Health effects and Hazards of Radiation
Estefanie Garcia
Carrington College
Krista
11-2-2017
Health effects and Hazrads of Radiation
Radiation is one of the most dangerous and easiest way of having health effects. Radiation was first discovered by Roentgen. Hazards are the first things people need to know in order to understand what it can do to your body. It causes many health effects on everyone out in the world. It harms people in the dentistry and field and even in the medical field. Normal people out the world can also be exposed when coming into one of these offices and getting x-rays of some type.
Wilhelm Roentgen discovered radiation which is also known as x-ray in 1895. Radiation is energy turned into waves or particles in
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The energy in ionizing radiation can cause chemical changes in the the cells that can lead to damaging them. Most of the cells can either permanently or temporarily become abnormal or they can just die. Radiation can cause cancer by damaging the DNA in the body. The damage of the cells can also depend on how long the organs are exposed (environmental protection agency, 2017, unknown). If someone has many exposures at one time that radiation in the body keeps adding on. As well as if its only a little bit of exposure in on day and years later you get exposed again it keeps adding on the radiation will never leave the body. Having radiation in your body doesn’t affect you right away but as you get older it starts to show and you feel it. Chronic exposure is when someone is exposed many time for long periods. When this happens the type of effects it will carry is having harmful generic change, cancer, tumors, and even cataracts. Partial health effects can also depend on if it was internal or external exposure. Internal exposure is when either by drinking, breathing, eating and even an injection cause radiation to get inside your body. External exposure is when taking an x-ray out of your body and letting it go through letting all the energy go as it goes in (environmental protection agency, 2017, unknown). In the dental world radiation gets into the patients when we take x-rays on there teeth. In order to avoid to much radiation on them we put a lead apron on them and make sure to cover their thyroid which is the most common way of getting cancer when taking an x-ray. When we take the x-ray we stand behind a wall at least 6 feet away to avoid ourself from getting
The X-ray was first discovered in 1895 by a German physicist named W.C. Roentgen (“The Discovery”). W.C. Roentgen was working in his lab one day in 1895 and decided to send a high electrical current through a cathode ray filled with special gas. He realized that a dim green colored light was being produced, and decided to hold the cathode ray just above his wife’s hand. When he did this he observed that the light was able to penetrate human skin, but would leave all the bones visible. There is a picture below of the X-ray of W.C. Roentgen’s wife’s hand (“The Discovery”). He named it the X-ray because he did not know the identity of what kind of ray it was. He just named it X, because of its use in solving unknowns in algebraic equations (“The Discovery”).
Chernobyl is located in the Ukraine which is about 110 kilometers north of Kiev, near Belarus border. It is a small town with amount of population about 12,500 people. There was a nuclear power station with four reactors that has been built which is located about 15 kilometers to its northwest. A 22 sq. km in size of manmade water reservoir was created in order to cool down the reactor. This power plant was using Soviet-design RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors which are said as old and outdated design. This RBMK reactor are using U-235 fuel to heat water, creating steam that spin the turbines and generate electricity. Graphite is used to controls the core reactivity and also to keep the continuous nuclear reaction occurring in the core. When the core produces more steam and bubbles, it became more reactive and creating positive-feedback loop which is called as positive-void coefficient. Compared to other design of nuclear reactor, water is used as a coolant and to moderate the reactivity of the nuclear core. When the core heats up and produces more steam, the increase in steam bubbles or voids in the water reduces the reactivity in the nuclear core. This is an important safety feature found in most reactors built in the United States and other Western nations.
There are essentially three main types of cancer treatments; surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Surgery allows doctors to effectively remove tumors from a clear plane. Chemotherapy uses drugs to treat the tumor; but often the drugs affect other healthy cells in the process. Using radiation as a treatment can be either precise or vague. Many health stigmas can come from the vague forms of radiation or conventional radiation therapy. Conventional radiation treats both the unhealthy and healthy cells, therefore exposing healthy cells to harmful radiation (Radiation Oncology, 2011, p.6). When healthy cells are exposed to gamma radiation they are also exposed to ionizing radiation. The ionization can cause “breakage of chemical bonds or oxidization (addition of oxygen atoms)” in a cell; the main impact of this is on a cell’s DNA, if two strands of DNA break it can result in “mutations, chromosome aberrations, ...
For decades, the effects of radiation has been studied by doctors around the world. X-rays are used in the medical and dental field to take radiographs of certain parts of a person's body. Some have become concerned of the long term and short term effects of having x-rays taken because of the radiation that is exposed. Since the rise of concern, studies have been done to find any type of link between cancer and radiation from x-rays. Specifically, in dental x-rays, researchers have been performing studies trying to prove that radiation from x-rays in the dental office can cause cancer .
