Radiation and Cancer
57Cancer has been increasing in the nuclear age.
United States Cancer Death Rate since 1930 before the advent of the nuclear age -- as opposed to influenza and pneumonia. (per 100,000 population)
Year ….Cancer ………. Influenza & Pneumonia
1930 .… 97.4 ……….. 102.5
1940 ... 120.3 ……….. 70.3
1950 ... 139.8 ……….. 31.3
1960 ... 149.2 ……….. 37.3
1970 ... 162.8 ……….. 30.9
1980 ... 183.9 ……….. 24.1
1990 ... 203.2 ……….. 32.0
2000 ... 200.5 ………...24.3
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922292.html
Note that modern medicine has greatly decreased the death rate from Influenza and Pneumonia, but has only make minor progress against Cancer, even though the smoking rate has greatly decreased and surgical techniques have greatly improved. In fact, modern medicine claims major improvements in eliminating cancer or disabling it in the past quarter of a century.
So what is going on here? Simple. Radiation Particulate exposure has been going up and up with each passing year and is almost offsetting the advances in modern medicine.
What is Radiation Particulate? If you were a child growing up in the Fifties as I was, you read about it in the newspapers of the era. Radioactive Strontium 90 was in our milk because it had drifted across the United States from the Atomic Bomb tests to the west and had settled on our houses, yards and farms. Cows were eating grass contaminated with it, and radioactive particulate was in their milk, which we used on our breakfast cereal and drank with our school lunches. Our baby teeth from that era had Strontium 90, Radioactive Cesium (134 & 137), Plutonium, Uranium and other radioactive elements in them. Our thyroids had radioactive Iodine 131 in them, and the rate of thyroid cancer was increasing.
We heard about it and read about it because scientists were worried and concerned, but our government told us that we were perfectly safe, because low doses of radiation would not hurt us.
That, of course, is a horrific lie. It only takes one X-ray or Cosmic ray or Beta or Alpha or neutron to start cancer growing in your body. Just one.
Radiation Ionizes (burns) cells. When molecules are hit by radiation, the bonds are broken that hold the molecules together and the different chemicals that were in the molecule become Ions (or are ionized.)
That ionizing can happen anywhere in the cell, but when it happens to the cell DNA you can get cancer or other mutations.
When hit, the DNA strand will try to repair itself. Three things can happen.
1. It can actually restore that damaged DNA.
2. It can not restore that damaged DNA and the cell dies.
3. It blotches the repair of the DNA and you have a mutant cell that can then go on and reproduce more mutant cells and you have what is called a tumor, or damaged neurons, or CANCER!
Low dose radiation can kill you. Always avoid any unnecessary exposure to radiation.
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Wow, I grew up in the 50's, butdid not drink much milk, I was alergic. Maybe that will have saved me.
Excellent article.
@SueJanet (I like that name by the way.) There have been people who have been able to walk through an intense radiation zone right after a nuclear bomb went off. Others have died within years. Just one ray can cause cancer, and it could be the very first one to hit you, or the tenth trillion one. You simply take your chances along with the rest. I was a nuclear reactor plant operator and I have two tumors in my abdomen, so it looks like I got "hit." Some tissue appears to be more prone to radiation damage (I.e. it repairs itself in the WRONG fashion with greater frequency that other tissue, and that is human breast tissue; hence the high death rate for breast cancer.) You are older like me, but if you have a daughter or granddaughter who is living in proximity to a nuclear reactor plant tell her to move away and do not move downwind from the plant. You just might save her life.
My eighteen-year old son was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 16, 2 weeks after receiving an x-ray on his wrist which he had hurt playing soccer. I did not approve that x-ray. In fact, I had never allowed him to have even so much as a dental x-ray. He died, after a brave 2-year struggle, a bone-marrow transplant and excellent care at Johns Hopkins. During his treatment I read the book "Radiation and Human Health" and am convinced the cancer was triggered by that x-ray, and was referred to as "spontaneous leukemia". He also died without any cavities. I was involved in an auto accident and sent to the hospital for spinal x-rays. The technician took dozens of x-rays and as I was leaving I overheard a conversation between the technician and another worker. The "technician" was actually a student and had used the wrong film, so had to take more x-rays than needed. That was about 20 years ago, so I'm probably due to see a visit from the Big C any day now.
Sadly as I tell all, "It only takes one radioactive ray to start a cancer growing in your body." Though both of us suspect that the X-rays were the initiator, we can not prove it. There is no way to prove it other than looking at the numbers. I am sorry for your loss. Nobody should lose a child at the age that your son passed on. I know the emotional pain must have been horrible. Again, I am sorry.
Joe Neubarth Hub Author 4 months ago
Germany has voted to discontinue the Nuclear Power Industry in their country because they have done the research that links Nuclear Power plants to particulate radiation release. They already know that particulate radiation causes cancer. In particular, women who live within 50 miles of their nuclear power plants are at a ten fold risk of breast cancer. It is about time that we tell the whole world about this.