Interactions of hazardous materials - Essay Example

Interactions of hazardous materials College The effects caused by radiation are as a result of ionizing effects. Certain level of radiation damages the body molecules resulting in an organism not being able to carry out normal functions required in order to live or in human beings he will fall sick if essential enzymes are destroyed. Long time exposure to radiation may have long term effects such as development of leukemia and cancer. Damage to human DNA causes reproductive effects such as giving birth to deformed children.

High exposure to radiation kills. Roentgen (rem) is a unit used to measure radiation. Total dose of rem determines how much the radiation can harm a person. A 25 rem dosage of radiation causes changes that can be detected in the blood while doses around 100 rems normally don’t have immediate effects. Radiation of 50 rems causes nausea, 55 rem fatigue, 70 rem vomiting, 75 hair loss, 90 diarrheas, 100 hemorrhage and 400 can possibly cause death within a period of 2 months. 1,000 rems cause destruction of intestinal lining and death within two weeks while rem of 2,000 damages the central nerve system and causes death within minutes (Walker, 2006).

In Three Mile Island incident, the radiation that was released was minimal, far below the levels associated with health effects resulting from radiation exposure. In the incident, 2.4 million curies of radioactive noble gases and 16 curies of radioiodines were released (Mac Kinney & Schoch, 2003). The resulted average radiation dose to people living in that area was 1.4 mrem. In chest X-ray, a patient receives 3.2 mrem this is twice more than the radiation released during the incident. In the Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union, the radiation level in some areas was about 20,000 roentgens per hour and this cause death to some workers.

Average radiation dose for the people who was affected most was 120 mSv; this was mainly those who were assisting in the recovery operation and a dosage of 30 mSv for the evacuated persons. ReferencesMichael L. Mac Kinney & Dr Robert M Schoch. (2003). Environmental Science: Systems and Solutions: Environmental Science Series. New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning Samuel, Walker. (2006). Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. California: University of California Press