{"product_id":"radiation-isbn-9780307950208","title":"Radiation","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe universe was born in a nuclear explosion. We live on a radioactive planet. Without radiation there would be not life. And yet radiation remains deeply misunderstood and often mistakenly feared. Now Dr. Robert Peter Gale—one of the world’s leading experts on the subject—and Eric Lax set the record straight about subjects like uranium, plutonium, iodine-131, X-Rays, CT scans, and the radiation of food, while lucidly debunking myths about radioactivity. In this fascinating book, the authors explore the science, benefits, and risks of radiation exposure, drawing on the most up-to-date research and Gale’s extensive experience treating victims of radiation accidents around the globe. Here is an illuminating and essential guide to our post-Chernobyl, post-Fukushima world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Robert Peter Gale and Eric Lax's \u003ci\u003eRadiation\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Eric Lax [and Robert] Gale weigh up the risks and benefits of industrial, medical and natural radiation clearly, logically and with ample science. . . . It is Gale’s phenomenal frontline experience that gives this book edge.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Humorous and accessible. . . . Gale and Lax aim to fill in the gaps in the public understanding of all things nuclear, and they are adept at doing so. . . . The book navigates this troublesome territory without bias. . . . [Gale and Lax] present a host of interesting facts and figures . . . and their explanation of the biological effect of internal radiation is excellent. . . . This book does a good job at explaining radiation and what it does, both good and bad. Radiation is integral to our planet and its use will shape our future here. In \u003ci\u003eRadiation\u003c\/i\u003e, Gale and Lax help us understand how and why.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew Scientist\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Everyone needs to read this book; it’s compact, easy to understand, rife with interesting revelations, and it cuts through a great deal of the noise surrounding the subject [of radiation].” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eJewish Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Stellar. . . . Gale and Lax objectively present the danger and value of radioactivity. In content and writing, \u003ci\u003eRadiation \u003c\/i\u003eabsolutely glows.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Lax and] Gale’s is an invaluable guide for negotiating an increasingly radioactive world—for scientists, patients of radiation-related medical procedures, and environmentalists alike.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A well-written extension of the reach of reason in an area fraught with phobia and hysteria.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Robert Peter Gale was on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine for twenty years and has served as chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry. He is the author of twenty-two medical books, eight hundred scientific articles, and numerous pieces on medical topics and nuclear energy for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEric Lax is the author of medical\/science books \u003ci\u003eLife and Death on Ten West\u003c\/i\u003e, an account of the UCLA bone marrow transplantation unit, as well as \u003ci\u003eWoody Allen: A Biography\u003c\/i\u003e, each a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book of the Year. \u003ci\u003eThe Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat\u003c\/i\u003e, about the development of penicillin, was a \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the Hardcover Edition\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eASSESSING THE RISKS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow Can I Determine My Risk of Cancer From Radiation, and Why Is There So Much Disagreement Among Experts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn  July 16, 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) desert near  Alamogordo, New Mexico, the fiery explosion of the Trinity test—the  first atomic bomb—generated a light brighter than any ever seen on  Earth. As it dimmed, it revealed a mushroom cloud of vaporized water and  debris that grew thousands of feet into the air. J. Robert Oppenheimer  (1904–1967), who more than anyone else was responsible for building the  weapon, wrote afterward that watching the explosion brought to mind two  lines from the sacred Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita: “If the  radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky that would be  like the splendor of the Mighty One.” And: “I am become Death, the  shatterer of worlds.” (It is perhaps more likely that his first thought  was, Wow! Thank God, it worked!)