Pulled over due to a medical test

[Aabidano]

A co-worker was pulled over by a NJ state trooper yesterday because he set off a radiation detector in the troopers car. He was on his way home from getting a PET scan, from what I've since read it takes ~24 hours for the agent to pass out of your system.

I'm pretty impressed, having the sensitivity to pick something like that up at a good distance while it's shielded by a steel car body and moving at 55 mph is really hard, and not have constant false alarms due to natural background radiation sources. He was even able to tell him the decay rate of what he'd been dosed with, which also told the trooper essentially what he'd been given and probably why. Things that are actually dangerous should be relatively easy to detect and act on. Looks like there are 10,000 or so of these units in use with various law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

Definitely a practical use of tax dollars IMO, and not just more security theater like you get at the airport and other places.

The "radiation is bad!" speech the trooper gave him showed a definite lack of knowledge on the subject but he sounded well trained on the use of the equipment and what was\wasn't suspicious.

[Animalor]

That's really really cool...

[Boogahz]

I didn't realize it was sensitive enough to pick something up like that. I used to chuckle at the mention of radiation detectors in major cities, but if they can pick something like this up...

[Winnow]

That is impressive. Hopefully that protects us from suitcase nukes!