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The 20-something dental hygienist, wearing dark purple scrubs, smiled at my children and me as she motioned for us to follow her to the examining room.
“Okay,” she chirped at my 10-year-old daughter, “Mom will wait outside while we take a quick picture of your teeth.”
I could feel my face stiffen.
“We aren’t going to do X-rays this time,” I said, keeping my voice as casual as possible. “I mentioned that we didn’t want X-rays when I called for an appointment, and I also wrote it in on the consent form.”
The young hygienist furrowed her brow. “Ah, okay,” she said, her eyes darting awkwardly away from my face. “Just wait in here while I, uh, go check on that.”
She came back a few minutes later.
“Dr. Y says that you have to have X-rays,” she said, still unable to look at my face. “She says she can’t treat your children without them.”
This was in May, 2010, just a few weeks after the President’s Cancer Report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” was released. On page 7 of the report, in large font, is a section entitled, “Children Are at Special Risk for Cancer Due to Environmental Contaminants and Should be Protected.”
That 240-page report states definitively that cancer among children (and adults) is on the rise in the United States. Out of 50 countries, the United States has the dubious distinction of rating #9 in the number of deaths from cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 10,700 children ages 0 –14 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2010, a rise of more than 10 percent from just five years ago. While childhood cancer is considered “rare,” it is the second most common cause of death among children (after accidents). It is predicted that 1,340 American children this year will die from cancer.
The numbers sadly confirm the anecdotal evidence among our friends and family. As I've mentioned previously on this blog, our 14-year-old neighbor Michael is battling leukemia. My daughter’s friend Isaac’s older sister Whitney was 18 when she died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after fighting it for four years, and more than twelve of our adult friends (including my 62-year-old father-in-law who has throat cancer, my 29-year-old friend Faigy who has five children and Stage IV melanoma, and my daughter’s first grade teacher who died at age 59 from breast cancer) have been afflicted by cancer.
The President’s Cancer Report is very clear that radiation (that is, exposure to X-rays) is a known carcinogen, and that the more you are exposed to radiation, the more likely you are to get cancer. We have all heard that X-rays are harmful. That’s why you and the hygienist leave the room when your child’s teeth are being X-rayed. That’s why your child wears a lead bib to protect the rest of her body from the harmful X-rays. But what I didn’t understand until I started learning more about it, and what most of us don’t think about, is that the harmful effects of X-rays are cumulative. That means that every time you get exposed to X-ray particles, even if the exposure itself is very small, you increase your risk (or your child’s risk) of getting cancer.
According to the report,
… [I]f patients were more aware of radiation exposure due to specific tests and the cancer risk that can accrue with cumulative medical radiation exposure, they might be more likely to raise this issue with their physicians.
It seems like a simple thing to say, “No thank you. I don’t want my daughter’s teeth X-rayed this time,” but I was worried about bucking the system and a little unsure about how the dentist would react. That’s why I called the practice ahead of time and why I also put the request to not do the X-rays in writing. When Dr. Y came to talk to me about it, I explained that I was requesting we forgo using X-rays as a diagnostic tool and only use them if she found something in my daughter’s mouth that was cause for concern.
If you’ve never questioned medical or dental authority before, the idea that the dentist dismissed my family from her practice might surprise you. But if you’ve been gently asking the doctors and dentists and other health care providers who care for your children to intervene as little
