‘No cancer risk’ at Piraeus unit
Defense officials and medical experts yesterday stressed that reports of excessively high levels of atmospheric radiation at a Piraeus cancer hospital were no cause for concern. Piraeus Prefect Yiannis Michas lodged complaints with the Metaxa Cancer Hospital, Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and local prosecutors after a leaked document from the Greek Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) allegedly showed radiation levels at the hospital’s nuclear medicine unit to be 1,000 times above the permitted level and noted that the unit did not have a valid operating license. But the president of the Defense Ministry’s National Operations Center, Panayiotis Efstathiou, told Kathimerini that there was no threat to public health. According to Efstathiou, the document in question was issued during one of the inspections needed to renew the hospital unit’s operating license. The radiation measurement had been distorted by the emissions of a needle, used to administer radioisotopes to a patient, which had not been correctly discarded, he said. GAEC’s president, Leonidas Kamarinopoulos, told Kathimerini that the commission conducts regular inspections of the nuclear medicine units of Attica hospitals with the aim of improving their radiation protection systems. These inspections reveal a small percentage of irregularities, chiefly provoked by staff negligence, but do not pose any risk to hospital employees or the public, he said. The director of the nuclear medicine unit of Athens’s Evangelismos Hospital, Ioannis Datseris, said an improperly discarded syringe would provoke a high radiation reading but was not a health threat. «It’s like doing a gamma-ray test,» he said. But Piraeus Prefect Michas yesterday remained cautious. «Prefectural authorities will remain on standby,» he said.
