Uncle Al posted"

"Why is a patient
covered with a lead blanket for dental x-rays?"

Because the dentist is attempting to protect himself from junk lawsuits
charging that the reason a child was born with defective genes or has
ADD was the dentist's fault.

Take careful note of the fact the medical community routinely and
repeatedly employs x-rays with no such window dressing such as lead
aprons, and their x-rays are both much more energetic and have higher
intensity levels. CT scans, in particular, really zap you with
rems/sieverts, and I've had 6 over the past 10 months for diagnostic
purposes. These were in addition to 12 conventional x-rays. (My 4 MRI
scans don't count, because they don't employ ionizing radiation.)

Everything is a trade-off. When I was much younger, the diagnostic
procedure employed for the symptoms that I presented would have been
"exploritory surgery." Would I have preferred exploritory surgery to
all the radiation to which I have been exposed -- You can bet your
sweet ass that I wouldn't!

With respect to radiation cataracts, a neutron flux is known to cause
cataracts, not conventional ionizing radiation. About two years ago I
had cataract surgery to replace the lenses in both of my eyes (a
trivial procedure today that I would prefer to a visit to the dentist).
Could this have resulted from exposure to the neutron flux from a
particle accelerator during my college years -- you bet. Still, no
average person (except for an astronaut) is likely to encounter high
level neturon fluxes during a visit to the dentist or during routine
medical diagnostic procedures.

The media has cultivated a fear of radiation in the majority of our
population, without realizing that radiation is a component of Earth's
natural environment. It comes from the sky, and from beneath the
surface. You cannot escape it. Toxic, carcinogenic chemicals you can
with effort avoid but not radiation.

You can minimize your radiation exposure by avoiding travel by air,
living on or near granite based mountain formations, or building your
home in areas where the bedrock (ledge) is close to the surface such as
New England. Still, the reduction in radiation exposure you will obtain
will be minimal -- almost negligible.

Ionizing radiation has a positve side too, since man's exposure to
natural radiatin has led to mutations the drove the evolution of
species and produced the vast variety of plants and animals that we now
have. It can produce a genius like Uncle Al, or a drooling fool.
Natural selection takes care of the rest of the job.

Kindest regards, Harry C.