Watch out for your kids!

Two radiation-related news stories this week caught my eye, both from the New York Times.

Image originally from Springer Science+Business Media--Forensic Aspects of Pediatric Fractures: Differentiating Accidental Trauma from Child Abuse, by Rob A. C., Robben, Simon G. F., Rijn, Rick R. 1st Edition, 2010, Chapter 8: 171-188, Fig. 3.

The first deals with newborn babies being accidentally or carelessly subjected to excess x-rays.  This is the latest in a series of scares over the last couple of years about lax regulation of the intensity and frequency of medical x-rays and other forms of medical radiation exposure.  See the full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/health/28radiation.html



(Photographs by Marcus Yam for The New York Times)

The second article, also from the New York Times, deals with an increase in eye damage cases for teenagers playing with green laser pointers.  Many lasers that are commercially available have dangerously powerful lasers, some exceeding the federal limits.  If accidentally or intentionally directed at the eye, the focused laser light can cause heating and basically burn away part of the retina.  This is a really different kind of radiation damage compared to ionizing radiation (like that in the article on x-rays, above), but it shows that even ordinary green light can be harmful in some circumstances!

Here's the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/health/01laser.html