An airport terminal in Vladivostok, Russia was evacuated Thursday after a ‘radioactive’ woman set off an alarm.
The woman had just arrived from a flight from Seoul, South Korea when a radiation alarm went off forcing security officers to shutdown the terminal, Interfax news agency reported.
The alarm was eventually called off when officials discovered the source of the scare was the woman. According to the news agency, she had just received radiation therapy.
The woman was released when South Korean doctors confirmed they had treated her with iodine-131, a radioactive isotope used in nuclear medicine, giving her a level of radioactivity 15 times greater than the norm.
"Iodine-131 is a short-lived isotope, so the passenger should be back to normal in a month," customs spokeswoman at Vladivostok airport told Interfax.
Iodine-131 is used to diagnose and treat cancers of the thyroid gland, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s produced commercially for medical use and industrial uses through nuclear fission. In medicine, iodine-131 comes in the form of capsules or liquid designed to be swallowed by patients, the CDC reported in its Web site.
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