How dangerous is ionizing radiation to the human body?

>>8563499
Depends on the dose, or is it the absorbed dose? I never remember, theres so many units and measures in medical physics.

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not very unless you are exposed to extreme levels that are not found either in nature or controlled medical imaging, AKA a nuclear reactor melt down and you're standing right next to the plant, or an atomic bomb being dropped in your town. even traveling to mars would more than likely not pose any risk from ionizing radiation. you are always exposed to radiation living on earth, and medical imaging is rarely to a level of any concern. only the most hardcore radiology studies on a patient will deem worthy any sort of discussion of the risks from the ionizing radiation, but even then it is truly unnecessary and only scares patients.

a young adult could literally go 10,000 lifetimes of getting a routine CT scan before possibly having any effect on their life, statistically, and that using conservative, worst-case-scenario models. the results from the dozens of tests we've done always come to statistical insignificance that we can't even verify as being related.

even with atomic bombs being dropped, excess cases from exposures under 100 mSv are exponentially decreasing the closer you get to a 5 mSv dose(in which we see no excess) in comparison to above 100 mSv, where effects are actually statistically significant although small. We have very recently shown that to even very radio-sensitive parts of the body in the elderly who are even more radio-sensitive, doses under 10 mSv do not even damage our DNA to the best of our ability to detect such markers in 2016, so it is safe to assume that anything that isn't you being involved in some catastrophic accident will not effect your lifespan at all or cause any science-fiction tier mutations. It's basic science. our bodies have really good defenses against ionizing radiation up to levels that we very rarely have seen in history(chernobyl, fukushima, hiroshima, nagasaki) and especially anything naturally occurring on earth and controlled medical imaging.

So long we have an intact atmosphere we are safe.

Too bad that the Mars lacks one.

The dangers of it are really overblown. I have a family member that won't get their head CT scans because they think it will give them cancer when the reality is that such a thing is only a concern with very, very small children under 5 years of age, typically under 1 year old. Adults 18+ have absolutely nothing to worry about.

t. radiology tech

>>8563499
you can see from your own fucking image that it's not that dangerous

If I remember correctly you need to take 100-200 rem as an acute dose to even be able to feel radiation sickness. For reference you get about 300 mrem from cosmic radiation every year. So unless you happen to live in a reactor compartment or enjoy snacking on radioactive isotopes you should be fine.

>>8565273
But if you're talking about cancer every ion pair is a ticket to the cancer lottery fag

>>8565273
I think OP is asking about x-rays

>>8565278
Oh that's boring, they give you a lead apron quit being a pussy.

>>8563505
>Depends on the dose, or is it the absorbed dose?

it's absorbed dose, also the quality factor...

Four primary types of radiation:

1. Beta (charged particles, electrons and the like)

2. Neutron

3. Alpha (high speed hydrogen atoms)

4. Gamma (x-ray and gamma photons)

How much damage the radiation does depends on several factors:

1. How many radiation events you are absorbing

2. What type of radiation you are absorbing

3. How energetic each radiation event is.

Combined together, you get the sievert, the S.I. unit for absorbed dose of radiation, measured in Joules per Kg of body mass * quality factor, with the quality factor being determined by the energy level/type of ionizing radiation.

Computing your absorbed dose is a SUPER fun oddesy into the land of complex math.

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>>8565280
people really like to spread that it will basically kill you.
>>8565317
what do you think of CT scans and plain film x-rays?

>>8565320
>what do you think of CT scans and plain film x-rays?

They DO emit ionizing radiation, but it is under the amount that can give you cancer, or kill you outright.

Radiation and it's effects are fairly complicated, because it's basically statistics.

Radiation basically does damage in the same way that bullets do, but they are VERY, *VERY* tiny... so it takes a shit ton of them in a short amount of time to do anything to you.

Not many people know, but every biological organism is radioactive... the typical human has about 8,000 atomic disintegration per second (berquels) in their body, from the time you are born to the time you die. (mostly from potassium-40 and carbon-14)

You are made up of trillions of individual cells (google tells me it's about 37.2 trillion), so it's going to take a FUCK TON of them dying all at once to even phase you.

There are two ways that radiation can kill you...

1. Chronic dose... this is based on the statistical probability of an individual radiation particle hitting one of your cells in JUST THE RIGHT WAY to give you cancer... it's basically one in a quatrillion or something silly like that.

2. Acute dose.... this is the one that super sucks, it's when you take enough ionizing particles at once that your body basically shuts down.

