By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — One group receiving treatment for a thyroid disorder is given a radioactive drug that makes the patients a potential hazard to children or pregnant women for several days. Still, doctors usually send them home immediately after treatment.
Yet another group of thyroid patients given the same drug in much smaller doses must be quarantined for two to five days under government rules, until the radiation the patients emit is sharply reduced.
What is the difference? The first group is made up of human patients, and the second is made up of cats and dogs.
In October, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, complained to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that its policy on human thyroid patients was creating dilemmas for patients, some of whom are sent home immediately after radiation treatment to households with children or pregnant women.
Now, Mr. Markey is pointing out that the rules are much stricter for house pets, even though they usually get radiation doses 90 percent to 98 percent smaller than the ones given to humans. On Thursday, he plans to ask the commission to revisit the regulations.
“The public is more protected from a radioactive Fluffy than from a radioactive father who receives the very same treatment and is then just sent home,” said Mr. Markey, who is the chairman of a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the nuclear commission.
“The N. R. C. needs to immediately change its nonsensical policy and act to protect public health instead of industry’s bottom line,” he said.
In an interview, a spokesman for the commission, David McIntyre, acknowledged the disparity in the regulations. Under the commission’s rules, radiation exposure to a person from a human patient is supposed to be limited to 500 millirems per treatment, while the exposure to humans from treated pets should be one-fifth that amount. (By comparison, the average American gets about 360 millirem a year from natural sources.)
But, Mr. McIntyre said, “The higher limit for humans is appropriate because of the benefits to the patient in being able to recover at home in the care and presence of loved ones, and because the risk of exposure to others can be managed by taking appropriate precautions.”
“The lower limit for animals is appropriate because it is more difficult to manage the exposure to humans,” he added.
Most of the radioactive material is eliminated from treated patients, animal or human, via saliva, urine or solid waste.
“With our veterinary patients, I can’t control where they salivate, urinate or defecate,” said Dr. Debra Gibbons, the chief of the nuclear medicine service at Colorado State University’s veterinary teaching hospital in Fort Collins, Colo.
“I can tell you to go to the bathroom,” she added. And humans can be told not to sleep in the same bed with another person, or not to cuddle people who might be vulnerable, including children or pregnant women.
“Animals, especially cats, do not follow directions well,” Mr. McIntyre said.
The difference in rules is obvious to veterinarians who specialize in treating cats, which are prone to thyroid disorders. Dr. David S. Herring, who co-founded Radiocat.com, which has 15 clinics around the country that have administered radioactive iodine to over 40,000 cats, keeps his patients for three to five days, depending on the state.
But when his former wife was treated for thyroid disease with radioactive iodine, she came home immediately, he said, even though the doses given to humans are “astronomically more” than the doses given to cats.
The problem, he added, is that the rules for pets are probably too strict.
“We have had a constant quest for reducing the amount of time the pets had to stay with us,” he said. Some of his patients are old, he said, and have never spent a night away from home. They would recover faster in familiar surroundings.
New York State recently changed its rules on radiation exposure, allowing shorter quarantines for pets if there are no children or pregnant women in the household they will return to.
Dr. Ned Dykes, a veterinary radiologist at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, said that 20 years ago, when he began treating cats with radioactive iodine, the rules required that they be quarantined until their urine had the same radiation output “as tap water,” and that this sometimes took weeks.
He said that depending on the age of the people in the household, releasing house pets immediately would be appropriate.
But, Mr. Markey argued, human beings may not always follow directions either. And the divergence in regulations, he said, is “bizarre.”
The standards for people should be made “at least as protective as those that govern the release of cats and dogs,” he said.
| Dec 9, 2010: Markey Calls for Revisions in Radioactive Rules for Humans, Pets |
| Presses NRC to Address Disparities in Release Following Medical Isotope Treatment WASHINGTON, D.C. — Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, today sent a letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Greg Jackzo for full comment on how NRC will address inconsistencies in regulations governing the safe release of pets and human patients following treatment with radioactive materials. The letter highlights the disparity in NRC regulations that provides cats and dogs with greater level of post treatment care and more restrictive guidelines for discharge than human beings, and calls on the Commission to revise its human patient release regulations. A full copy of the letter to NRC can found HERE . The letter follows up on recent congressional analysis that highlights the potential dangers to public health from patients who have been released from the hospital after being treated with radioactive materials for cancers and other diseases. The investigative analysis, conducted by the staff of Rep. Markey highlights the need for increased oversight and regulation by NRC. More information on the investigative analysis on safety concerns associated with radiation treatments can be found HERE . |
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