A number of studies conducted at the sites of some of the worst radiation incidents in history have concluded that the danger from radiation isn't as great as was previously believed.
Deaths from radiation incidents including the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in WW2 and Russian nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl were in the hundreds, not tens of thousands. The risk of genetic deformity was also lower than expected.
"For commendable reasons, many critics have greatly exaggerated the health risks of radioactivity. But contrary to widespread opinion, the number of victims is by no means in the tens of thousands," said Albrecht Kellerer, a radiation biologist.
Theoretically yes, but I'm not 100 percent convinced by this report until I know who paid for it and see some more reactions to it from the scientific community. It's possible that this is true - I'm trying to keep an open mind. I thought it was interesting and worth throwing out there to see what others thought.
This has been known for a while, the deaths predicted from chernobal never eventuated. also back in the 20's people used to purposly expose themselves to radiation, it was a home health craze. I think the science is currently pointing towards flucuations in radiation exposure causing celluar and Genetic damage. The Interesting part of the doco i saw this in was that radiation from things like mobile phones and television and more likly to effect older people than younger generations that have always had the current level of exposure, it seems we build up an immunity.
also we actually need some radiation otherwise we get rickets, but we can get enough from sunlight.
More reports will calm the irrational publics fear of Nuclear Energy. With significant research in to deposing of the Cores after 15 years of use in the average reactor, I think the Nuclear Power would probably be the cleanest and most powerful alternative.
you should realize, ... the country that chernobyl was in, is also known for cover ups, shooting dissidents, propaganda, etc.
how 'factual' do you think your statement is regarding chernobyl?
as far as people exposing themselves to radiation, ... they also drank whiskey made of god knows what during prohibition, and smoked cigarettes like they were the cure for cancer. we've seen how bad smoking is for you, and how many people went blind or died from drinking tainted rot-gut. just because it was done, doesnt make it good for one's body.
That seems to be happening around the chernobyl area. The wildlife was dying off at first to radiation posioning, then the next generation of offspring seemed to go unaffected. Now it's thriving with no people around.
In comparison to burning fossil fuels, I'd have to agree with LC, nuclear power seems the lesser of two evils.
Whether C02 GW is true or not, we have much to lose if it is true. C02 hangs in the atmosphere for as long 400 years, whatever we put into the air today will likely effect at least 10+ generations of our children.
It's our generations responsibly to show a bit of caution with such long term effects.
So initially only hundreds died but the radio active fallout from Russia has killed thousands over the years. Just ask yourself why do Russia and Poland have the highest cancer rates since Chernobyl.
It's enormously overstated. If a terrorist set off a dirty bomb, the people "guaranteed to die" are really only the people in the blast radius, or close enough to ingest a lethal amount of radioactive material. The material would not likely spread far, and most people who caught any of the radiation would face a health risk similar to smoking or poor diet.
Radiation damages DNA in direct relation to the dosage and duration of exposure.
There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. Age, diet, whatever, does not protect you at all from the damage itself. What can differ is what your body is capable of doing about that damage.
When assessing DNA damage, there are four critical questions:
1. What sort of damage occurred? There are *many* different types of damage DNA can suffer. Radiation typically causes oxidation of the DNA and results in DNA single and double-stranded breaks.
Double stranded breaks are the hardest type of DNA damage to repair (the DNA is cleaved instead of only one strand of the DNA being damaged) because of all the tricks the cell has to repair DNA, this is the only method that has no template to work off of, and can rejoin segments of DNA in improper orders.
2. How extensive was the damage? In your average day-to-day life you experience somewhere between 1 thousand and 1 million incidents of DNA damage daily. That might seem like a lot, but an adult body has some 10 trillion cells in it so the error rate really isn’t that high. And your DNA repair mechanisms will rapidly and correctly fix the vast majority of these damages.
Additionally, in the vast majority of cases, DNA damage will not strike the same cell twice and therefore the damage will most likely be repaired without incident. It's multiple damage points in the same cell that causes the chief danger. The more ionizing radiation, the higher the chance for individual cells to be hit with a double-whammy.
3. Where did the damage occur in the genome? A lot of the genome is rather resistant to DNA damage. Either the DNA is junk (note - I am of course aware that a lot of what was once termed "junk" really isn't so, but still a lot of the genome is indeed junk. I can explain further but that's another topic) or is redundant.
However, there are a great number of gene pathways that deal with DNA repair, and if you damage those you might have trouble fixing other incidents of damage. This is why it becomes dangerous when a single cell gets damaged twice in the same event -- if both a repair mechanism and a critical cell regulation pathway gets damaged, cancerous growth is a real possibility.
Additionally, if the DNA repair mechanisms become damaged, they may not be fixed, or may be fixed improperly. This isn’t so important at the time of damage but can become important at a later date when the cell, or descendants of the cell, receive some future damage and are subsequently unable to repair it.
4. Where in the body has the damage occurred? Obviously some cells are more dangerous to damage than others. A great many of your cells are slated for termination on a daily basis. If the damage occurred in any of those cells, there isn't much to worry about as the cell is soon to be dead. On the other hand damage to nerve or stem cells can rapidly turn fatal. And of course damage to gonadal cells can make mutants out of any future offspring.
As I said originally, you can predict the outcome of radiation exposure by knowing the strength and duration of the exposure. Lethal exposure need not be like in the movies where people's faces melt off. You can get a lethal exposure and appear to be fine for a day or so. Then your body starts to melt from the inside due to the high amount of damage each cell in your body has received and cellular functions go awry body-wide.
Not a pleasant way to go, but it only happens with direct exposure to really intense radiation. More commonly, death due to radiation exposure comes in the guise I mentioned at the end of point #2 above – that the original event caused damage to some of the cells’ DNA repair mechanisms, then either at the same time or at a later date those same cells, or descendants of those cells, are damaged again in a way that leads to uncontrolled growth (i.e. tumors).
It’s not that younger people are immune to DNA damage, it’s because as youths their bodies have not gathered decades worth of DNA damage, some of which would be to DNA repair pathways. As such the low-level damage they may be taking from weak radiation sources are not yet apparent because the damage isn’t occurring to cells that are already damaged in ways that can lead to tumor growths.
I would also note that a great many of the researches of radiation from the time period you referenced ended up dying grisly cancer-related deaths. Just because people in the 20s exposed themselves to radiation didn’t mean it was a consequence-less thing to do.
The same goes for the Chernobyl accident. Radiation levels immediately after the incident caused a massive die-off of the local surroundings. Everything died. Plants withered, larger animals had melted thyroid glands. It was an ecologic disaster.
Wildlife is returning, IMO, not because the critters are especially resistant to DNA damage but because in the absence of people (and the related industry, traffic, pollution, pesticides, etc) outweighs the now less-intense radiation levels. Also of note that many of the returning animals are migratory, that is the wander in and out of the contaminated zones. The get lower doses of the radiation which may keep them from immediately developing complications. In contrast, the trees that have come back – by definition sessile – have come back stunted and warped. Since they can’t escape the constant long-term bombardment by the ambient radiation they are soaking up a lot of damage and it shows.
All of our soldiers from the first Iraq war that have Poison DUst (look it up exactly as spelled on video.google). Is that not danger enough from radiation?