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat shattering burst of energy  was also an act of creation: it produced radioactive forms of natural  elements that—apart from laboratory work during the bomb’s  development—had never before existed on Earth, including ­cesium-­137,  iodine-­131, and strontium-­90. During the months that followed these  newly created radionuclides circled the globe and silently entered the  bodies of everyone alive. And because some of these radionuclides remain  radioactive for hundreds or thousands of years, the children of these  people, their children, and all humans from that date until our species  ceases to exist will have radionuclides created at the Trinity explosion  in their bodies. The same is true for the radionuclides released by the  more than 450 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests carried out by the  United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China between 1945  and 1980, and from several nuclear power facility accidents. Of course,  the amounts of radionuclides released from each of these sources differ  vastly. It is inappropriate to consider atomic weapons and nuclear  power facility accidents comparable, because the quantity of  radionuclides released varies greatly, because they are not uniformly  distributed over the Earth, and because different people have different  likelihoods of encountering them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome of the radionuclides  released by nuclear weapons testing and by nuclear power facility  accidents can cause cancer. But some of the same radionuclides are used  to diagnose and treat cancers and save lives. What is the balance  between the potential harm and benefit posed by radionuclides and by all  forms of radiation?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo determine whether this balance favors  harm or benefit, it is necessary to know what radiation dose a person  has received. This is not as simple as it might seem (in fact it is  exceedingly complex, even for radiation experts), so we ask the reader  please to bear with the following several pages of technical  information, knowing that in the end all you ­really need to remember is  one technical term: millisievert (mSv), named for the Swedish medical  physicist Rolf Maximilian Sievert (1896–1966), who did pioneering work  on the biological effects of radiation exposure. A sievert (Sv) is a  unit of potentially harmful radiation. Each year we generally receive a  few thousandths of a sievert, called a millisievert. People in the  United States on average receive 6.5 mSv of radiation annually.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRadioactivity  is measured by the number of atoms decaying (losing energy by emitting  radioactive particles and\/or electromagnetic waves) in a certain amount  of time. The disappearance of a radionuclide is measured by how long it  takes for one-­half of its atoms to decay. That can take a long time, as  something can be reduced by one-­half almost forever, until only one  atom remains—and then it decays. But most of the starting radioactivity  is gone after about 10 half-­lives; only about one-­thousandth of the  starting radioactivity remains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese measurements have many  names, depending on what you want to quantify. At first it is easy to  mistake which unit to use, so one can end up comparing the radioactive  equivalent of eels to elephants. It is also easy to mistake amounts: 1  microsievert (a millionth of a sievert) is a thousand times smaller than  1 millisievert (a thousand mSv make 1 Sv), yet several news reports of  the Fukushima-­Daiichi nuclear power facility accident confused these  units.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn estimating how a radiation exposure might affect us,  scientists need to consider the amount of radiation we are exposed to;  what type of radiation it is; how much of it gets into the various  cells, tissues, and organs in our body; and how susceptible these  tissues and organs are to radiation-­induced damage. Some cells, like  bone marrow, skin, and gastrointestinal tract cells, are especially  sensitive to damage from radiation. One reason is that they divide  frequently—rapidly dividing cells are more sensitive to radiation that  damage DNA. For example, a normal person needs to produce about 3  billion red blood cells each day to stay healthy. Other cells,  predominantly those that divide infrequently, if ever, like heart,  liver, and brain cells, are relatively resistant to radiation-­induced  damage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo to determine the amount of radiation in an exposure,  we must calculate the quantity of radiation emitted or released from a  source, be it a CT scanner, a radiation therapy machine, a nuclear  weapon, a failed nuclear power facility, or a radioisotope injected for a  PET scan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut calculating the quantity of radiation is complex.  Some diagnostic radiation machines emit electromagnetic waves such as  X‑rays or particles such as protons, neutrons, or electrons. Other  radiation-­related activities, like fissioning uranium-­235 or  plutonium-­239 in a nuclear weapon, emit gamma rays and neutrons. Most  fission products emit electrons and gamma rays. The explosion of the  Chernobyl nuclear reactor released into the environment more than 200  radionuclides in diverse physical and chemical forms, including  radioactive gases such as xenon-­133 and iodine-­124 and -131, as well  as radioactive particles. These gases rapidly disperse into the  atmosphere. The radioactive particles also disperse across a very broad  area—unless it happens to rain when the radioactive cloud passes over  you and particles of cesium-­137 and strontium-­90 fall to the ground  with the raindrops.