Talk:Iodine-131/Archive 1

I-131 in fallout
A section needs to be written about the role of iodine-131 in nation wide exposures to 1950's fallout from the above ground testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada and in the Pacific.

I suggest adding a reference to Steven L. Simon, Andre Bouville, and Charles E. Land, "Fallout from nuclear weaspons tests and cancer risks," American Scientist, v. 94, p. 48-57 (2006), and an external link to http://www.cancer.gov/i131, which contains an online personal dose and risk calculator at http://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/--Pkrnger 17:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I have tried to include the above reference, but I'm not familiar with how to create a reference list.--Pkrnger 17:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Try filling out the cite web template:

cite web

and putting it between &lt;ref> and &lt;/ref> tags. There is already a &lt;references/> tag at the end of the article. --JWB 17:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I have added context regarding iodine absorption in thyroid as intro to the adverse effects section. Note also that I am not certain if the current statement is correct that iodine supplements work by *increasing* the levels of iodine in the body. If so, this must be a very transient effect as I believe the body will attempt to regulate the level of iodine and remove excess amounts. However, the presence of large amount of stable iodine will dilute and replace the I-131 while keeping the total iodine constant - hence the beneficial effect. PJG 03:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Giersp (talk • contribs)

please point to Thyroid_neoplasm as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.28.252 (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Treatment and prevention
Under "Treatment and Prevention", it might be appropriate to include dosages (Milligrams/administration), frequency of administration (No. per day), and duration of administration (No. of days) so that a person caught in an emergency situation of exposure and unable to go to a hospital or physician would have a chance to self-administer the iodine treatment.

Is a prescription required to obtain iodine used in the treatment? How soon after an exposure must one have the treatment for it to be of value? Does the treatment (dosage, frequency, and duration) depend on the amount of exposure or on the length of exposure or the time since exposure or any combination? Such information would seem appropriate under the "Treatment and Prevention" heading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.190.80.188 (talk) 15:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * We can add some, but most of this information is at potassium iodide and links to there are more appropriate. I'll make sure they exist. S  B Harris 18:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

garbled sentence
"Te-130 (34% of natural Te) absorbs a neutron and emits a beta to become tellurium-131, which decays with a half life of 25 minutes to I-131."

I believe this should read "Te-130 (34% of natural Te) absorbs a neutron to become tellurium-131, which emits a beta and decays with a half life of 25 minutes to I-131."

Neutron absorption does not change atomic number. Beta emission increases the atomic number by one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.160.160.50 (talk) 00:33, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yep, you're right. Will change it to something like your suggestion. S  B Harris 00:38, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Decay product
Iodine 131 Decays into Xenon 131? Can someone explian this better. It seems really strange singe isn't Xenon a heavier element.12.25.75.72 (talk) 16:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, whoops it looks like 131 is the total number of neutrons plus the total number of protons. So a neutron turns into a proton and the mass dosn't change much. 12.25.75.72 (talk) 16:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Changes by enough. It changes by about 0.001 amu which is 971 keV. That's the decay energy, since it's the difference in nuclide atomic weights, so the mass of the electron is already accounted for as these are for neutral atoms (the difference in nuclear masses is 511 more than this). That 971 decay energy adds up very closely to the 606 KeV maximal beta energy (where the minimum goes to the neutrino), plus the 364 keV excitation gamma (leaving only 1 keV unaccounted for, which is the neutrino plus some measurement error). When working nuclear physics problems you can't look at the atomic weight of the "element," which is an average. You need to compare the weight of the isotopes individually, which you can see in this article, and the one in isotopes of xenon. You might do this problem for yourself, for practice. S  B Harris 16:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Dose vs. danger
After some research, I was unable to verify the accuracy of this statement: "For this reason, high doses of the isotope are sometimes paradoxically less dangerous than low doses, since they tend to kill thyroid tissues which would otherwise become cancerous as a result of the radiation.[citation needed]." In fact, most reputable sources suggest that the lower the dose, the less dangerous it is to human health. I think that paragraph ought to be deleted. Jotanyc (talk) 21:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The relative absense of thryoid cancer after therapeutic I-131 to treat Graves' disease makes it rather self-evident that if you kill all thyroid tissue with I-131, there's no thyroid tissue left to get cancer IN. How can you argue otherwise?


 * And here is your better cite discussing I-131 treatment of Graves' disease, especially in children, which I will add: :

The increased risk of thyroid cancer after thyroid irradiation in childhood has been recognized for nearly 50 yr (119). Thus, a major concern of iodine-131 therapy relates to the risks of thyroid and nonthyroid cancers. Not surprisingly, this issue has been the focus of several long term follow-up studies involving more than 60,000 patients (56, 120–123). Studies of the effects of external radiation, diagnostic iodine- 131 use, and environmental radioiodine and g-ray exposure have also provided important insights regarding the risks of radiation exposure and thyroid carcinomas (26, 28, 124–128). These studies show that the risk of thyroid cancer is increased with exposure to low or moderate levels of external radiation. In contrast, thyroid cancer risks are much lower after high level irradiation that results in thyroid cell death or reduced capacity of cells to divide (128, 129). [...] The large scale epidemiological surveys of the CTSG involving 36,050 patients in the United States (56) and the Swedish cohort studies (16, 121, 141) have provided considerable information about the relative cancer risks after iodine-131 therapy. After treatment of Graves’ disease in adults with iodine-131, which exposes the thyroid gland to high levels of radiation, rates of thyroid cancer and thyroid cancer mortality were not increased (56, 121, 141, 160). Follow-up data involving children in the CTSG showed that thyroid adenomas developed in 30% of the patients treated in one center with low doses of iodine-131 (50 mCi/g) estimated to result in thyroid exposure of 2500 cGy (56, 88). Yet, in the other centers where children were treated with higher doses of iodine-131 (100–200 mCi/g), the incidence of thyroid neoplasms was not increased (56).


 * S B Harris 00:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I-131 a major part of fission product hazard
When fission products ARE a hazard (which they are when released into the environment), I-131 and Te-132/I-132 are the two largest contributors to the hazard in the first week of release. Calling a hazard a hazard is hardly "perjorative." NPOV requires that WP describe majority views, and this is surely the majority view. S B Harris 19:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Where's the gamma? And antineutrino?
You should add the gamma photon in your equation! Klaus Wilhelm


 * Done. There are actually two separate decays. A beta decay always precedes one or more gamma de-exitations, but the time can be as little as 10-12 sec between these processes.

Can we please have energies expressed in Joules, the preferred SI unit of energy and the unit used in the definition of the Sievert.


 * That would be silly and counterproductive. SI has a lot of non-SI units that are perfectly accepablt to NIST and widely used in the physics community, and eV is one of them.http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/outside.html. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to use liters for volume, or amu's for atomic weights. Give it up. S  B Harris 12:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

In benign thyroid disease
10.1210/er.2012-1030 JFW &#124; T@lk  11:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

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