Myth: Radiation treatments used to kill cancer cells will cause patients to become radioactive. Fact: “This is a common misconception I hear from patients,” says Arnab Chakravarti, MD, the chair of the OSUCCC – James Department of Radiation Oncology. “High-energy X-ray beams are delivered to the patient, their cancer cells and straight through and out of the body, and no radioactivity is left behind. Patients do not become radioactive.” Chakravarti believes the roots of this myth are entangled in a procedure called brachytherapy. In this procedure, radioactive material sealed inside a pellet or seed is implanted in the body to destroy cancer cells. “A brachytherapy is used, for example, for some prostate and cervical cancer cases,” he says. “These radioactive pellets decay slowly, but for a time, patients can be slightly radioactive. For this reason, we tell grandparents not to hold children on their laps. But again, with the more common external-beam radiation that is used in 95 percent of all cases, these patients are not radioactive in any way whatsoever.”