 The latter decay channel also produces ground-state 123Te.Especially because of the internal conversion decay channel, 123I is not an absolutely pure gamma-emitter, although it is sometimes clinically assumed to be one.The Auger electrons from the radioisotope have been found in one study to do little cellular damage, unless the radionuclide is directly incorporated chemically into cellular DNA, which is not the case for present radiopharmaceuticals which use 123I as the radioactive label nuclide.