30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Radiation | Amazing Facts 4U
- Radiation is the energy that comes from a source and travels through space. When this energy passes into the body, either by penetrating skin or being swallowed or inhaled, it may be harmful. Whether the radiation is ionizing or non-ionizing will influence the health risks.
- Sources of ionizing radiation include nuclear weapons handling and detonation, nuclear plants, x-rays, etc.
- Non-iodizing radiation is low-energy radiation that includes radiation from sources such as sunlight, microwaves, radio frequencies, radar, and sonar.
- Radium, a radioactive element was discovered by Marie Curie who in fact died from radiation exposure.
- Millirem is 1/1000 REM, a unit to measure radiation.
- The loss in life expectancy from a 1 millirem dose is about 1.2 minutes, equivalent to crossing the street three times, taking three puffs on a cigarette, 10 extra Calories for an overweight person.
- Nuclear power plants are very safe. In fact, the safety limit for exposure is just 5 millirem.
- The average radiation exposure due to medical diagnostic procedures is about 80 millirem per year.
- People in America living near coal-fired power stations are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants.
- Chest X-ray gives off about 30 millirems of radiation.
- The average person absorbs about 300 millirems of radiation per year in total from background sources.
- 1% of static on an untuned analog TV is from cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang.
- The thorium-rich sands of Kerala, India give off 380 millirems per year, and similar sands in Guarapari, Brazil give locals an amazing 600 millirems per year.
- Residents of Denver, Colorado get about four times as much cosmic radiation as those in who live at sea level, giving them an extra 115 millirems of radiation per year.
- The Manhattan Project secretly tested the effects of radiation on its own citizens, including injecting pregnant women with radioactive mixtures and feeding children radioactive oatmeal. In the end, about 1,400 children died due to these experiments.
- During the Manhattan Project, a man was injected with Plutonium without his knowledge or consent and he survived it for 20 years, eventually surviving the highest radiation dose known for any human.
- Bananas are slightly radioactive and eating a banana exposes a person to radiation.
- Because of the amount of granite used in its construction, the Grand Central Station of New York City produces more radiation than what is allowable at a nuclear power plant.
- Astronauts on the Apollo missions reported seeing flashes and streaks of light when they closed their eyes. This was later confirmed to be caused by cosmic radiation bombarding their retinas while outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
- All the American flags placed on the moon are now white due to radiation from the sun.
- In the 1950s, there was a toy called the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory that came equipped with low-level radiation sources and four Uranium-bearing ore samples. It sold for $49.50. The product stayed on the market for only about a year between 1950 and 1951.
- The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster was huge. It is still giving off radiation, and that there is a high chance of the containment structure collapsing, causing huge amounts of radiation to spread out.
- A fireman’s eyes at the Chernobyl disaster are said to have turned from brown to blue because of the intensity of the radiation he received.
- There is a type fungi inside the Chernobyl reactors that thrives on radiation.
- Flight crews are classified as radiation workers and some are exposed to more radiation annually than nuclear plant workers. One flight from New York to London is equivalent to one chest X-ray.
- Smokers receive a radiation dose equivalent to about 300 chest x-rays annually due to the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 contained in tobacco smoke that comes from the ingredients of the fertilizers that are used in farming tobacco.
- The USA originally denied that atomic bombs caused lingering radioactivity, calling such claims Japanese propaganda
- A handful of raw uranium ore actually only has about as much radiation as 10 bananas. Banana has radiation due to potassium content.
- The use of nuclear weapons and testing has resulted in steel contaminated with background radiation in many areas after 1945 making it unusable for many scientific and medical applications and steel made before 1945, often taken from sunken battleships, must be used instead.
- On December 27, 2004, Earth was hit by the largest blast of radiation in recorded history. It came from a “giant flare” on a magnetar 50,000 light-years away.
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