Uranium-in-hair test useless

I wrote the following article in response to of a news-story on "uranium in the hair of children of Faridkot"

Dr K.S.Parthasarathy




SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Friday, April 24, 2009, Chandigarh, India
Uranium-in-hair test useless
K.S. Parthasarathy

For the past few weeks, the ‘uranium in hair’ news story from Faridkot has been receiving a lot of media attention.The presence of uranium in hair is nothing new. In USA, several analytical laboratories analyze hair samples and offer advice and treatment. At US $180 per sample, it is a thriving business. Experts argue that the test is useless in the diagnosis of diseases.

Presence of uranium in the hair of children by itself does not mean anything. “I have data on uranium in hair for more than 20,000 persons. I have never seen a single case in which it was clinically significant and affected treatment”, said Dr William Walsh, a specialist in the field responding to my e-mail query.

According to Ronald Kathren, Emeritus Professor, Washington State University, a well-known expert on uranium related fields, background levels of uranium in hair vary highly from person to person and region to region, depending largely on dietary factors.

On June 17, 2008, Aetna, the US agency providing scientific information on health care, asserted that hair analysis has not been proven to be of use in either the diagnosis or treatment of autism.

The American Autism Society concluded thus: “The exact cause of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is not well understood. …..Currently there are no biological markers for ASD, and diagnosis is based solely on behavioral criteria”.

Pritpal Sigh, head of Baba Farid claimed that “the results were startling”… “around 80 per cent of samples… revealed the presence of uranium in levels that the experts have described as pathological,” he said.

Did they collect for comparison, hair samples from their healthy siblings or from normal children from the regions from which the autistic children came? The study appears to be flawed. My repeated attempts to get the uranium test results from the German Company failed.

Some people made un-substantiated, un-scientific and preposterous claims on the origin of uranium. They attributed the allegedly increased levels to Indian nuclear reactors at 150 km away away, Pakistan’s reactors and winds from Afghanistan. A competent team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy is studying the matter. I do not want to prejudice their investigation.

During the 60s, some people in USA argued that uranium in peaches from a region near the Hudson River might have originated from a uranium enrichment plant located across the river.

An enterprising lawyer found that peaches from far off California also contained uranium. Peaches grown in cultivated farms, using fertilizers were more “radioactive” than those grown in virgin fields. Phosphatic fertilizers contain uranium!

Uranium run off from the fields may cause increase in the concentration of uranium in drinking water. This aspect needs closer investigation. Uranium enters body through food and water. Most of it is excreted promptly. Body retains a small portion. A portion of it appears in hair.

We cannot avoid the presence of uranium around us. It is present in rocks, soil, water etc. The first one metre layer of a ten cent piece of land may contain about one kg of uranium. It may be more, or less depending on local geology. Water entering the soil pores carries traces of uranium with it.

Normally, the uranium concentrations in water in India are less than a fraction of a microgramme to a few microgrammes per litre. Scientists have measured moderately high concentrations at a few locations.

Researchers have found that the maximum concentrations of a few hundred to a few thousand microgrmmes per litre in USA, Finland and UK. For uranium, the maximum acceptable concentration of uranium in water is based on its chemical toxicity.

On September 15, 2008, Pritpal Singh sought financial support from Mukesh Ambani. “Dr Carin Smit with her team visited our centre and stayed with us for 15 days and diagnosed the most severe cases and came to the conclusion that mostly kids are highly toxified because of Mercury,” he wrote.

Now Smit claims that uranium is the cause for the health conditions of the children! The investigations on the appropriateness and the legality of some of the treatment practices such as “chelation therapy”, advocated by the foreign team, may open a can of worms.

— The writer is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

Image gently, bring down CT dose to kids

Excessive and avoidable radiation dose to children undergoing CT scan examinations is currently the most important radiation safety issue which attracted the attention of
several professional associations in USA. Thirteen of them jointly started the Image Gently web page which provides valuable information on the topic. An article in the Science & Technology section of the Hindu a muti-edition daily carries my article on the topic.

K.S.Parthasarathy



Date:06/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/seta/2008/03/06/stories/2008030650071500.htm
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Back Sci Tech



Image gently, bring down CT dose to kids
Last July, 13 U.S. associations including the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the Society for Paediatric Radiology (SPR), the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) founded the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Paediatric Imaging.
Collective effort
They launched the Image Gently campaign as a collective effort to bring down radiation doses to children. Its objective is to ensure that medical protocols for imaging children keep pace with technology advances (medicalphysicsweb, February 1, 2008).
Specialists became aware of the safety significance of paediatric CT examinations when the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR) expressed serious concern on unnecessary radiation doses to children (AJR, February, 2001). On November 2, 2001, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Public Health Notification on the topic.
In December 2001, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board brought the USFDA advisory to the notice of the managements of CT Units in India.
Image acquisition
The growth of CT use in children has been driven primarily by the decrease in the time needed to perform a scan — now less than 1 second — largely eliminating the need for anaesthesia to prevent the child from moving during image acquisition (The New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM, November 29, 2007). The children get exposed to radiation doses higher than necessary because many technologists use the same x-ray exposure factors for Computed Tomography (CT) examinations of children as those used for adults. Children are more sensitive to radiation than adults, as their tissues are developing.
U.S. figures
Nearly seven million CT procedures are carried out annually in the U.S. among children of all ages, with 33 per cent on children under 10 years of age. Surveys at 71 CT Units in India revealed that on an average 8.9 per cent of CT procedures are on children; paediatric protocols are not used in 32 of these installations. These centres are exposing children to unjustifiably high radiation doses.
CT examination is beneficial, when it is medically needed. But there is a need to reduce dosage.
Tube current
Researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi demonstrated that the doses to children can be halved without reducing clinical benefits simply by lowering the tube current (Clinical Radiology 2005).
David Brenner, Eric J. Hall from Columbia University argued that there is direct evidence from epidemiological studies that the organ doses corresponding to a common CT study result in an increased risk of cancer. (The NEJM, 2007). “The evidence is reasonably convincing for adults and very convincing for children,” they asserted.
Dr Marilyn J. Goske, who chairs the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Paediatric Imaging, conceded that there may be disagreement within the medical community about the accuracy of the risk models.
Indisputable fact
“These arguments will not be settled in the near term. However one fact is indisputable; we must continue our efforts to do a better job of reducing radiation dose to children if and when they need a CT scan”, she wrote in an editorial (The AJR, February 2008)
Child-sizing a must
Goske suggested that the technologists must reduce or “child-size” the amount of radiation used; scan only when necessary; scan only the indicated region and scan only once; multiphase scanning is usually not necessary in children.
Everyone handling a CT Unit must read http://www.pedrad.org/associations/5364/ig, the Image Gently web page. Medical literature contains protocols to reduce radiation doses; many of these are scanner specific and not transferable to other units (Image Gently, 2007).
CT centres in India, in consultation with manufacturers may develop appropriate protocols using the “Paediatric CT Protocol Guidance” published at the Image Gently website. Those who do not, must not carry out CT examinations of children.
K.S. PARTHASARATHY

FORMER SECRETARY, AERB
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