How much of a dose of irradiation do you get by snuggle up against your significant other for a year ? Unless they ’re glowing green , it ’s a pocket-size dose , but it ’s not nothing . We ’ll assure you how much radiation therapy you , and the people around you , emit .
radiation therapy is n’t only made by mankind . by nature - occurring radioactive particle are all over , and we draw them into our bodies constantly . Sometimes we absorb them by accident , as when our bodymistakes strontium-90 for calciumand invest it in our bones and tooth . Other clock time , we build up our body out of radioactive particles because they ’re isotopes of element we require . When the Fukushima disaster happened , child were giveniodine-127 tablet . Their bodies stored the iodine in their thyroid , until the thyroid reached iodine intensity , at which full stop the kids excreted the rest of the I . They also excreted any radioactive iodine-131 that might have been making its way into their organisation .
Iodine-131 , and most other radioactive particles we pick up , emit genus Beta particles — electrons . This decay can damage us when it ’s give off at bottom of us , but ca n’t suffer anyone around us . ( It could n’t even do any real scathe to us if were outside our body or else of interior of it . ) For a human to give a superman of radioactivity to the someone standing next to them , we need da Gamma radiation — high frequency photons .
The main emitter of these is potassium-40 . Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring isotope of K . It gets taken up by plants ( some of which have a higher chemical attraction for it than others ) , and when we wipe out the plants we integrate it into our dead body . About5000 atoms of potassium-40 decay in your soundbox every second — a small less if you ’re well under 70 kilograms , or 155 pound . Only ten pct of those decaying atom give off da Gamma shaft , and only a modest percentage of those ray make it out of your dead body . One reason to fall back weightiness could be the opportunity to minify the pct of those gamma rays that hit you before they make it into the outdoor creation . ( see like this , though , diet is an act of selfishness . If someone in your life is dieting , they ’re probably test to belt down you . )
Sleepingnext to a personfor a year give you about 1 millirem of radiation . take over eight hours of sopor a night , that means a human body gives about three millirem a class of radiation syndrome . That ’s about what you ’d get if you spentnine days in Atlanta or six days in Denver(a eminent altitude think a high dose of radiation sickness ) . So it ’s not time to forswear human companionship , yet . Or if it is , you ’ll need some other alibi .
PhysicsScience
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