DEAD MAN GETS CREMATED, MAKES CREMATORIUM RADIOACTIVE
So this shouldn’t be a surprise. But it is. So back in 2017, there was a 69-year-old man who had pancreatic cancer. As you know, that’s a death sentence more often than not. But this man had really low blood pressure. So he went to the hospital to get some help. Unfortunately, he passed away at the hospital only two days afterwards. But as is often the case, the hospital had his remains cremated. But the dead can have some hidden and dangerous surprises. That was certainly the case with this poor guy. His remains were radioactive! And they left radiation in the crematorium.
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THE DECEASED HAD JUST BEEN INJECTED WITH RADIOACTIVE CANCER TREATMENT
So what the authorities didn’t realize was that the man had been to another hospital only the day before he was admitted for help with his low blood pressure. But at the other hospital, he received treatment for his cancer. Namely, doctors injected him with a radioactive compound. But it was still in his system when he died and when he was cremated. The compound was lutetium Lu 177 dotate. So this situation highlights something no one seems to have thought about much. Cancer treatments involving dangerous radioactive materials happen every day, practically everywhere. But there doesn’t seem to be a protocol, yet, to prevent what happened here.
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GEIGER COUNTER FOUND CREMATORIUM RADIATION, STAFF PERSON HAD ANOTHER READING
So how did anyone discover this? The initial hospital eventually heard about the man’s death. So they reached out to the crematorium. That’s when reality took a hard bite. A month after the man’s remains were burned, the crematorium made use of a Geiger counter to measure radiation levels there. So that’s how they learned that the crematorium chamber, the oven, vacuum filter and the bone crusher all had elevated levels of radiation. But here’s where the story gets more disturbing. The worker who cremated the man had a different radioactive isotope in his urine test. So that means he was also exposed to a different cremated body.
But we’ll have to wait and see if crematoriums all start using Geiger counters before every cremation.