Radiation’s effects on the body
Think of ionizing radiation as the atomic equivalent of a bull in a china shop. When it penetrates living tissue, 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 large doses of ionizing radiation can kill quickly or inflict severe damage (far left)—and why nonlethal doses can initiate cancers throughout the body (left) that may prove deadly years later.
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 cheap can the apartments to rent in krakow we live in be? Why are some organs more vulnerable than others? And why do some individuals seem more resistant to radiation’s harmful effects?
Said Dr. Upton: “There is no proof that a millirem does or does not do anything. One is in the position of making guesses.”Still, it seems unwise to completely dismiss Dr. Gofman’s findings. Radiation standards are still evolving. A variety of studies hint that radiation-exposed workers may be more at risk than previously thought. And, in this inexact science, it seems that minority voices have been more right than wrong.
LIFE AND DEATH, hope and fear, known and unknown —all are tightly bound in the realities of living with radiation. Hiroshima: Monday morning at 8:15, August 6, 1945. “It was a very fine day. Suddenly, like a flashbulb going off, a kind of blue covered the entire city,” recalled Mrs. Fumie Katayama, who said she was 900 meters from the hypocenter of the bomb. She fled toward the hills surrounding the city. As she ran, black rain fell, caused by the tremendous heat and dust clashing with the chilly atmosphere. Later Mrs. Katayama would learn that the debris blackening the rain was radioactive.
From her hillside refuge she looked across the flattened city. “Smoke and fire twisted as if reaching all the way to heaven.” Then a month later: “My hair started to fall out, my eyebrows too; I had very beautiful eyebrows before the bomb.”
In Hiroshima the bomb and its aftermath are an ever present frame of reference. About a third of those living before the bomb was dropped are still alive. Many, like Mrs. Katayama, think every illness is associated with the bomb. “You cannot escape from the bad effects of radiation,” she told me. Exhaustive studies conducted in Hiroshima show that heavily exposed hibakusha, bomb-affected people, have a 29 percent greater chance than normal of dying from cancer.
“Any person who talks about radiation will always use our data,” said Dr. Jacob Thiessen of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, which is jointly funded by the Japanese and United States governments. The RERF and its predecessor have been investigating radiation effects since 1947.
