why is radioactivity dangerous?

Question

what and why is radioactivity dangerous?

Answer 1

Radioactivity is when a substance gives off very tiny high energy particles that are capable of passing through your body like an X-ray does (some not as deep, but same idea). These particles hit the molecules in your body and damage them, so they do not work properly, and sometimes the cell they are in dies.

It is also a mutagen, which means that it mutates cells. It does this by damaging the molecules that record the genetic structure of the cells. Then they may not be able to divide, or their next generation may not be able to perform their function. This is especially bad in tissues to must replace often, like skin and intestinal linings, and in the genetic material you send on in your children, in sperm and eggs (that is why you wear a lead shield when you get an X-ray).

It is especially dangerous because radioactivity tends to last a long time in the environment, and continue to do damage to any living thing that comes across it, or accross water or soil contaminated by it.

Answer 2

Radioactive decay is the set of various processes by which unstable atomic nuclei emit subatomic particles (radiation). Decay is said to occur in the parent nucleus and produces a daughter nucleus. This is a random process, i.e. it is impossible to predict when an atomic nucleus will decay or which nuclei in a sample will.


Radioactivity was first discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel while working on phosphorescent materials. These materials glow in the dark after exposure to light, and he thought that the glow produced in cathode ray tubes by X-rays might somehow be connected with phosphorescence. So he tried wrapping a photographic plate in black paper and placing various phosphorescent minerals on it. All results were negative until he tried using uranium salts. The result with these compounds was a deep blackening of the plate.

The trefoil symbol is used to indicate radioactive material. The Unicode encoding of this symbol is U+2622 (☢).The SI unit for measuring radioactivity is the becquerel (Bq). If a quantity of radioactive material produces one decay event per second, it has an activity of one Bq. Since any reasonably-sized sample of radioactive material contains many atoms, one becquerel is a tiny level of activity;

As for types of radioactive radiation, it was found that an electric or magnetic field could split such emissions into three types of beams. For lack of better terms, the rays were given the alphabetic names alpha, beta, and gamma, names they still hold today. It was immediately obvious from the direction of electromagnetic forces that alpha rays carried a positive charge, beta rays carried a negative charge, and gamma rays were neutral. From the magnitude of deflection, it was also clear that alpha particles were much more massive than beta particles. Passing alpha rays through a thin glass membrane and trapping them in a discharge tube allowed researchers to study the emission spectrum of the resulting gas, and ultimately prove that alpha particles are in fact helium nuclei. Other experiments showed the similarity between beta radiation and cathode rays; they are both streams of electrons, and between gamma radiation and X-rays, which are both high energy electromagnetic radiation.

Radiation sickness is generally associated with acute exposure and has a characteristic set of symptoms that appear in an orderly fashion. The symptoms of radiation sickness become more serious (and the chance of survival decreases) as the dosage of radiation increases. These effects are described as the deterministic effects of radiation.

Longer term exposure to radiation, at doses less than that which produces serious radiation sickness, can induce cancer as cell-cycle genes are mutated. If a cancer is radiation-induced, then the disease, the speed at which the condition advances, the prognosis, the degree of pain, and every other feature of the disease are not functions of the radiation dose to which the sufferer is exposed.

Since tumors grow by abnormally rapid cell division, the ability of radiation to disturb cell division is also used to treat cancer
Radiation poisoning was a major concern after the Chernobyl reactor accident. It is important to note that in humans the acute effects were largely confined to the accident site. Thirty-one people died as an immediate result.

Of the 100 million curies (4 exabecquerels) of radioactive material, the short lived radioactive isotopes such as 131I Chernobyl released were initially the most dangerous. Due to their short half-lives of 5 and 8 days they have now decayed, leaving the more long-lived 137Cs (with a half-life of 30.07 years) and 90Sr (with a half-life of 28.78 years) as main dangers.

Answer 3

depenting on your level of doasage radioactivity can have both positive and negative effects. for example in taiwan a flats brick were discovered to have radioactive radon. it was soon discoved that the resistents living near that area had a 80% lower chance of having cancer

Answer 4

radiation causes cell mutations in the body which usually leads to cancer.