Hello, I’m Dr. Adam Pomerleau, a medical toxicologist working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During a radiation emergency there will be a need to triage, assess, and treat patients who have come in contact with one or more radionuclides. Many patients will simply need to be screened and decontaminated to reduce their health risk to an acceptable level; other patients may require further intervention if they received a particularly high dose of radiation. As we will discuss in this module, additional interventions may include treatment with medical countermeasures for patients who have become internally contaminated with radioactive materials or who have been exposed to a high dose of ionizing radiation.

This module will introduce you to four medical countermeasures you may encounter during a radiation emergency, and will cover basic radiation health and triage concepts to help you make the most of potentially limited time and resources. Additional information – including summary sheets and links to other module topics – is provided in the last section of the training.