RADIOACTIVITY AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOU
All of us are exposed to nuclear radiation every day of our lives
from naturally occurring minerals within the earth, traces of radioactive
elements within our bodies and cosmic rays from the sun and stars.
These sources are mostly unavoidable. However, you should be concerned
about local concentrations of nuclear radiation from uranium mine
waste, dissolved radioactive elements in the underground water supply,
such as radium salts and radon, and wind blown dust and gases from
man made radioactive waste around the hundreds of sites dedicated
to nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons manufacturing plants and
nuclear waste landfills. Radioactive elements are unstable and give
off highly energetic charged particles that can damage the genetic
blueprint of the living cell. Some of the time the cell can no longer
function or repair itself and dies, but occasionally the cell multiplies
uncontrollably and becomes a cancer. Obviously, the size, energy
and penetrating distance of nuclear particles determine the damage
to living matter and the number of breaks and changes in the genetic
code.
Nuclear particles are forcefully
ejected by unstable atomic elements, each with its own preferred
method of releasing the overabundance of energy contained in its
nucleus. It first must vibrate itself into the proper pattern. If
you were to shake a coin out of a piggy bank you would succeed only
when the coin and the slot were aligned and moving in the right
direction. Although no one can predict when an individual unstable
nucleus of the radioactive atom will give up its excess energy,
the time it takes for half of a large number of these atoms to decay
can be predicted with statistical accuracy. This is know as the
half life of the radioactive element. After ten half life periods
have passed, less than a tenth of one percent of the radiation will
remain. Some half-life times are long enough to require the radioactive
source to be isolated from public exposure for decades, centuries
or even millennia.
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