FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Oral X-ray machines safe, say dentists urging removal of controls

Oral X-ray machines safe, say dentists urging removal of controls

X-ray machines used for dental services emit very low levels of radiation, the Dental Council says.

The council staged the test of the equipment for the media on Monday to back its demand that X-ray machines should be removed from controls under the Nuclear Energy for Peace Act. 
According to the test, an oral X-ray exposes a patient to 0.001 mSv radiation – the amount a person is naturally exposed to over a period of two-and-a-half hours. 
A X-ray for other dental services such as orthodontics, emits 0.024 mSv, the scientific unit of measurement for a radiation dose.
Dentists at the press conference and the testing also disassembled parts of the dental X-ray machine and said such devices are not dangerous under the supervision of licensed dentists. 
According to Johns Hopkins University in the US, people are exposed to radiation from natural sources all the time. Recent estimates show that the average person in the US receives an effective dose of about 3 mSv per year of radiation from naturally occurring radioactive materials and cosmic radiation from outer space. These natural "background" doses vary.

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