Well yeah. If someone falls in water at work, you get them checked out at the hospital. The paltry amount of radiation is kind of the least of your worries if there's even the smallest risk you got some water in your lungs.
People can drown on dry land from about a tablespoon of water getting into their lungs.
> People can drown on dry land from about a tablespoon of water getting into their lungs.
Well, I don't think there's such a big risk of that. Falling into a pool is something most of us have probably done. Being pushed by a friend as a kid for example. The risk of drowning is probably pretty comparable to the risk from the radiation (negligible).
I didn't expect this level of unfounded ignorant hysteria here. Have you really never gone swimming and inhaled some water? Did you go to the hospital?
> In the past, these terms were used to try to explain that some fatal drowning victims had very little water in their lungs at autopsy. Now it is understood that little water enters the lungs during drowning. Moreover, when water enters the lungs, it is rapidly absorbed when breathing starts again. The amount of water that enters the lung does not determine the amount of injury or determine the treatment of drowning. The amount of injury from drowning is due to how long the victim is without oxygen.
Even a tiny amount of water in your lungs is a trip to the hospital.
The amount of radiation that guy was exposed to is roughly the same as eating a banana, or driving through the middle of Aberdeen with your car windows down inhaling all the radon off the granite.
If there's a bit of water in your lungs, a surprisingly small amount, it causes massive inflammation and your lungs start to fill with fluid. It's called "secondary drowning", and it happens a couple of hours after.
My water rescue course is up to date. When's yours due for renewal?
As the saying goes, "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing". Your "water rescue course" taught you something that's clearly wrong, as we see with the sibling comment, while my common sense and just everyday life experience led me to the correct conclusion.
> If there's a bit of water in your lungs, a surprisingly small amount, it causes massive inflammation and your lungs start to fill with fluid. It's called "secondary drowning", and it happens a couple of hours after.
> Secondary drowning, sometimes called delayed drowning, is another term that is not medically accepted. The historical use of this term reflects the reality that some patients may worsen due to pulmonary edema after aspirating small amounts of water.
> Drowning starts with aspiration, and few or only mild symptoms may be present as soon as the person is removed from the water. Either the small amount of water in the lungs is absorbed and causes no complications or, rarely, the patient’s condition becomes progressively worse over the next few hours as the alveoli become inflamed and the alveolar-capillary membrane is disrupted. But people do not unexpectedly die of drowning days or weeks later with no preceding symptoms. The lungs and heart do not “fill up with water,” and water does not need to be pumped out of the lungs.
> There has never been a case published in the medical literature of a patient who underwent clinical evaluation, was initially without symptoms, and later deteriorated and died more than 8 hours after the incident. People who have drowned and have minimal symptoms get better (usually) or worse (rarely) within 4 to 8 hours. In a study of more than 41,000 lifeguard rescues, only 0.5% of symptomatic patients died.
Maybe don't set too much store by what some random "water rescue course" instructor tells you, especially if it sounds like complete bovine excrement.
Well yeah. If someone falls in water at work, you get them checked out at the hospital. The paltry amount of radiation is kind of the least of your worries if there's even the smallest risk you got some water in your lungs.
People can drown on dry land from about a tablespoon of water getting into their lungs.