Radiation: Major Use, Effects & Dangers

Radiation is when the nuclei of atoms give off rays of high energy. Out of the 1,500 known atoms on Earth only about 50 of them give off intense radiation. There are three kinds of radiation: alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays. Alpha rays have a positive charge consisting of two protons and two neutrons. Alpha rays are emitted with high energy but lose energy very quickly. About two or three sheets of paper can stop an alpha ray. Beta rays are electrons. Most nuclei emit ordinary electrons. But some emit positrons. Beta particles can travel the speed of light and some can penetrate a half inch of wood. Gamma rays do not have an electrical charge. They are the same as x-rays. Gamma rays are photons; they travel the speed of light. They are also much more penetrating then alpha and beta particles.

Radiation originates in the nuclei. Alpha particles consist of only protons and neutrons. These are fragments of the nuclei that emit them. There are no electrons in the nucleus. In beta particles a change in the nucleus creates an electron. When atoms give off alpha or beta radiation they change into atoms of a different element. Since gamma rays have no charge they cannot result in transmutation. When the nucleus emits an alpha particle that nucleus loses two protons and two neutrons. When a nucleus emits a beta particle it also emits a neutrino. A neutrino like a neutron has no electric charge. In radiation of a negative beta particle a neutron in the nucleus turns into a proton a negative electron and a neutrino. Once the neutrino and the electron form they are emitted and the proton remains in the nucleus. Gamma radiation can occur in many different ways. One way is when an alpha or beta particle is emitted but the particle fails to carry off all the available energy. After emission the nucleus has more energy than in its stable state. To balance this out the nucleus gives off gamma rays. Radiation is used heavily in medicine. Radioisotopes can detect abnormal behavior in certain organs of the body. Radioisotopes also can be used to treat cancer. When you have cancer your cells reproduce at a very fast rate. Radioisotopes destroy the cancerous cells. Radiation though destroys living tissue so you need to be shielded from excess rays. Alpha and beta rays are easily absorbed by the body but gamma rays can be very dangerous. Every day approximately 3,000 people are diagnosed with cancer. Also every day approximately 2,000 people die from a form of cancer. Scientists are still trying to find safer and more effective ways to use radiation to treat cancer. Improvements in radiation therapy have definitely led to an increase in the number of people surviving after being diagnosed with cancer.

How is it used?

A major use of radiation is in the treatment of cancer. For the first time cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body giving that organ radiotherapy then re-implanting it. This operation allows doctors to admit higher doses of radiation to widespread tumors without affecting other organs. Doctors in Italy performed this twenty one hour surgery on a forty eight year old man's liver. One year after the surgery this man is alive and well and recent scans revealed no signs of tumors. This technique can be used to tackle hard to treat cancers in organs that can be transplanted, such as the lungs or pancreas. The patient that was treated so far using this method initially only had a colon tumor removed but the cancer spread to his liver. Scans revealed fourteen tumors and many smaller ones were found during the operation. Diffuse cancers can be difficult to treat using conventional means. The tumors were resistant to chemotherapy. There was little hope of killing the widespread growth with radiotherapy without destroying the liver. The method of removing the organ and treating it outside the body is called the boron neutron capture therapy. During the surgery the liver is removed and the patient is put on life support. The liver needs to be place in a Teflon bag so that neutron will be able to pass through. Boron atoms are attached to the amino acid phenylalanine and injected into the organ. Because tumors are growing quickly they take up more of the compound then the normal cell. Two to four hours after the boron is injected the organ is brought to a research reactor were neutrons blast the boron into high energy particles that only kill the cancerous cells. This method needs to be done outside the body because bones can block the neutron beam and the tissues surrounding the organ receive a large dose of radiation and those tissues are usually destroyed. After the surgery the liver was re-implanted just like a normal liver transplant. This technique was very successful but with only one patient it might be too early to judge how safe and effective it is. In order to receive this operation today you would need to travel to Australia, Italy, and Russia because these are the only countries with suitable reactors capable of producing suitable neutron beams. The work could also improve normal boron neutron capture therapy. By improving our knowledge of the therapy it becomes safer and easier. This method is currently being tested on patients with untreatable brain tumors. These people donated there bodies to science.

