What makes radiation dangerous?
While high-energy ionizing radiation (like gamma rays and X-rays) is dangerous and lethal in high enough doses, it’s important to note that lower energy forms of radiation can have serious effects on organic life as well.
Ionizing radiation poses a threat because of how it interacts with materials in its path. X-ray and gamma ray radiation are so high energy, that rather than being deflected or absorbed by solids (like sunlight or infrared light are), they pass right on through. If these particles or waves happen to be traveling through a cell in your body, they can wreak havoc in one of a few ways. Radiation can damage the membrane of a cell’s nucleus, affecting the way the cell synthesizes protein, or a direct hit to a DNA strand can cause mutations when the cell divides, which can in turn cause cancer. It in this fashion that radon gas can cause lung cancer: radon gets in your lungs and blasts lung cells with radiation as it decays, causing damage to cell structures and DNA. The most vulnerable cells in your body are the cells that reproduce quickly, like skin cells, bone marrow and blood cells.
Ionizing radiation’s effects are categorized in three ways: as deterministic, threshold or nonthreshold. Deterministic effects occur from acute doses of high energy radiation, like what many unfortunate Japanese experienced soon after the atomic bomb strikes. In this case, massive quantities of high energy waves and charged particles bombard the body causing massive damage to cell structures and obliterating chains of DNA, resulting in massive internal bleeding, eradication of hair follicles, and reduced blood production.
Threshold effects vary on a case by case basis… low doses of radiation at regular intervals don’t produce catastrophic results right away, but the chance of damage to cell structures or DNA increases over time, and minor damage accumulates.
Non-threshold effects occur when a single charged particle happens to strike just the right part of a cell to trigger cancerous growth. While the risk of developing cancer as a result of radiation exposure increases and decreases with dose, the risk of a one-time unlucky direct hit is always looming. When you stop and think that 20% of our ionizing radiation exposure is due to medical equipment, one has to wonder… at what cost? Of course, on the other hand about 13% of our exposure is due to cosmic radiation, which is a reliable source of gamma ray radiation. The formation of some celestial objects (such as neutron stars, super-dense collapsed cores of dead stars like our sun) produces gamma ray bursts so powerful they penetrate our entire planet in a fraction of a second.
Threshold effects vary on a case by case basis… low doses of radiation at regular intervals don’t produce catastrophic results right away, but the chance of damage to cell structures or DNA increases over time, and minor damage accumulates.
Non-threshold effects occur when a single charged particle happens to strike just the right part of a cell to trigger cancerous growth. While the risk of developing cancer as a result of radiation exposure increases and decreases with dose, the risk of a one-time unlucky direct hit is always looming. When you stop and think that 20% of our ionizing radiation exposure is due to medical equipment, one has to wonder… at what cost? Of course, on the other hand about 13% of our exposure is due to cosmic radiation, which is a reliable source of gamma ray radiation. The formation of some celestial objects (such as neutron stars, super-dense collapsed cores of dead stars like our sun) produces gamma ray bursts so powerful they penetrate our entire planet in a fraction of a second.
Different wavelengths of nonionizing radiation affect our bodies in different ways. Certain wavelengths resonate with different substances and tissues within our bodies, and can produce various short and long-term effects. Microwaves excite water molecules, causing them to release energy in the form of heat. Our Hilgenkamp book talks about the effects of radiation at 800 MHz (some UHF television channels broadcast at this wavelength, as well as older model cell phone antennas) on the brain and eyes, specifically the way hormones produced by our pineal gland regulate our wake and sleep cycles.
While I hesitate to post the video itself (it’s unconfirmed and controversial), if you haven’t already seen the YouTube video about popping corn with cell phones, I’d suggest you check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgjx4JROjR4 here’s the link to the original video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsoVEeJg3TY and here’s a response from the Cardo Systems CEO calling it a hoax.
