PESHAWAR, Aug 18: Exposure to the radiations emitted by the X-ray machines causes serious health problems for radiologists, patients and their relatives, doctors told Dawn on Monday.

“Frequent exposure to the X-rays causes cancer, mental and physical disabilities, genetic changes, and infertility,” said a senior radiologist at the Hayatabad Medical Complex.

According to him, lack of precautionary measures on the part of health professionals had further aggravated the problem. Every technicians at city hospitals had to take the X-rays of 25 patients on a daily basis, and they did not have the right equipments to protect themselves from being exposed.

“There is no mechanism in place to gauge how much a person has been affected by the radiations, owing to the high fee charged by the Pakistan Atomic Commission (PAEC) for the purpose,” said the radiologist.

The government had built the X-ray departments with lead impregnated walls with a view to stopping the rays from outside penetration, but still more precautionary measures for radiologists and technicians were required because they stayed inside the laboratories of city hospitals, he said.

A few years back, the PAEC stopped analyzing the Radiation Monitoring Badges (RMB), due to an outstanding amount that the city’s hospitals were supposed to pay to the commission.

Radiologists at hospitals said that the RMB were supplied by the PAEC for doctors and technicians, which they wore during their duty hours.

Every month, films were taken from the RMB that were sent to the PAEC to ascertain how much a person had been affected by the radiations under an agreement called the Film Back Service (FBS). The RMB indicated the dosage and over-dosage of the radiations. But the FBS was painfully slow and the films remained at the laboratories for months. Therefore, the agreement was dropped.