OT: CT man has nuclear cardiac stress test - gets pulled over by state police

[Home Guy]

Crazy.

Totally crazy.

Radiation detectors in state police cars.

And you wonder why you're so deep in debt as a country. Because of crazy-ass spending like this.

Doesn't matter how many rights and freedoms you give up in the process.

And probable-cause can apparently now extend to any detector that the gov't deploys in police cars.

Which means when they come up with a "bad-guy" detector, the police will have all the probable-cause they need to pull over anyone -> for any reason.

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Mike Apatow was minding his own business Wednesday, driving to an appointment for work in Washington Depot when a state police car appeared suddenly and signaled for the Milford resident to pull over.

Apatow, 42, was entering Interstate 84 in Newtown when the cruiser appeared, and he had no idea what he'd done to merit police attention. It turns out he didn't do anything.

But earlier that day, Apatow, who'd experienced a recent spike in his blood pressure, had a nuclear stress test at Cardiology Associates of Fairfield County in Trumbull. In the test, a small amount of a radioactive material is injected into the veins and used to help track blood flow to the heart.

Though the amount of radioactive material used in the test is relatively low -- equal to a few X-rays or a diagnostic CT scan -- it was enough to set off a radioactivity detector in the state police car. The detectors are used to help identify potential terror threats.

"I asked the officer `What seems to be the problem?' " Apatow said. "He said `You've been flagged as a radioactive car.' "

Apatow's doctor had given him a document attesting that he'd had a medical procedure involving a small amount of radioactive material that he handed to the officer.

"I had no idea the police even had devices like that," he said. "I imagined it being like a cartoon -- like I'm driving down the street and my car was glowing."

State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance confirmed that many of the state police cars have the radioactivity detectors. "It's part of our homeland security operations here," Vance said. "It's just another layer of public safety that we have in this state."

Though the goal of the detectors is to alert police to motorists who might be carrying hazardous materials, cases like Apatow's happen from time to time.

"They're very sensitive," Vance said of the detectors.

[gregz]

I got a couple radiation detectors. I would be more concerned for the young fellow who had to get injected. A long time ago I got upper/ lower gi. I learned it's about like being around a nuclear blast. I don't get those perimeter dental stays, but had a head ct scan recently. It's not nice. If I turned off my radon fan, it's like smoking an additional 2 packs of cigs a day.

Greg

[gregz]

>

Of course, they say a radon level equal to smoking 1/4 pack a day, is ok.

Greg

[Han]

gregz wrote in news: [e-mail]-september.o rg:

It's not the radon that is dangerous, but the decay products. Radon is a gas, so it would be exhaled fairly soon, but the decay products are solids that stick to dust etc. from the wikipedia entry: As the radioactive gas of radon decays, it produces new radioactive elements called radon daughters or decay products. Radon daughters are solids and stick to surfaces such as dust particles in the air. If contaminated dust is inhaled, these particles can stick to the airways of the lung and increase the risk of developing lung cancer.[3]