There are ways to better understand how radiation affects the body when compared to other every day activities. If an occupational worker receives 1 rem per year then is it possible that 51 days is expected to be lost. A person that smokes 20 cigarettes a day takes about 6 years off of their life. People that are overweight by 15% take about 2 years off of their life. In actuality radiation would seem as though it is not any more harmful than other everyday activities people decide to do such as smoke, chew tobacco, or sky dive. The risk of taking days, weeks, years off of ones lives will always be present depending on the activity they choose to be part of. However, radiation exposure in the healthcare field is used to extend the patient’s life by helping them find out what is going on in their body. A patient that comes in with RLQ pain, nausea, and vomiting then an abdomen x-r...
This is the major contributor to worldwide radiation exposure, Non-medical, man-made radiation used in small amounts in food irradiation, airport security scanners, and some consumer products. Exposure to man-made radiation can happen in certain workplaces, or in communities as a result of above ground nuclear weapons testing and nuclear accidents
Ionizing radiation has enough energy to break chemical bonds and knock electrons out of atoms, some examples of these are x-rays and ultraviolet light rays from the sun. That is why radiation is a way to treat cancer because of the strong energy it has to destroy a cancer cell, actually any cell in the body. That’s the issue with radiation therapy, is it worth the damage? It can damage any cell, whether it is healthy or cancerous, which can cause a major affect in the body later on. Although it sounds scary, there are other types of treatments such as chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, photodynamic therapy, etc.
Garcia, Kimberly. Wilhelm Roentgen and the Discovery of X Rays. Bear: Mitchell Lane, 2003. Print.
The use and management of radioactive materials is not a topic that is generally discussed in abundance to everyday citizens. Many people do not know what radioactive waste is or even the effect that it can have on the human body. Radioactive waste is a type of waste that has some type of radioactive material inside of it. The managing of this radioactive waste is extremely important because it can cause damage to living tissue. Without a place to properly dispose of or contain, the radioactive waste can contaminate our water, food, air, or even our land. If this happened it would be detrimental to all human’s health, causing many different problems throughout the world not only with the health of the population, but problems with the environment as well. Therefore it is vital that we have somewhere to put these radioactive wastes.
Radiation exposure can affect children as well an children have the risk of being the most harmfully effected by radiation because their body absorbs substances differently also their bodies can or are more likely to get certain kinds of cancers from too much exposure, “they are also closer to the ground, where radioactive fallouts settle.”
Marshall, G. W and S. Keene. “Radiation Safety in the Modern Radiology Department: A Growing Concern.” The Internet Journal of Radiology 5.2 2007: N. pag. 24 Apr. 2011 .
when talking about the radioactive wastes risks we have to mention that, they still radioactive even after the usage .and this depending on the kind of usage and the length of time that the material was used .thisclearly cancause a greater risk of getting tumors, cancer and any other harmful effects .pregnant women and babies are two major critical conditions in resaving the radiation and interacting with it. Chernobyl is a great example of what radwastecan do to people. This disorder begins in UKRAINE in 1986. The reports states that, the soviet reactor design coupled with industriously mistakes by the plant...
Scientists from earlier times helped influence the discoveries that lead to the development of atomic energy. In the late 1800’s, Dalton created the Atomic Theory which explains atoms, elements and compounds (Henderson 1). This was important to the study of and understanding of atoms to future scientists. The Atomic Theory was a list of scientific laws regarding atoms and their potential abilities. Roentagen, used Dalton’s findings and discovered x-rays which could pass through solid objects (Henderson 1). Although he did not discover radiation from the x-rays, he did help lay the foundations for electromagnetic waves. Shortly after Roentagen’s findings, J.J. Thompson discovered the electron which was responsible for defining the atom’s characteristics (Henderson 2). The electron helped scientists uncover why an atom responds to reactions the way it does and how it received its “personality”. Dalton’s, Roentagen’s and Thompson’s findings helped guide other scientists to discovering the uses of atomic energy and reactions. Such applications were discovered in the early 1900’s by using Einstein’s equation, which stated that if a chain reaction occurred, cheap, reliable energy could b...
Now, the three examples, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three mile islands, show the effect of the nuclear accident. Each has different causes, but the damages were terrible.
One of the greatest events of twentieth century was the use of radioisotope as a source of energy and as medical and industrial tools. Using radioactivity has been a global issue owing to its very nature. When it is used for peaceful purposes, it is a triumph of science because it can solve energy problems in the form of nuclear energy but the side effects in the form of harmful radiation and harmful radioactive waste is the real limitations of science. This essay will attempt to analyze the application of science in the use of radioactivity and radioactive isotopes and how science is not so effective in dealing with the side effects.