The Radiation And Its Health Effects

Surveys were sent to 35,000 male British doctors documenting their smoking habit, then repeatedly thereafter. They check the amount of people who have died over 50 years and results were issued and for the next 50 years. In 1956 Lung cancer deaths from smoking was had a higher loss of life than non-smokers, heavy smokers had a higher chance of getting lung cancer than light smokers. Cigarette smokers had a higher chance of life then pipe smokers. Smokers who continue to smoke have a high loss of life when compared to people who give

It is estimated that half of all smokers die from diseases related to the consumption of tobacco and live an average of ten to fifteen years less than non-smokers.

The average annual radiation dose received by Americans is 360 millirems (or "mrems"), about 300 of which come from naturally occurring sources like radon. By contrast, you would get only 0.01 mrems per year as a result of living 50 feet from a nuclear power plant. Even a single annual cross-country airplane flight exposes you to 3 mrems, while a medical X-ray gives you a dose of 20 mrems.

Beginning with the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, a widespread belief has proliferated that all levels of ionizing radiation are dangerous. Since 1980, radiation hormesis studies have shown there is actually a threshold of danger with high level exposures, but below that threshold low dose radiation is essentially safe and quite possibly beneficial to life. Yet, this relatively new, seemingly contradictory understanding of radiation's health effects has gone essentially unknown to the general public. In order to grasp the reasons why, we must again return to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are many people that die a year from lung cancer. Around 6 million people die a year in the US from tobacco use. According to Center for Disease Control (CDC), smokers will die at least 10 years earlier than nonsmokers. At least 1,300 people die a day from smoking. Also, according to CDC, if smoking continues at this rate then 5.6 million Americans under the age of 18 are expected to die

Ira Helfand demonstrates ethos, or authority, to argue the fact that any amount of radiation can be detrimental to public health, no matter how small. In order to effectively represent authority with this claim, Helfand uses a report from the National Research BEIR VI, “It is the consensus of the medical and scientific community, summarized in the National Research Council BEIR VII report, that there is no safe level of radiation,” (Helfand, 2012. Para. 2). The National Research Council BEIR VII specializes in the study of nuclear energy. For this group to insist that there is not an amount of exposure to radiation that could be deemed as safe, it is more of an “eye-opener” on the argument. Consequently, including an expert organization’s findings into his article allows Dr. Helfand a security of authority on the

Cigarette smoke has extreme health consequences. It has been found that for both sexes, smoking increases the risk of dying from heart disease and from all causes; and for women, it increases the likelihood of dying from lung cancer (Bjartveit and Tverdal 2005). Cigarette smoking habits also

Usable lifetime consumption data were available for 118 of the 153 WP-only smokers, and 91 of the 103 cigarette-only smokers. Total hours of lifetime consumption was dichotomized at meaningful cut points for the dose response analysis as follows: WP hours were dichotomized into 78 hours and less versus greater than 78 hours. Seventy-eight hours corresponded to approximately two (2) WPs per week for one year. Lifetime cigarette hours were dichotomized at 730 hours or less versus greater than 730 hours. This cut point corresponded to approximately two (2) packs of cigarettes per week for one year. These cut points divided the cases into approximately even group sizes. The numbers of WP-only smokers were 58 and 60 for low and high doses, respectively.

The new United States Coast Guard Radiological Isotope Identification Device (RIID) is being promulgated with the next six months. Currently CG-721, DOL-44, nor the Maritime Law Enforcement Academy (MLEA) have discussed implementation processes for the RADSEEKER. This type of oversight could result in Radiation Detection Level II personnel the inability to determine the legitimacy of a radiological source. This poses a risk to national security and the safety of Coast Guard personnel. As MLEA’s Radiation Course Managers there needs to be an effective formulated plan of creating training material, integrating training material to academy staff, and procedures for members in the fleet to become proficient.

Due to some circumstances being out of our control, whether it is through natural means of toxicity from radiation or unnatural means of radiation, how do we protect ourselves? The Earth is covered in natural background radiation. Terrestrial, cosmic and radon radiation are all a part of our environment. Even if manmade radiation and nuclear radiation didn’t exist, we would still be exposed to toxic, unhealthy sources of biological changing substances. How do our bodies recover from an assault to our immune systems and resume a healthy life from ionizing radiation that can cause cancer? How do we become proactive, and responsible for our own health outcome? Can we eliminate from our bodies unwanted toxins, carcinogens, free radicals, and ionizing substances? Do we have control over our health after a large dose of radiation from a nuclear accident, or treatment from radiation therapy? Evidence shows that we do. Just as there are natural sources of radiation, there are natural ways to cleanse our bodies and use nutrition to detoxify, rejuvenate, and restore health when our immunity has been compromised from natural or unnatural sources of radiation.

I interviewed Martha Dibb over the phone to see what her life is like working at Gundersen as a radiation therapist. Martha is a relatively new radiation therapist that graduated from La Crosse two years ago. Her bachelors in radiation therapy is the only degree she has up to this point. She does not plan to pursue any managerial roles at this point in her career, but she does have an open mind. She completed her internship at Gundersen and said she really loved doing her internship there. After she graduated she received a job at Aurora in Kenosha, and she worked there for nine to ten months before getting a job as a radiation therapist back at Gundersen. She has now worked at Gundersen for about eight months and really seems to enjoy working there. I asked her if there were any difference between Gundersen and Aurora and she said there actually is a lot of difference since Aurora in Kenosha was a small radiation center. According to her when she worked in Kenosha the radiation

The first review was from an article in The New England Journal of Medicine called: “Smoking and Mortality — Beyond Established Causes” written by several physicians. (Carter, 2015) It explains how the mortality rates are higher among recent smokers than people who have never smoked. This seems to be attributed to the 21 common diseases that maybe caused by cigarette smoking. Data was collected from group studies in the United States that followed smokers and non-smokers between 2000 and 2011. A study that included men and women who were age 55 or older. As a result, they found that the participant’s mortality rates were higher due to diseases that had not been formally recognized as being triggered by cigarette smoking.

Potential radioactivity and how to address it by identifying the potential risk, avoiding the spread of and exposure to radioactive contamination as part of the permitting process.

While healthy babies are born every day, not everyone is so fortunate. In many cases, diagnostic radiology is required for patients during their childhood. Can having this radiation during the formative years lead to adverse effects later in life? The biggest concern from radiation is the risk of cancer. Cancer can occur at any dose from ionizing radiation because it is a stochastic effect, meaning that it is probabilistic. The probability of a stochastic effect, such as cancer, increases as the dose increases. While receiving this radiation may be necessary, it can cause some serious trouble later in life, such as breast cancer, leukemia, and thyroid cancer.

One of the long run effects of smoking is that four million people are killed every year and is estimated that the figure will rise to ten million by 2030