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnfortunately, when the radioactive plume  from the 1986 Chernobyl accident containing particles with iodine-­131  and cesium-­137 passed over Scotland, it was raining. Consequently,  substantial amounts of these radionuclides landed on grass. The grass  was subsequently eaten by grazing animals, especially sheep, and those  radionuclides were incorporated into their bodies and secreted in their  milk. The iodine-­131, with an 8-­day half-­life, was gone in about  three months. But the cesium-­137 was concentrated in the meat of the  sheep, and with its half-­life of 30 years, it stayed around for the  lifetime of the sheep. The level of cesium-­137 in many of these animals  exceeded government safety standards; consequently many sheep were  killed and buried, and their meat was quarantined from the market.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor  a radioactive substance or radionuclide, like a gram of radium-­232 or a  gram of cesium-­137, we can compute how much radiation it releases by  considering the number of spontaneous disintegrations (decays) that  occur in the nuclei of the atoms in that gram over a certain time  interval, for example, one second. This rate of decay, referred to as  the amount of radioactivity in radionuclides, is measured in units  called becquerels (Bq), named after the nineteenth-­century French  physicist Antoine-­Henri Becquerel (1852–1908). One becquerel equals one  nuclear disintegration per second. Because this is an extremely small  quantity, scientists often speak of thousands of becquerels (a  kilobecquerel, KBq), millions of becquerels (a megabecquerel, MBq), a  million million becquerels (a terabecquerel, TBq), or even a billion  billion becquerels (a exabecquerel, EBq). It’s like an expression of  speed. If a becquerel is a person walking 1 mile per hour, a  kilobecquerel is like the same person walking (or rocketing) 1,000 miles  per hour, and so forth. However, the quantity of becquerels a substance  contains is not the only consideration for human health. Because  different nuclear disintegrations release different electromagnetic  waves and particles, the same quantity of becquerels released can have  substantially different potential health consequences. Also, not all  radioactive substances are equally radioactive. When we compare similar  quantities of thorium-­230 and ­uranium-­234, for example, the  thorium-­230 is about 1 million times more radioactive—it has 1 million  times more disintegrations per second.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce we have ascertained  the amount of radioactivity, we must determine how much radioactive  energy it deposits into something. That “something” can be the air,  another substance, or our bodies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen we must determine how this  radioactivity interacts with humans. This is referred to as dose, which  is quite different from emitted radiation. Imagine a gram of  ­cesium-­137 inside a lead box. It is releasing radiation in the form of  electrons and gamma rays, but no one is being exposed to it, because  these radiations cannot penetrate the lead. So the dose of radiation to  any person is zero, and hence it has no chance for harm to us. But if  you are holding this same gram of ­cesium-­137 in your hand, the same  electrons and gamma rays that it emits through the spontaneous decay of  its nucleus will interact with the skin, muscle, and nerve cells in that  hand. And because gamma rays can travel considerable distances and pass  through many substances, other parts of your body will be exposed to  radiation, although not uniformly. As these gamma rays pass through your  cells, they will deposit some of their energy within each cell they  strike. This amount of energy is the radiation dose to the cell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother  concept in radiation dosimetry is the radiation absorbed dose, which is  expressed in units of gray (Gy), after the British physicist Louis  Harold Gray (1905–1965). A gray is the amount of energy a dose of  radiation deposits in a tissue. We will skip over them other than to say  that the quantity of grays absorbed into a tissue or organ (adjusted  for some biological factors) can be converted to a number of sieverts,  the unit used to estimate risk of harm, like cancer, from radiation  exposure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally, determining the effective dose, measured in  sieverts, considers two issues. First, not all types of radiation are  equally damaging—for example, a dose of neutrons absorbed is much more  damaging than the same dose of X‑rays. Second, different cells, tissues,  and organs in the body, as we saw, have different sensitivities to  radiation damage. Effective dose adjusts for these variables and thereby  gives a better estimate of the harmful consequences of a radiation  exposure. This, at last, brings us to the end of units of radioactivity  and activity. But please try to remember ­millisieverts, as we will  translate everything into them from now on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving slogged  through so many technicalities, let’s examine how scientists analyze  radiation emitted, energy absorbed, and