Radiation Levels from Toilets Used By Patients Injected with 99mTc-based Radiopharmaceuticals in Ibadan

The use of radionuclides in patients undergoing nuclear medicine procedures presents a special concern on the safety of not only the patients but also of those who come in contact with such patients either at the nuclear medicine centre or at home after discharge from the facility. This has heightened the public concern about nuclear medicine especially in Nigeria where the practice is new. When patients are injected with radioactivity for nuclear medicine procedures they excrete most of the radioactivity via urine even before leaving the nuclear medicine facility. Therefore, we set out to survey the toilets used by these patients in the hospital for radiation levels to know the radiation risk posed by the 'radioactive urine' of the patients to the general public and radiation workers respectively.