Non-ionizing sound waves
The Mayo Clinic website specifies that "Diagnostic medical sonographers and vascular technologists use nonionizing, high-frequency sound waves (ultrasound) to diagnose, treat and prevent medical conditions."
Is there any reason they use the term nonionizing? As far as I understand there isn't a form of sound waves that can cause ionization.
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You're right: their description contains redundancy.
I think the reason for the extra clarification may be to make sure readers understand that the method does not involve X-rays (which are ionising, and hence more dangerous). I've seen people confuse them with ultrasound, because both methods are used for seeing through tissue, their results look similar at a glance, and popular culture colloquially refers to any sort of "seeing through things" as "X-ray vision".
Precisely to emphasize the safety of ultrasound and to point out that you or your fetus will not be subjected to any sort of radiation as it may be the case in some of the other popular imaging methods besides ultrasound.
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