New use for radiation

Radiation is one of the most effective means of killing microbes and has was only been clinically and FDAA approved to treat cancer, this may be about to change. For the first time scientists have turned radiation against infection. With antibiotic resistance among the bacteria medical researchers are looking beyond the traditional drug therapies. A possible new source is radio immunotherapy (RIT). RIT is a technique used to treat cancer patients. RIT is like radiation treatment but instead of blasting the tumors from the outside individual atoms are injected into the blood. In order to keep normal cells from being coated with the RIT you need to attach radiation emitting atoms to antibody proteins. This insures that the normal cells will be spared from the DNA blasting radiation. RIT can also be used to fight fungus and infection. Antibodies have been designed to bind to Cryptococcus neoformans. This fungus plagues AIDS patients. When lab mice were injected with the antibody alone and treated with just the RIT they died just as quickly as untreated mice. The antibody needs to be attached to a radioactive substance. When radioactive bismuth-213 or rhenium-188 atoms were attached to the antibody the infection started to clear up. The mouse survival increased to sixty percent. The best news about this is that the RIT does not kill bone marrow. RIT has had a lot of initial success. Out of the three hundred mice that were given the fungus fifty percent lived for a year. In humans though you will be able to live for a lot longer then a year because our immune system are more complicated then those of mice. The one problem with the RIT therapy is that some of the mice faced tissue problems. Scientists have a long way to go with RIT. With success RIT can be the most effective and least expensive cures for infection and cancer.

Alternative to radiation therapy, created by advances in radiation

Thousands of women with breast cancer can be spared the trauma of mastectomy by a new treatment that kills tumors without the need for open surgery. A new technique known as ablation therapy may be a safe and effective alternative to traditional methods of treatment. This treatment will let women either choose from a therapy that does lead to breast removal or scarring nor require large doses of radiation. The traditional method of treatment is either mastectomy or removal of the cancerous lump combined with radiotherapy of the whole breast to kill any remaining cancerous cells. Ablation therapy has become possible because of advances in the MRI. The scan can pinpoint exactly were the cancerous cells are. The scans are used to guide needles that are inserted directly into the tumors. Once the needle is inserted into the tumor there are three options to destroy the cancer. One option of treatment uses electrical current to heat the needle to 140ºF. This process takes about 15 minutes. It burns away all the malignant cells. The second method of treatment the needle emits a laser beam that kills the cancer. The third type of treatment uses liquid nitrogen to freeze and destroy abnormal tissues. This method has been tested on 50 patients all of whom had traditional treatments as a precaution. In the later investigations research showed that ablation removed 90% of the cancerous tissue and the traditional method also removed 90% of the cancerous cells. Ablation therapy also leaves women scar and cut free. The normal scarring with traditional therapy goes away in 6 months. With Ablation therapy the scarring goes away in a few days to a week. The reason for this breakthrough was the high contrast, high resolution MRI machines.

Dangers of Radiation in everyday life

Every time you talk on your cell phone the speaker emits weak radiation. Men who are heavy users of cell phones have significantly lower sperm counts then those who are not. Both the quality and the quantity of the sperm have declined. Heavy users of cell phones produce 40% less sperm then men who never used a mobile phone at all. Smaller falls in sperm count was discovered in less frequent users of cell phones. The electromagnetic fields generated by mobile phones are interfering with sperm production. There was a study of 360 business men that use there cell phones about 4 hours a day. All these men were in good health, not obese, and all of them had a very low stress level. These men had a sperm count at the beginning of the experiment and they were monitored through out the experiment. At the end 320 men had a decrease of 50% of their sperm levels and 40 men had a 70% decrease in their sperm count. This was hard to prove because if your holding your phone to your ear how would it effect your testes. It was proven though and with almost a billon people using cell phones the consequences could be negative. One of the men who was part of this test could not get his wife pregnant due to his low sperm count. Men need to start using there mobile phones less or they need to find phones that do not emit electromagnetic radiation fields. If you use your phone though for short calls and not that often there will be hazard. Also this occurs over a very long time so you can change your ways at anytime. The phones are all improving all the phones on the Verizon and Sprint network do not emit the radiation but all the phones on the Cingular network do emit the radiation field.

What's the future of radiation therapy? - Conclusion

Tomotherapy represents the future of radiation therapy. The leap in technology from regular radiation therapy is overwhelming. Tomotherapy is actually a form of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). It is a component of radiotherapy and has the key objective of a treatment that is selective in its effects, damaging cancer cells and sparing normal cells. Radiogenic therapy and Equivalent Uniform Dose (EUD) in conjunction with Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) are the future. Radiogenic therapy has been proposed as a method of using radiation technology to induce the formation of cytotoxic (cell killing) agents within cancer cells. Using lower doses of radiation with a biological agent may yield the same results as higher dose radiation alone, but with reduced toxicity. Reducing toxicity is the goal as radiation can and does have negative effects on the healthy cells and tissues. EUD distributes equal intensities with the same effects, but without the same levels of toxicity.

It will take time for IMRT to be available in all areas but as its advantages are more fully understood more medical facilities will make it the standard in cancer treatment.