Today we will be discussing the terminology and effects of radiation. Radiation can be pretty scary, but its effects are pretty well known and we have excellent detection equipment that can detect even the smallest changes. It can be dangerous, but we will try to put it into perspective.

From my childhood, I vividly remember the scene from Indiana Jones where they open the Ark and all the bad guys faces melt off

Until I started working with radiation, this is how I always

visualized it

Today, of all the things I work with, radiation is the thing

I fear the least

Can measure in real time

Using 100 year old technology (if

it hasn’t changed in that time, it must work really well)

All I have to do is back up

What is radiation? http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/whatisradiation.html

Radiation you might be familiar with, also called

non-ionizing radiation

              Light

              Radio

waves

              Microwaves

Radiation we will be discussing is called ionizing radiation

because it can produce charge particles when it strike something (me or you)

This radiation produced by unstable atom (uranium,

plutonium, radon) or high voltage (x-ray)

These unstable atoms are trying to become stable and do so

by emitting particles and/or energy

We are exposed to radiation at low levels everyday https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses

These doses come from

              Sun and

stars (if you live at a higher elevation you receive a higher dose, because you

are closer to the source)

              Radioactive

elements in the earth and our bodies (radon produced in areas with large

amounts of uranium, potassium 40 in many foods and Carbon 14 becomes a part of

us used in dating of organic items

Another source is man made radioactive sources associated

with nuclear power and more commonly medicine

The sum of these exposures we call a dosehttps://www.nrc.gov/images/about-nrc/radiation/factoid2-lrg.gif

Average American receives 310mR per year

A whole body CT scan can give a dose up to 1 rem

Most people’s eyes start to glaze over when they here Rems,

curies, sieverts, gray, bq, roentgens, etc

These are just units of measure just like many things we are

already used to inch, cm, grams, oz, mph etc

Just like these units of measure, it gets more complicated

because you have traditional units (oz) and metric units (g)

To simplify things I’m going to use only two, the curie and

the Rem https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/measurement.htm