give reasons why
Radon is used in radiotherapy .
Answers
because radon is a radioactive element.
Radon is highly radioactive and has a short half-life. The chief use of radon is in the treatment of cancer by radiotherapy. It has also found some use (mixed with beryllium) as a neutron source. All naturally occurring radon decays by the emission of alpha particles.
It is very useful in treating localized cancers. It is encapsulated in small gold ‘seeds’ and many of them are inserted in the cancer and left in place. Radon has a very short half-life (less than 4 days. Radium is 1600Years), so the radiation is short and intense.
Also it has primarily Alpha-ray decay, and those are heavy particles, so they don’t travel far, so there is very little irradiation that gets to normal surrounding tissues.(Radium has much more penetrating, high energy, Gamma rays, so has more side-effects in nearby normal tissues)