Background/introduction
In March 2011, a tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the coast of Japan led to an energy accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Fukushima. This was widley report as the most significant nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986. This event raised many questions regarding the safety of nuclear power stations on a global level and highlighted and re-emphasised the potential harmful effects of radiation.
‘Google Trends’ is a powerful tool created by Google that monitors popularity of search...
Description of activity and work performed
‘Google Trends’ software was used to examine internet searches related to radiation protection over the past decade from September 2009 to September 2019.
The software outputs the results as a graph demonstrating relative the popularity of a search term over time. The most popular time point for a search term is given the highest score of 100 and the rest of the time periods are given scores relative to this.
The search terms examined were: 'effects of radiation', ‘radiation protection’, 'radiation dose', ‘xray radiation' and...
Conclusion and recommendations
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster prompted people to take to the internet to educate themselves on the effects of radiation during the month of March 2011 when the event took place. This increase in public awareness of the potential dangers of radiation will possibly have trickled down into diagnostic radiology and hopefully with people having greater respect of ionizing radiation and its safe and appropriate use in medical imaging.
Personal/organisational information
G. Rahmani; Galway/IE - nothing to disclose C. McNamara; London, DUBLIN/UK - nothing to disclose
References
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[2] McNamara C, Rahmani G. Gena Norris and gadolinium deposition disease - the impact of celebrity health disclosure on public awareness. Magn Reson Med. 2018 Oct;80(4):1277-1278
[3] Rahmani G. Selena Gomez, lupus and the impact of celebrity health disclosure on public awareness. Lupus. 2017 Jan 1:961203317742714