Question

-What type(s) of effects are the radiation protection standards trying to prevent?

type the answer please

Answer 1

Radiation to a limited extent is necessary but beyond that is harmful for our body.

• Ionizing radiation has sufficient amount of energy that can cause chemical changes in our body cells and damage them. They may either die or become temporarily or permanently abnormal.
• Radiation and cause damage to our genetic material (DNA) contained in our body cells causing cancer.

Radiation effects are catergorized on the basis of amount and duration of its exposure:

• Chronic (Long-term): Chronic exposure is intermittent exposure to radiation over a long period of time. With chronic exposure, there is a delay between the exposure and the observed health effect. These effects can include cancer and other health outcomes such as benign tumors, cataracts, and potentially harmful genetic changes.
• Acute (Short-term): Acute health effect occurs when a body is exposed to a large amount of radiation. The large exposure can occur all at once or from multiple exposures in a short period of time. For e.g accidentally handling a strong industrial radiation source or extreme events like nuclear explosions. It takes a large radiation exposure, more than 75 rad in a short amount of time to cause acute health effects like radiation sickness. (This level of radiation would be equivalent to an x-ray dose of 75,000 millirem. For comparison, the average dose from an adult chest x-ray is about 4 millirem.