If those pesky Al-Qaeda blokes get their filthy hooks into him, they just have to strap a bomb on him and send him into parliament, a double dirty bomb, what with the radiation and all the blood, shit and piss flying everywhere.

Shoot him anyway, damn paedos want grinding into dust under a massive boot.

i assume he'll be sacked.

or promoted

Why don't we have geiger counters at our ports anyway? Unlike X-rays and metal detectors they're almost completely passive and very very cheap -- anyone with half a brain can knock one together on a kitchen table.

"Excuse me sir, but you appear to be radioactive."

Turn the lights off and he's the one that glows in the dark.

Or

Nuke 'em till they glow and then shoot 'em in the dark.

A _radioactive_ roboplegic wrongcock!

So issues the Garda with geiger counters and we'll find him pretty quick?

Geiger-Muller tubes work by detecting charged particles directly. Since the average radioactive particle will only travel a few centimetres through air, they would be pretty much useless unless you go around waving one over every part of a person's anatomy. Add that to the fact that the radioactive iodine used to treat a thyroid condition (not an uncommon treatment) will be concentrated in a persons thyroid gland, which is in their neck beneath skin and surface musculature, which would tend to absorb the beta particles pretty effectively.

SuperPaedo!

Anything to do with radiation automatically becomes a scare oout of proportion to the real threat.

He will presumabely be treated with I131 this has a half life from memory of about 8 days and is a gamma and beta emitter. The gamma rays havea fairly high energy (for nuclea rmedicine anyway) of around 360 keV so will easily penetrate his body.

Whatever he has ingested has already decayed by a factor of 8. In addition some material will have been excreted. The beta radiation will not penetrate his body leaving the gamma exposure to police or the public. Studies of the radiation exposure to the family members and pets! of therapy patients show that doses recived over two weeks are an order of magnitude below safety limits.

Given that the material will have decayed by a factor of 8 and the possible exposure time is going to be no more than a few hours the 'threat' already well within safety limits is going to be roughly one thousandth of an already insignificant hazard. Actually this is obvious, people are routinely treated in this way as out patients and it is considered quite normal and safe.

The story does contribute to the general scare mongering and paranoid fantasy about anything radioactive, dirty bombs etc.

He may only be accused of a child pornography offence, but clearly he has violated his bail conditions. Perhaps by announcing that he is radioactive, it is hoped that he will turn himself in, rather than being Tasered by police who wouln't want to spend too long physically restraining him.

"five counts of making indecent images of children"

Well at least at the moment that probably means the guy in someway took photos of naked kids (although he could just be an artist who makes pictures of cherubs)

But soon "five counts of making indecent images of children" will just mean he drew 5 manga loli on a piece of paper.

Depends on the kind of radiotherapy. Toward the end of his life John Diamond had the occasional radioactive implant as doctors got ever more desperate to stop him dying.

As I understand the law, this means that you simply have to download the .jpg and 'make' the pic on your screen with the comp. It goes back to the time when it was legal to possess some kinds of porn, but not to manufacture the stuff, so some clever prosecutor persuaded a judge that the 'download file - create image' was making the picture.

Anyway, I seem to recall that here in Canada Manga lolis are illegal. (Well, some anyway)

>"five counts of making indecent images of children"

Well at least at the moment that probably means the guy in someway took photos of naked kids<

Couldn't be further from the truth. But the law was deliberately phrased to suggest what you surmise. Crafty, ain't it?

...as I imagine it will say all over The Sun's Have Your Say, Morons pages tomorrow

"Geiger-Muller tubes work by detecting charged particles directly. Since the average radioactive particle will only travel a few centimetres through air, they would be pretty much useless unless you go around waving one over every part of a person's anatomy"

GM tubes will also detect gamma rays. If a gamma ray photo strikes a particle of air within the tube (and is absorbed), the molecule of gas become ionised.

So GM tubes will also detect gamma radiation.

However, the point about gamma radiation is that it is not as strongly isonising as alpha radiation. Alpha radiation are charged particles. Gamma radiation is not charged.

If as someone else has suggested the primary emitters of radiation with the radioisotope are gamma rays and beta radiation, the beta particles ( high energy electrons) will not penetrate the skin, however the gamma will, but that's probably very low level.

The biggest risk is...if you catch the criminal and he decides to take a leak over you.

Some of the radioactive material may find its way into the uninary system.

"Geiger-Muller tubes work by detecting charged particles directly. Since the average radioactive particle will only travel a few centimetres through air, they would be pretty much useless unless you go around waving one over every part of a person's anatomy. Add that to the fact that the radioactive iodine used to treat a thyroid condition (not an uncommon treatment) will be concentrated in a persons thyroid gland, which is in their neck beneath skin and surface musculature, which would tend to absorb the beta particles pretty effectively."

Indeed. Surely if he was radioactive enough to be a danger to others he would be....well...dead, dead dead and more dead to the power dead. So that raises the question, if he IS radioactive enough to be dangerous he should be easily detectable.

Daily Mail HERE WE COME :D

I tend to work with 'dangerous' levels of radiation most days. It takes a fair amount of radiation to get a Geiger counter to start ticking above background levels - say like 10 feet from a 1.6 Curie CS 137 source in a ~33kg depleted uranium shield. And you really have to be paying attention to see that low level.

For someone treated with such extremely low levels of radiation, with such a short halflife, you'd probably be able to stick the Geiger-Muller tube probe down their throat and not see anything out of the orginary. You would likely need a Scintillation Detector, which is not quite as cheap or easy to make as a geiger counter. And you'd have to be pretty close too. The nice thing is that if you did it right, it could do a spectroscopic breakdown and tell you just what radioisotopes it found. And that would probably come out on the indecent side of $100k.

"He is *accused* of having dangerously pornographic pictures."

And then he ran.

Nothing says "I did it!" "Arrest me!" like running.