The Pros And Cons Of Radiation And Cancer

What do cancer, radiation, and technology have in common? The links between the three are quite extraordinary. Cancer is a disease that accounts for 13% of all deaths in the world (Delfino and Day 1). The disease has an impact on patients, friends and their love ones. According to WebMD, radiation is energy that travels in the form of waves through radiation therapy. Through radiation therapy, radiation is used to stop, slow or cure the growth of cancer. With technology, radiologists can treat cancer patients through radiation and special computerized imaging (WebMD).

A common form of cancer that is very popular today is lung cancer. Lung cancer is a very dangerous form that can cause problems in simple body functions. These simple body functions are short breath and general fatigue. Lung cancer is commonly formed from smokers that has been exposed to that activity for numerous years. Lung cancer can also be spread by being exposed to asbestos or other pollutants. This form of cancer has many risk factors to it. These risk factors are high levels of air pollution, arsenic drinking water, and radon gas. Radon gas is a gas that is highly radioactive and is very sensitive to the body. Once radon is exposed to the body, it has a very high respiration rate which initially divide its radioactive cells- causing more significant damage to the body.

It is now known that radium, shown in figure 4, is a potent carcinogen (a substance the cause’s cancer (Wilbraham, Staley, Marta, & Waterman, 2005)). It emits a form of ionizing radiation which “includes electromagnetic radiation (e.g., gamma rays and X-rays) as well as particles (e.g., alpha particles, beta particles, high-speed neutrons, high-speed electrons, high-speed protons, etc.)” (National Library of Medicine, n.d.). Acute studies have been done on the effects of radium exposure on the human body by organizations like the Geneva World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Man. As a result of their findings, The National Library of Medicine states that sufficient evidence has been provided showing that prolonged exposure to Raduim-224, Radium-226,

Cancer is a genetic, heritable disease in which abnormal cells divide rapidly destroying normal body cells, often being fatal. Cancer can occur in any body tissue; skin, organs, and parts of the reproductive system (Duda). There are various activities linked to different types of cancer, such as smoking, too much sun exposure, gene mutations, carcinogens, and viruses. A major cause of cancer, dating all the way back to the 1950’s, is radiation. Atomic testing ordered by the U.S. Government has been suspected to be the cause of many deaths linked to radiation-related diseases (Williams 149).

Statistics report that radon is the number one cause of lung cancer for non-smokers in the US and the second leading cause of lung cancer overall.

“Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch by David Ropeik states that radiation is very destructive to humans and our bodies (Ropeik 1). In this article Ropeik contradicts the fact of whether it is as devastating as we make it seem. We fear what we do not know. That is why we get scared of radiation and nuclear weapons, because we cannot physically see it so we don’t understand what it really consists of. Fear is something brought upon ourselves and until we learn to control it, it will always be around. As a result, Ropeik discovers that radiation is deadly, but at a very low percentage (Ropeik 1). “For the entire population exposed, often to extremely high levels of radiation, that’s an excess cancer mortality rate of about two-thirds of 1

One potential stochastic effect that can occur with ionizing radiation is thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer is the 5th most common cancer in women. The diagnosis of thyroid malignancy has increased worldwide in the last few decades and is the most rapidly increasing cancer in the United States with a 5.1% increase from 2003 to 2012. Common symptoms of thyroid cancer are a lump on the neck, a tight feeling in the neck, difficulty breathing or swallowing, hoarseness, and swollen lymph nodes. However in many cases, no symptoms arise and the cancer is diagnosed because an abnormality is seen on an imaging test being performed for another reason2.

Radiation comes in different forms and is around us all day sometimes dangerous other times not. Radiation can be used under various categories such as communication, science and medical usage. The main focus surrounding these groups is medical because it is used to findings, test and analyze both treatments and research. Radiation uses X-rays and gamma rays for medical use. For example, X- rays are used identify if bones are fracture or broken. X-rays is usually used during radiology with specialized equipment like computerized tomography, cardiology, mammography and magnetic resonance imagining. Radiation is also used for treatment of diseases or cancer known as therapy. Oncology

Radiation exposure: A man whose chest area has been exposed to radiation (usually for treatment of a cancer inside the chest such as Hodgkin's or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) has an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

Cancer is most common to be discovered in Chernobyl. There has been a 200% increase in breast cancer, and 100% in leukemia. Thyroid cancer has increased drastically since 1986 to 1990. Thyroid cases has decreased, but only for children. Adult cases has increased from 38 to 308 cases. 70,000 people have cancer just from Chernobyl, and 185,000 have cancer worldwide. You could say cancer is really common here on earth.

After reviewing the Radiation and Its Health Effects section, review the health effects and expected life lost graph. How many days or years does an average person lose due to radiation exposure versus cigarette smoking? Were you surprised by the number of days or years lost to radiation versus cigarette smoking? Why or why not?

In 2007, it is predicted that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States (Pickle et al., 2007). More than half of these cancer patients will undergo the use of radiation as a means for treating cancer at some point during the course of their disease (Perez and Brady, 1998). Cancer, a disease caused by an uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells, affects millions of people around the world. Radiotherapy is one of the well known various methods used to treat cancer, where high powered rays are aimed directly at the tumor from the outside of the body as external radiation or an instrument is surgically placed inside the body producing a result of internal radiation. Radiation is delivered to the cancerous regions of the body to damage and destroy the cells in that area, terminating the rapid growth and division of the cells. Radiation therapy has been used by medicine as a treatment for cancer from the beginning of the twentieth century, with its earliest beginnings coming from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. With the advancements in physics and computer programming, radiation had greatly evolved towards the end of the twentieth century and made the radiation treatment more effective. Radiation therapy is a curative treatment approach for cancer because it is successful in killing cancerous tumor cells and stop them from regenerating.

In an effort to address the issue of radio frequency radiation exposure in this community, we will provide a background on the sources of radio frequency radiation as well as the known and suspected health effects. We will also proposed two epidemiological studies and discuss risk management and

Radioactivity has been around since the 1800s. It is very popular in the medical field. It is used my many professionals to help diagnose and treat people every single day. Although it does have some advantages and disadvantages, people still use it to this day.

radiation (the kind used in X-rays) is known to cause cancer at high doses, the risks of