Radiation, hardly a word in any language generates more anxiety and living with radiation can infect be frightening. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, as well as other nuclear power plant accidents have alarmed us. Nuclear waste is piling up. Yet radiation, coupled with human ingenuity, performs many beneficial works also.
Destroying the malignant cells of tumors, sterilizing medical products and food stuff by killing the harmful bacteria tracking the progress of medicines through the body with radioisotopes, dating archaeological and geologic events by radioactive decay rates, turning water to steam for electric power, and soon detecting plastic explorations in suitcases. This means that for good or ill, radiation will remain on important of our lives.
If body tissues and cells become ionized, abnormalities in DNA can result. Cancer and birth defects can also result from exposure to ionizing radiation. Think of ionizing radiation as the atomic equivalent of a bull in a china shop. When it penetrates living tissues, it wreaks havoc on the atoms and molecules in its path, setting off a chain of events that can destroy living cells or make them function abnormally. That is why high doses radiation can kill quickly or inflict sever damage why nonlethal doses can initiate cancers throughout the body that may prove deadly years after.
Studies of people who have received significant doses such as atom bomb survivors, uranium miners and radium watch dial painters show that damage depends on how they were exposed, the dosage and the type of radiation. Scientists know that human organs can repair some radiation damage, although many questions persist. How harmful is the background radiation we live in. Why are some organs more vulnerable than other? And do some individuals seen more resistant to radiation’s harmful effects?
Life and death hope and fear known and unknown all are tightly bound in the realities of living with radiation.
Voices will continue to crash over risk versus benefit but even in controversy it is likely to think that we will gain. Perhaps there will be never, safer nuclear reactors perhaps too we will cleanup the dangerous radioactive waste scattered throughout the world. Certainly radioisotopes will make new contributions to medical diagnosis and treatment. We will also learn about the danger of low level radiation and let us pray there is no nuclear war.
Living with radiation raises questions and difficulties but live with it we must. No body must have radiation licence to kill.
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