this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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I remember my senior advisor student tellimg me a story how she went to industrial lab internship in a hospital with these things.
They had their own little collider there. They made synthetic radioactive cocaine to study something in the brain.
They didn't measure the drug dosage, they just filled the syringe and waited holding it near a radiation counter for radiation to drop to desired level.
Once she spilled something and dipped her hand in it. She was told to hold a hand away rfom the body for a day - on a train ride home, in shower, in sleep - to protect internal organs. Next day, radiation was gone, down to natural level.
These things are amazing.
That liquid must have had a hell of an ability to be absorbed into skin if she wasn't able to remove the contamination by just washing her hand.
The fact that they let her leave the controlled area makes me think the activity was low enough that holding her hand away from her was probably overkill. If you're contaminated enough that it's a risk to your organs, most radiation safety officers aren't going to let you leave the controlled area lol
At the radiopharm manufactory I used to work at, we had a guy accidentally inject his finger with the QC sample. Fortunately it was low enough activity that he was able to leave by the end of his shift. It was really stupid that the QC sample syringe was capped with a needle instead of a blunt syringe cap, but changing the manufacturing protocol to allow capping with a new type of device would have required FDA oversight.
The first thing I always did during my QC testing was remove the needle and yeet it directly in the rad sharps waste container, cuz fuuuuck that.
I kinda wonder if it was a "Tell her to keep her arm raised until tomorrow, it'll teach her to be more careful next time." situation.