biological damage from that  radioactivity, so that we can make the one judgment that ­really  matters: What am I exposed to, and is it bad for me? We’ll use a  basketball analogy, for simplicity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen a player sends a  basketball through the hoop, the number of points awarded can vary. A  free throw is worth 1 point, a basket shot from inside a circumscribed  area is worth 2 points, and a basket shot from outside that area is  worth 3. The team’s score in a game is not the number of times its  players sent the ball through the hoop but the total of the points  awarded from those baskets. It’s the same with measuring radioactivity:  the amount you are exposed to is not necessarily the amount that you  will absorb, and that is not necessarily directly correlated with the  amount of harm. Determining that final harm score means weighing and  balancing several factors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf there were a direct correlation  between a specific amount of exposure and the onset of disease, a simple  chart would clarify things for you. But the relationship between  radiation and disease is not entirely linear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe conventional  approach to determining a person’s cancer risk from a radiation exposure  is to compare the range of possible effects from the dose in the  scientifically accurate but difficult-­to-­understand units we’ve  detailed. When there is a nuclear or radiation accident, public health  authorities often give information in terms of what radiation dose  people received (or will receive in the future) and\/or how much  radioactivity is in something they may encounter, such as food or water.  They then compare these doses or amounts of radioactivity to a  benchmark, such as the normal background radiation dose, or the dose a  nuclear power facility worker receives annually, or the regulatory limit  or threshold for radioactivity in food or water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch  information, given to people who are not radiation scientists or  physicians, is likely to be uninformative at best and misleading at  worst, and it is at once confusing and simplistic. The implication is  that if you receive a dose similar to or less than your normal  background dose, or less than a regulatory limit for food or water, you  need not worry. For example, if the regulatory limit for radioactivity  in milk is 500 Bq per liter and the milk you are drinking contains 350  Bq per liter, you are not at risk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut things are not so simple.  For any radiation dose, the risk of getting cancer also depends on one’s  age at the time of exposure, estimated remaining life span, exposure to  other cancer-­causing agents (like cigarette smoke), concurrent health  problems that can be exacerbated by radiation, and other complicated  variables. Simply put, the implications for an eighty-­year-­old exposed  to a given dose of radiation are entirely different from those for a  three-­year-­old who receives exactly the same dose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAssessing  risk requires statistical analyses. You cannot rely only on dose to  express a person’s risk of getting cancer, because dose is only an  intermediate quantity between their radiation exposure and their cancer  risk. A more helpful way to link cancer risk to exposure is to specify a  person’s lifetime risk of cancer regardless of the cause; specify the  additional lifetime risk resulting only from a specific radiation  exposure; estimate future cancer risk for persons exposed in the past  (or who soon will be exposed) and who are currently free of cancer,  radiation related or not; or estimate the likely increase in numbers of  cancers in an exposed population such as people evacuated from  Fukushima.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen we talk about the dangers of radiation, we are  usually referring to ionizing radiations, which can alter the structure  of atoms, molecules, and chemicals in our cells and cause cancers. Most  data suggest that exposure to nonionizing radiations (except UV), like  those from TVs, computer screens, high-­voltage electrical transmission  wires, and the like, are not harmful. This area is controversial and  conclusions may change, but the adverse effects of nonionizing  radiations, if any, are unquestionably small compared to the proven  harmful effects of ionizing radiations like neutrons and gamma rays. The  challenge in considering risk of illness from a new exposure to an  ionizing radiation—say, from a radiation accident—is to compare it to  voluntary and involuntary cancer and noncancer risks in everyday life,  like ­driv­ing a car, riding a motorcycle, flying in a jet aircraft, or  going into a basement containing radon gas. By looking at the whole  picture, we can weigh the cancer risk from a radiation exposure and  decide whether a past exposure is important or whether a future exposure  is acceptable.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303907119333,"sku":"NP9780307950208","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307950208.jpg?v=1767735339","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/radiation-isbn-9780307950208","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}