CT scans and X-rays have a higher radiation dose that your normal background, but not enough for any acute damage, and barely anything so far as chronic dosage is concerned... so long as you aren't taking an x-ray per hour or something.

>>8565330
>an x-ray per hour

*for a year

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>>8565330
I had a 1.5 mSv(DLP of 709) head CT scan. From what I've researched myself, it will not affect me. Am I wrong?

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>>8565333
XKCD is kind of a shitty site now that it's turned all leftist...

But this chart is fairly accurate.

Looks like you hit your yearly limit for radiation exposure.

Luckily, x-rays have a Q factor of only 1.

>>8565338
>yearly limit

This limit is established to minimize the risk of cancer.

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>>8565333
Interesting note:

You know that characteristic "Blue Glow" from radiation? (pic related)

This is known as bremsstrahlung radiation, (braking radiation). It's what happens when the radiation "Particles" exceed the speed of light in the medium that they are traveling through (refractive index), strike an atom or molecule in that medium, and subsequently gives off a visible spectrum photon (usually high energy, characterized by it's nifty blue glow)

If you EVER see this glow, and you aren't separated from the source by meters of water, or lead glass... As in, if you see it IN THE AIR, with nothing in-between you and the source BUT air... then you have already taken a lethal dose.

>>8565333
>I had a 1.5 mSv(DLP of 709) head CT scan. From what I've researched myself, it will not affect me. Am I wrong?

Just to fully answer your question... you'll be fine.

Basically, you increased your risk of cancer by something like 0.0000001%

>>8565317
>3. Alpha (high speed hydrogen atoms)

Damnit... that should have been helium.

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>>8565333
trips confirm it won't affect you

but seriously, all of the ham you ate on Christmas Eve will be more detrimental to your life span than that scan will. people REALLY underestimate how much radiation is needed to cause cancer. You need to have a chronic exposure for a long time, like a major CT scan every week for 1 year, or one huge blast, we're talking hundreds of millisieverts or more for there to be any real concern. one stupid CT scan, especially to the head of an adult, is like the least worrisome set of circumstances for any question of a medical imaging study to actually cause cancer. if we were talking like, several close together abdominal/pelvic scans of a small child, then you could worry, maybe. Small children are the only people that need to worry about things like this. Even at 10 years of age, statistics show the possible excess cases to be exponentially lower than <5. Any 18+ year old male is totally cool. If you actually look at what scientists and doctors talk about when they talk about radiation concerns in x-rays, they talk about small children because big kids and adults just aren't at risk.
>>8565342
>Basically, you increased your risk of cancer by something like 0.0000001%
not true at all, more like 0.01% - 0.001%. it's still negligible.

>>8565345
>not true at all, more like 0.01% - 0.001%. it's still negligible.

I thought I made it pretty clear that I wasn't being specific.

>>8565342
>"something like 0.0000001%"
>they're using whole-body rates and not rates for cancers that manifest in the head to calculate that

lol

>>8565349
Well, you would just calculate the head's mass only for that one.

>>8565351
well you have to take into account the radio-sensitivity of the types of cells that make up that portion of the body, neurons being behind muscle cells as the least radio-sensitive.

at the end of the day, the statistics show that this shit doesn't matter for anyone other than little kids, who in reality probably already had a problem to begin with and the scan didn't play too much of a part.

literally, if you look at these studies and check the ages of the excess cancer cases, the vast majority are young children and the excess cases exponentially decrease towards 10-18 years of age where the excess cases are very few in comparison and pretty suspect.

>>8565357
That's probably because the kids are still growing, and also have fewer cells than adults, most of the kids cells are still dividing, growing, etc... so the probabilities of a radiation event causing problems is increased as the age decreases.

Mitosis and all that.

>>8565360
yeah, that's really the logic behind it. they dose from age/weight, but it will obviously still be more dangerous for a growing child.

A big enough amount will kill you. But thats true for everything isnt it? As most guys here said, as long as the amount is low you will be fine

>>8565340
Cherenkov radiation*

>>8565386
>Cherenkov radiation*

Yup... you're right, I got those two confused.

Look like they have a similar mechanism though, only it's the medium instead of the particle in the case of cherenkov radiation doing the emitting.

Bremsstrahlung is still pretty cool though... F.E.L's

>>8565391
>Look like they have a similar mechanism though

Of course, this doesn't mean much, since in bremsstrahlung the particle isn't exceeding phase-c in the medium.

That just gave me a few ideas....

>>8565333
I'd quite literally bet $100,000,000 if I had it that you don't die from anything related to that scan.