Re: OT--But sort of related - at least you weren't pulled over for radiation

True or Propaganda, Radiation Detectors
by Dotty Gale
Mon Mar 06, 2006 at 12:06:07 AM PDT
I was travelling this weekend and listening to the local radio news
station, WCBS 880, for the traffic and weather together and heard a
curious report.

Apparently a woman in Connecticut was pulled over for setting off a
radiation alarm. The radiation in her system was the result of an
injection that she received during a stress test at a Doctor's office.
It sounded funny at the very end of the report when the woman was
quoted as expressing thanks for the knowledge that our roads are being
monitored for terrorists with nukes.

The propaganda alarm went off in my head so I promised myself to look
up the story when I got home. I found it on line in the Hartford
Courant written by a staff reporter named Tracy Gordon Fox. Apparently
Tracy Gordon Fox is the police blotter reporter for the Courant. I saw
some items about a series on Heroine Heroin addiction that caused a
stir but nothing remarkable beyond that.

I'm sure radioactivity detectors have come a long way since the Geiger
Counter but detecting it in the bloodstream of a person driving a car
moving at 65 miles per hour sounds a little weird. Two things troubled
me in this story:


Relieved to have completed a series of stress tests on her heart on
Feb. 23, the woman was heading home, seatbelt on, and cruising at the
65 mph speed limit on I-91 north.

That doesn't happen in real life. If you travel at 65 mph during the
day on I-91, you get run over.


The woman said she quickly explained to the officer that she had just
undergone a medical procedure that involved a radioactive substance.
She had to sign a bunch of forms that explained the risks.

The officer seemed satisfied by her answer, and said, "'That's usually
what it is,'" she said. He asked for her license and registration, and
returned to her car a short time later.


If "that's usually what it is", then why haven't we heard about other
people being stopped before?

It struck me as a little too sci-fi. Further, the story says that the
woman wishes to remain unidentified. But she must have called the
newspaper since no ticket was issued so no report was filed. The story
also reads like a "story" as it quotes a man in a blue jumpsuit:


"Ma'am, you were pulled over because you set off a nuclear radioactive
alarm," a man dressed in a blue jumpsuit-type uniform and a baseball
cap said in a monotone.

Perhaps that's a style choice but I thought quotes meant something in
the newspaper business.

.

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