Speaker 1: Just a warning out there. This is a pretty gruesome
Speaker 1: first hand account, and so if you would choose not
Speaker 1: to listen to it, please fast forward a few minutes.
Speaker 1: The midsummer sun was already glaring. On the morning of
Speaker 1: August sixth, nineteen forty five. After the all clear signal
Speaker 1: following the air raid warning, everything went back to normal,
Speaker 1: with people busy doing their own business. Going on an
Speaker 1: errand to a post office in Mayuki, Bashi under the
Speaker 1: scorching sun. I could not bear the heat anymore, so
Speaker 1: I turned back home to fetch my parasol. I was
Speaker 1: just about to open the parasol at the threshold when
Speaker 1: an intense flash burst upon me. The flash was a
Speaker 1: yellowish orange color, just like the magnesium light, but hundreds
Speaker 1: of times stronger. I instinctively rushed back into the house
Speaker 1: and laid myself down on my stomach, as had been
Speaker 1: trained in evacuation drills. Stepping outside, I found the clear
Speaker 1: blue sky had turned dim as if it were at dusk.
Speaker 1: Dust in the air blocked the view across the river.
Speaker 1: The place was filled with an indescribable smell. Pulling myself together,
Speaker 1: I looked back at my house to see if my
Speaker 1: mother was all right. Her hair was a mess and
Speaker 1: standing on end. Her lips were cracked and her head bleeding.
Speaker 1: She stood there like some unearthly creature. Then I saw
Speaker 1: my younger brother staggering about with his white cotton kimono
Speaker 1: soaked with blood. Are you both all right? I asked?
Speaker 1: That's my blood. He's not hurt, replied my mother. We
Speaker 1: carried her on a stretcher to the Mutual Aid hospital,
Speaker 1: where the doctor sewed up the cuts and her lips, jaws,
Speaker 1: and shoulders, but he did not do anything for her
Speaker 1: wounded wrist, as it had already been given first aid.
Speaker 1: Because of this, it took a long time before the
Speaker 1: wound got better, and the thumb and the index finger
Speaker 1: of her right hand were left to be paralyzed. Mother
Speaker 1: passed away in January nineteen ninety five. I also remember
Speaker 1: seeing a woman lying dead at a house by the
Speaker 1: river bank, her neck stuck through with a piece of
Speaker 1: glass blown by the blast. The glass must have cut
Speaker 1: the artery. Blood was scattered around her. She had been
Speaker 1: her baby. The baby was still absorbed and sucking the breast.
Speaker 1: There was a middle school student who was severely burned
Speaker 1: above the neck except for the top of his head,
Speaker 1: which had been protected by his combat cap. He was
Speaker 1: walking barefoot, saying, please give me water. I'm hot hot.
Speaker 1: His school uniform was burned to tatters. There came a
Speaker 1: drove of people whose faces and clothes were burned black,
Speaker 1: almost naked, and burned beyond recognition. They came tottering along,
Speaker 1: dangling their arms in front of them like ghosts. Some
Speaker 1: had their work pants burned away save the elastic strings.
Speaker 1: Others had all their clothes burned except for the front part.
Speaker 1: They kept chanting, water, give me water, exposed juicely wet flesh,
Speaker 1: peeled skin hanging from their fingertips like seaweed. An unfamiliar
Speaker 1: smell was floating in the air around the Mutual Aid Hospital.
Speaker 1: Dead bodies were piled up on the roadside. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: I never felt the dignity of life as seriously as
Speaker 1: I do now, Faced with so many deaths, had my
Speaker 1: mind stopped working after experiencing such a sudden attack by
Speaker 1: the bomb. I took my father back home from Ninoshima
Speaker 1: on August eighth. Flies swarmed around him because of the
Speaker 1: odor his festered burns, and the white ointment gave out.
Speaker 1: It took some effort to chase the pests away. On
Speaker 1: the way to the mutual Aid hospital, there was a
Speaker 1: first aid station where wounded people in a serious condition
Speaker 1: were laid on straw mats. They were delirious, begging for water.
Speaker 1: Those whose backs were burned lay on their stomachs, and
Speaker 1: those whose front was burned lay on their back. They
Speaker 1: could not even move to change the position. Their wounds
Speaker 1: and burns were covered with countless flies laying eggs.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: Those eggs hatched into maggots, and these crawled all over
Speaker 1: their bodies, causing them infernal agony. My father asked for water,
Speaker 1: knowing he would die if he drank too much. I
Speaker 1: only gave him a tiny cup of water. I did
Speaker 1: so because I wanted him to survive. I am not
Speaker 1: sure if I did the right thing, and my heart
Speaker 1: aches whenever I think of it. On the day of Japan, Sir,
Speaker 1: he mumbled, Japan lost the war. He died undramatically the
Speaker 1: next day, complaining of the cold. The damage caused by
Speaker 1: the bomb was not confined to those who were actually
Speaker 1: exposed to it. People who sustained no injuries e g.
