in layman’s terms, our fear of having cancer is giving us cancer.
This damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t news is magnified by the fact that CT use has skyrocketed nearly 5-fold in the past 20 years. In 2012, an estimated 75 million people (half of them women) will have a CT scan.
What doctors don’t tell you (because some of them don’t know) is that in the terms of radiation exposure 1 CT scan equals 500 X-rays. Yes, you read that right. 1 CT scan = 500 X-rays. The real kicker? Up to 30% of those CT scans are unnecessary.
Per my earlier posts, I suspect that radiation exposure in my early teens contributed to the breast cancer diagnosis I received in my late 30s. Of course, no one knows. But this new report adds to a growing pile of evidence that overuse of radiation has serious consequences. (And don’t get me started on CT scans and kids.)
Recap: respect radiation as a diagnostic tool. A CT scan may very well save your life if you have internal injuries from a car accident or a burst appendix. But, if you’re not in immediate danger, ask your doctor about other options. He/she might have to rely on more old-fashioned diagnostic tools, such as skill, knowledge, and intuition, instead of just irradiating you.