Aquatic Pollution and Coastal Management

Unit 10 : Radioactive pollution

10.6.Hazards to Human Health
The natural environment appears to be unaffected by the present level of radioactivity, but there is naturally more concern about risks to the human population.
The greatest threat of radioactivity to life is the damage to the gene pool and the genetic make-up. Genetic damage from the radiation exposure is cumulative over lifetimes and generations. Genetic researches have showed mutation and chromosomal aberration. Their effects are noticed in some abnormalities or defects in the next generation due to the irradiation of gonads.
If the exposure is great, death can occur immediately or within days, as it was happened for 200,000 people in Japan in 1945.
Even low-dose exposures have carcinogenic effect after extended exposure. People may suffer immune system damage, leukemia, miscarriages, stillbirths, deformities, fertility problems and cancer of bones, thyroid, lunges or breasts. Radiation is known to cause sterility in human. Beyond the physiological effects, radioactive pollution causes mental and emotional damages. Individuals cannot prove whether increase in “background” radiation or specific exposure is the cause for illness. Only epidemiological evidence is scientifically acceptable to know the cause.
In general, difference radionuclide present different kinds of health hazards, depending on their chemistry and organ in which they get accumulated. The critical organ for the radioisotope Iodine-131 is a thyroid. The critical organ for the Strontium-90 is bone because it behaves chemically like calcium and for Manganese-54 the critical organ is liver.
The quality of life of vast numbers of us may be affected by the increased burden of radioactivity. Many victims of radiation do not show up sickness because the kinds of symptoms experienced are not as significant as childhood leukaemia or stillbirths or birth defects. Nevertheless, lives of countless people have been affected by radiation exposure.