How Radiation Damages Cells

[Fidel MD]

The way that radiation damages cells (and we are all made of cells) is by the radiation (particle, or wave) hitting something important inside the cell (cells are mostly water inside, just like the rest of us). If the something important is damaged (think of a pool table, with the cue ball breaking the nice ordered rack of balls), the cell goes into 'apoptosis', or programmed cell death, and various parts of the body and the cell start recycling most everything. If a lot of this happens at once, that is bad - it leads to nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, in near-term radiation exposure cases. If the radiation hits a chromosome in the nucleus of the cell, it blasts apart the DNA (think of a BB hitting a glass rod)...maybe the repair mechanisms in the cell can fix it, maybe not. Again, apoptosis results. If this happens in (say) bone marrow, then your blood products aren’t re-manufactured (they get used up and wear out), it's like the factory burnt down, and you don't get any more until it's rebuilt. Maybe you will survive that long, maybe not. The worst effect is on the cells that reproduce the fastest, skin, the lining of the gut, hair, bone marrow (where blood products are manufactured), and that’s why these are affected first.

The worst case is the radiation hits the chromosome, and changes the DNA...DNA has repair mechanisms, error-checking mechanisms, and it also has a 'kill switch' to keep an individual cell from reproducing more than 55 or 60 times. If the error-correcting mechanism breaks then the cell starts reproducing badly – or doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. If the kill switch breaks, it starts reproducing willy-nilly.

We call that cancer. Bad news.

Fortunately, it doesn't happen all that often, but still - better to use mass, distance and time to avoid it. Fortunately, 4500 miles or more (from Japan) is enough distance.

There is an experimental drug, Ex-Rad that offers real protection against cellular damage caused by radiation. http://www.onconova.com/exrad.shtml However, it is experimental, and likely will only ever be approved for use in cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. I can’t see approval ever being given for even testing in radiation exposure patients, because who would be the test subjects? We can’t expose people to potentially fatal levels of radiation.

[izzyscout21]

Thanks for the write up, Fidel!

[helomech]

Yeah, nice to have someone with so much knowledge on stuff like this.

[Fidel MD]

You're all welcome.

[bacpacker]

Thanks Fidel. I work at a rad facility and have had some training. But no way in hell I can break it down like that. Or nearly as in depth.. Excellent job.