Ionizing radiation is like cupcakes.
One cupcake, that's fine.
1000 cupcakes, all at once?
Not fine!
You’ve probably seen acute radiation poisoning on TV, people wrapped in bandages, and such…
but chances are you don’t know what’s going on there… so let’s shed some visible
light radiation on this mystery.
There are a few kinds of radiation.
Some is light or heat, but the kind that damages tissue is called ionizing radiation.
Ionizing radiation comes in high-energy waves like x-rays and gamma rays, or from nuclear
material via particle decay.
This kind of radiation can damage atoms, which can affect whole molecules (like DNA), and
that can affect your cells, organs and whole body.
For example: your cells are comprised of water, H2O; which, if broken apart by radiation can
reform as O2 or H2 or H2O2 -- hydrogen peroxide!
Not great.
Of course, this all depends on dosage.
Theoretically, ionizing radiation has no safe dosage.
When you get a dose of radiation, specialists use Sieverts to calculate how much they used,
and Gray for the actual absorption of radiation into tissue.
A dental or stomach x-ray might be like 8 milliGrays (i.e. not many) or 8 milliSieverts.
Repeated, low-level exposure (like tanning, or working near nuclear material) can cause
cancer, but when lots of ionizing radiation hits you at once… it causes acute radiation
poisoning.
That is serious.
And it comes in four phases…
First, prodromal.
This can cause vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, anorexia… and more radiation makes it worse.
It can hit you a few minutes or days later . Second, is the latent phase.
You’d feel better, like you got over the flu symptoms!
But… you didn’t.
If you’ve had lab tests, they’d show you’re poisoned by radiation.
Then, maybe weeks later, BAM, the Manifest illness phase.
And four: recovery or death.
If it’s a low dosage you can probably recover, though you might have a higher risk of cancer.
However, above a certain point, the poop emoji hits the fan.
Say someone was exposed to the equivalent of 125 abdomen x-rays all at once.
Then they’d hit the lowest level of poisoning.
From one to ten gray the radiation penetrates tissue, and kills bone marrow cells by damaging
their DNA.
No marrow means no replacement white blood cells in case of infection, no new red blood
cells, and no new platelets in case of injury.
All bad.
It can cause death from infection or blood loss.
If your bone marrow is destroyed, you could get a bone marrow transplant… but even that
only gives a 50/50 chance.
At more than 10 gray (at least 1250 x-rays at once) cells in the gastrointestinal tract
are killed, meaning the body can’t absorb nutrients causing electrolyte imbalance, dehydration
and worse… once the GI tract shuts down, nothing can be done.
Death is certain.
Over 20 gray (2500 x-rays, at once!) -- it’s not clear what happens, but doctors think
your cardiovascular system and central nervous system swell with fluid thanks to the damaged
cells.
In less than three days the brain can’t control the body, and that’s all she wrote.
Because radiation is damaging DNA at the atomic level acute poisoning is hard to treat.
Radaway doesn’t exist, but there are treatments for some of the symptoms... for example: if
you get an infection because your white blood cells are compromised -- doctors can treat
it.
Same with the nausea, burns, and dehydration.
We know a lot of this because of the disaster at Chernobyl, and because of the bombs dropped
on Japan to end World War II.
Scientists entered the area, studying the sick, and documenting everything they could.
But there’s still a lot we don’t know!
I mean, as scary as radiation can be, most of us will never get exposed to the dosages
required to have to know all this stuff.
But it’s still nice to know, right?
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