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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,677 published reviews in this topic

台灣事實查核中心Health & medicine

心臟斷層掃描做一次 輻射量是核災區食品的8萬倍

Publisher’s rating: 部分錯誤

The review examined a report asserting that one heart CT scan involved 80,000 times the radiation exposure of one kilogram of disaster-area food. It traced the CT figure to the Taiwan Atomic Energy Council’s radiation-dose comparison chart, which listed 16 mSv per coronary CT scan. However, a nuclear medicine physician consulted by the review said newer CT equipment can deliver substantially lower doses: the article cites about 1 mSv for a scan at Taipei’s Cheng Hsin Hospital and examples of GE scans ranging from 0.6 to 2.1 mSv. The review therefore cautioned that 16 mSv was not a fixed dose for every heart CT examination. The review also challenged the comparison with food, rather than treating the two numbers as directly comparable. The physician explained that radiation from contaminated food is internal exposure after radioactive material is ingested, while CT radiation is external exposure directed at the body. The article further notes that a CT is performed for a medical need, whereas food may be eaten repeatedly and the amount and type of exposure may be unclear; it says these differences make the comparison’s basis inappropriate. Its conclusion was that the headline was incomplete: it relied on an outdated dose reference and an invalid comparison between unlike exposure situations. The review did not establish that every CT scan has a particular dose or that the claimed ratio is meaningful across examinations and food exposures.