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Not all radiation is created equal, and the delivery mechanism is very important. Breathing in material emitting an otherwise harmless amount of alpha particle
by jwie 3y ago
Not all radiation is created equal, and the delivery mechanism is very important.
Breathing in material emitting an otherwise harmless amount of alpha particles (essentially a helium isotope particle stripped of electrons) is very harmful. Those ionizing particles get into lung tissues and since they’re charged and have a lot of mass they can do a lot of damage in a local area. Internal doses are orders of magnitude more harmful.
Radiation is generally safe, but there are types of radiation doses that are very harmful. It’s less about the radiation level and more about what kind, how it’s delivered, and over how long a time span.
- QuarterReptile 3y agoYou're conflating two things, so just to be clear about both bad things, for everyone else: Alpha radiation is massively damaging, but is blocked entirely by the outer, dead layers of skin. Once it gets inside your body where it can access vulnerable tissue, it's a different story. Contamination (think "source of radiation") that gets inhaled or ingested (committed) is bad because you fractionally take it with you, getting continually irradiated. Even worse, some committed contamination eagerly accumulates or replaces in processes where it won't be exchanged out. This is the case with iodine, and that is why iodine pills can be helpful in large releases of radioactivity.