How is radioactive waste harmful to humans?
Answers
Answer:
Exposure to large amounts of radioactivity can cause nausea, vomiting, hair loss, diarrhea, hemorrhage, destruction of the intestinal lining, central nervous system damage, and death. It also causes DNA damage and raises the risk of cancer, particularly in young children and fetuses.
Explanation:
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Answer:
How does radiation harm the body?
There's been some reported evidence that radioactive iodine and cesium are being released into the environment from the malfunctioning nuclear reactors in Japan, said Kathryn Higley, director of the Oregon State University department of nuclear engineering and radiation health physics.
As radioactive material decays, or breaks down, the energy released into the environment has two ways of harming a body that is exposed to it, Higley said. It can directly kill cells, or it can cause mutations to DNA. If those mutations are not repaired, the cell may turn cancerous.
Radioactive iodine tends to be absorbed by the thyroid gland and can cause thyroid cancer, said Dr. Lydia Zablotska, an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
But radioactive iodine is short-lived and will be around for only about two months after an accident, said Andre Bouville of the National Cancer Institute, who has studied radiation doses from the fallout of the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine. So, if the exposure to the air comes after that time, radioactive iodine does not pose a health risk, Bouville said.
Children are most at risk for thyroid cancer, since their thyroid glands are 10 times smaller than those of adults, he said. The radioactive iodine would be more concentrated in them.