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"poisoning" means to introduce a harmful or deadly substance into someone or something. Even the very wikipedia article you refer to calls it poisoning.

• Retric 9y ago
  Nuclear weapons cause radiation poisoning, but it's energy that's causing issues not hydrogen ions or photons etc. We don't think of burns as poison for good reasons.
  • codewritinfool 9y ago
    So frustrating. I'm going to stop replying because your basic science is incorrect. Are you aware that gamma rays consist of high-energy photons?
    • Retric 9y ago
      Yes, as I said photons (X-Rays, Gama etc). Protons are used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_therapy You can add helium nuclei (Alpha), electron's (Beta radiation) etc. Arguably the worst Neutron's which are not directly ionizing even though they carry a lot of energy, penetrate most things, and often cause what they hit to become radioactive. Again it's really not about the carrier. We call it radiation because it's high energy that's causing problems. It's not like 450nm photons are deadly unless you have an insane number of them. But, if you had enough you could still kill someone with blue light.