An overview
Radiation sickness happens when a large dose of high-energy radiation goes through your body and reaches your internal organs. It takes far more than what you might get from any medical treatment to cause it. Doctors named the illness, which is technically known as acute radiation syndrome, after the atomic bombings that ended World War II. It’s not clear how many of the 150,000 to 250,000 people killed in those attacks died from radiation sickness. But estimates at the time put the number in the hundreds or thousands.
Symptoms of radiation sickness show up when you’re exposed to levels of more than 500 millisieverts (mSv) or half a sievert. More than 4 to 5 Sv is likely to be fatal. The workers who got radiation sickness at Chernobyl received doses that measured 700 mSv to 13 Sv.
Natural radiation is everywhere — in the air, the water, and materials like brick or granite. You typically get only about 3 mSv — three one-thousandths of a sievert — of radiation from these natural sources in a year.
Radiation Basics
The amount of radiation your body gets is measured in an international unit called a sievert (Sv). Symptoms of radiation sickness show up when you’re exposed to levels of more than 500 millisieverts (mSv), or half a sievert. More than 4 to 5 Sv is likely to be fatal. The workers who got radiation sickness at Chernobyl received doses that measured 700 mSv to 13 Sv.
Natural radiation is everywhere — in the air, the water, and materials like brick or granite. You typically get only about 3 mSv — three one-thousandths of a sievert — of radiation from these natural sources in a year.
Symptoms Radiation Sickness
The severity of signs and symptoms of radiation sickness depends on how much radiation you’ve absorbed. How much you absorb depends on the strength of the radiated energy, the time of your exposures, and the distance between you and the source of radiation.
Signs and symptoms are also affected by the type of exposure — such as total or partial body. The severity of radiation sickness also depends on how sensitive the affected tissue is. For instance, the gastrointestinal system and bone marrow are highly sensitive to radiation. You might also have skin damage, like a bad sunburn or get blisters or sores. Radiation may also damage the cells that make hair, causing your hair to fall out. In some cases, hair loss might be permanent.
The symptoms can go away entirely for anywhere from a few hours to weeks. But if they come back, they’re often worse. After the first round of signs and symptoms, a person with radiation sickness may have a brief period with no apparent illness, followed by the onset of new, more-serious symptoms.
If you’ve had a mild exposure, it may take hours to weeks before any signs and symptoms begin. But with severe exposure, signs and symptoms can begin minutes to days after exposure.
Possible symptoms include:
• Nausea and vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Headache
• Fever
• Dizziness and disorientation
• Weakness and fatigue
• Hair loss
• Bloody vomit and stools from internal bleeding
• Infections
• Low blood pressure
• Fatigue, fainting or mental fogginess.
• Inflammation of exposed areas (redness, swelling, bleeding).
If you work around radiation and experience any of the following symptoms, you should notify your organization’s radiation safety officer immediately and/or call 9-1-1 and let them know you may be experiencing radiation illness.
Causes of Radiation sickness
Radiation is the energy released from atoms as either a wave or a tiny particle of matter. Radiation sickness is caused by exposure to a high dose of radiation, such as a high dose of radiation received during an industrial accident. Sources of high-dose radiation
Possible sources of high-dose radiation include the following:
• An accident at a nuclear industrial facility
• An attack on a nuclear industrial facility
• Detonation of a small radioactive device
• Detonation of a conventional explosive device that disperses radioactive material (dirty bomb)
• Detonation of a standard nuclear weapon
Diagnosis
Information important for determining an absorbed dose includes:
• Known exposure. Details about distance from the source of radiation and duration of exposure can help provide a rough estimate of the severity of radiation sickness.
• Vomiting and other symptoms. The time between radiation exposure and the onset of vomiting is a fairly accurate screening tool to estimate absorbed radiation dose. The shorter the time before the onset of this sign, the higher the dose. The severity and timing of other signs and symptoms also may help medical personnel determine the absorbed dose.
• Blood tests. Frequent blood tests over several days enable medical personnel to look for drops in disease-fighting white blood cells and abnormal changes in the DNA of blood cells. These factors indicate the degree of bone marrow damage, which is determined by the level of an absorbed dose.
• Dosimeter. A device called a dosimeter can measure the absorbed dose of radiation but only if it was exposed to the same radiation event as the affected person.
Treatment
Your doctor will try to help you fight off infections. They might give you blood transfusions to replace lost blood cells. Or they may give you medications to try to help your bone marrow recover. Or they may try a transplant.
They also will give you fluids and treat other injuries like burns. Recovery from radiation sickness can take up to 2 years. But you’ll still be at risk of other health problems after recovery. For example, your odds of getting cancer are higher. Some treatments may reduce damage to internal organs caused by radioactive particles. Medical personnel would use these treatments only if you’ve been exposed to a specific type of radiation. These treatments include the following:
- Potassium iodide (ThyroShield, Iosat). This is a nonradioactive form of iodine.
- Iodine is essential for proper thyroid function. If you’re exposed to significant radiation, your thyroid will absorb radioactive iodine (radioiodine) just as it would other forms of iodine. The radioiodine is eventually cleared from the body in urine.
- If you take potassium iodide, it may fill “vacancies” in the thyroid and prevent the absorption of radioiodine. Potassium iodide isn’t a cure-all and is most effective if taken within a day of exposure.
- Prussian blue (Radiogardase). This type of dye binds to particles of radioactive elements known as cesium and thallium. The radioactive particles are then excreted in feces. This treatment speeds up the elimination of the radioactive particles and reduces the amount of radiation cells may absorb.
- Diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA). This substance binds to metals. DTPA binds to particles of the radioactive elements plutonium, americium and curium. The radioactive particles pass out of the body in urine, thereby reducing the amount of radiation absorbed.
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