Answer to Question #2371 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"

Q

On CSI (the TV show) I recently saw an episode about a type of radiation that slowly ate away at the body from the inside out. In school I am doing a research paper and presentation for my English class, and I was wondering if you would be able to help me out by letting me know what that type of radiation is. I remember it had a special name. It was injected in some orange juice, someone drank it, and it slowly ate away at the person's body from the inside out, and within 10 days or so the person who ingested it died. So, if you would be able to help me out in any way possible or refer me to someplace that I would be able to find out about it, I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you for your time!

A

CSI is normally a pretty good show, but in this case, they got the radiation facts very wrong. In fact, about the only thing they got right is that iodine-131 (¹³¹I) is radioactive and it's used in hospitals to diagnose and treat some thyroid diseases.

Iodine-131 emits beta and gamma radiation. To kill a person in 10 days, they would have to have received a whole-body radiation exposure of about 1,000 rem, which would require ingesting a fairly significant amount of ¹³¹I because iodine goes to the thyroid and whatever is not incorporated into the thyroid passes through the body fairly rapidly. It's also not easy to obtain this radionuclide because it's required to be kept locked up whenever it's not under guard. Plus, we (my hospital uses this for cancer therapy) have to account for every tiny bit of it—if any ¹³¹I comes up missing, we know very quickly and we try to track it down. Since so few people have access to it, the list of suspects is pretty small. It's much easier (and less obvious) to use a common poison. Poisons are present in hospitals as well.

If ingested, ¹³¹I will not eat away at a person's body. Radiation sickness is well studied. It is not pleasant, but it is well known. A dose of 1,000 rem would leave a person nauseous, vomiting, and very weak. The person may or may not have skin burns and may or may not lose his/her hair. When a person dies of this radiation exposure, it is often from multiple organ failure or from infectious disease. But all his/her organs are still there at the end of his/her life—they're not eaten away.

The problem is that CSI, like most TV shows, have to try to come up with something novel and dramatic, and they don't always like to spend a lot of time explaining the underlying science. Unfortunately, in this case, their misconceptions about radiation, combined with apparently poor fact checking, resulted in a show that was needlessly inaccurate. Yes, it is possible to kill someone by giving him/her radioactivity in his/her orange juice. But, it's not easy to acquire enough radioactivity to hurt someone, ¹³¹I is not a very good radionuclide to use because of the way it interacts in the body, and the symptoms the victim experienced were not very realistic.

There were a lot of other mistakes, but these are the most glaring. Too bad—I was just starting to like the show, and now I've lost whatever respect I had for it. By the way, you might like to know that USA Today had an article several days after the show that said: "'CSI' episode wasn't what the doctors ordered. Group says show misled; CBS says there are 'limits' to drama's accuracy."

So I am not alone in my views of this particular show.

Andrew Karam, CHP, PhD