Speaker 1: Those who went near the hypocenter to look for their
Speaker 1: children suffered a high fever and got purple spots all
Speaker 1: over their bodies, went almost mad, and died one after
Speaker 1: another during the six months following the bombing. My elder
Speaker 1: brother was suddenly stricken with leukemia and died many years
Speaker 1: after that dreadful experience, when we had almost forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: I myself suffered from diarrhea for some time at the
Speaker 1: end of August. It is not easy for me to
Speaker 1: talk about my experience as an A bomb survivor. For me,
Speaker 1: it is like airing my dirty linen in public. But
Speaker 1: here I am to talk to you because I really
Speaker 1: want all of you to remember that the piece we
Speaker 1: have today has been achieved through the sacrifice of those
Speaker 1: people who were mercilessly killed without receiving a drop of
Speaker 1: water to quench their thirst, keep a lasting, permanent peace.
Speaker 1: I want to convey the heart of Hiroshima, hoping that
Speaker 1: what I do will be like small ripples growing into
Speaker 1: big waves and into a tidal wave. Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I have no words.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: So that is the story of Miyoko Wantanabi, one of
Speaker 1: the Hiba Kusha, which is the survivors of the A bomb.
Speaker 1: And there are so many of these that have been
Speaker 1: collected in a big project, and I really encourage people
Speaker 1: to go seek out more of them because it is
Speaker 1: just yeah, yeah, no, they're my goodness. Yeah wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Eron Welsh and I'm Erin Alman Updyke and
Speaker 1: this is this podcast will Kill You.
Speaker 2: And today we're talking about radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a very very big topic.
Speaker 2: Massive topic. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this episode's going to turn out
Speaker 1: eron me neither. I don't know if we're going to
Speaker 1: do it justice, but we'll try. We'll try.
Speaker 2: We'll do our best. That's all we can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we are very excited this week because you know,
Speaker 1: radiation is a very interesting topic. It's got a massive history.
Speaker 1: The biology is super fascinating. And we were fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to speak with doctor Timothy Jorgensen, who is Associate Professor
Speaker 1: of Radiation Medicine and director of the Health Physics and
Speaker 1: Radiation Protection Graduate Program at Georgetown University in DC, and
Speaker 1: he wrote the incredible book called Strange Glow, which is
Speaker 1: really great. It's really really it's like one of the
Speaker 1: best examples of science writing. Yeah, I have ever found.
Speaker 2: I love that. I agree it explains, I am, I
Speaker 2: never took the time to learn physics properly back in
Speaker 2: undergrad and so like this was a very intimidating topic
Speaker 2: for me, and I feel like in our interview he
Speaker 2: explains it so beautifully and his book is just so clear,
Speaker 2: and it's it's engaging to read. It's really really great.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend it's yeah, totally, it's really it's really great.
Speaker 1: And so we are going to bring him on to
Speaker 1: talk first about the physics of radiation and radioactivity, how
Speaker 1: it works, what the different kinds are, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to dive into the biology and then the history.
Speaker 1: So pretty much standard, but we've got bring in some
Speaker 1: outside expertise who can talk about physics much better than
Speaker 1: you or I could do.
Speaker 2: I would never be able to do it.
Speaker 1: Although I will admit that, like after this, after reading
Speaker 1: his book, I was like, oh my gosh, I wish
Speaker 1: I had taken more physics. I wish I had like
Speaker 1: studied more about this because it is so beautiful. Some
Speaker 1: of the like examples of the logic that you need
Speaker 1: to like understand. Oh you know, how was Bragg's peak measured? Whatever? Okay,
Speaker 1: getting too much into the weeds, already, but still anyway, absolutely,
Speaker 1: oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, well, first of all, important business before we get started.
Speaker 2: It's quarantin any time.
Speaker 1: It is quarantiny time. What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 2: We're drinking glow and Behold.
Speaker 1: Great name, great name. Shout out to Andy, thank you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: So what's in glow and behold?
Speaker 1: Aaron? Fantastic question, Aaron Glow and Behold has gin lemon
Speaker 1: juice thedori, which gives it that lovely neon green color
Speaker 1: and egg white, so of course it's like a gin
Speaker 1: fizz kind of a thing.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. We'll post the full recipe for that quarantiny as
Speaker 2: well as our non alcoholic placey Berita, on all of
Speaker 2: our social media channels and our website. Do we have
Speaker 2: any other business?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think we should just dive in.
Speaker 2: All right, let's start off by learning some physics of
Speaker 2: how radiation works right after this break.
Speaker 3: My name is Tim Jorgensen, and I'm a professor of
Speaker 3: radiation medicine and biochemistry at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Speaker 3: I've been working there for a number of years, and
Speaker 3: I have a PhD in Radiation health Sciences from the
Speaker 3: John Tompkins School of Public Health. And my background is
Speaker 3: I'm really trained as a radiation biologist, which has led
Speaker 3: me into various aspects of that, and I run a
Speaker 3: graduate program in health physics at Georgetown excellent.
Speaker 2: So could you start us off really broadly just by
Speaker 2: explaining what is radiation and how does it work?
Speaker 3: Okay, So the simplest way to think about it is
Speaker 3: it's energy on the move. Basically, it's energy moving through space,
Speaker 3: and that can be empty space or that can be
Speaker 3: solid space. It's because depending on type of radiation, it
Speaker 3: has the ability to penetrate things like X rays. It's
Speaker 3: really there's two fundamental types. There's the electromagnetic type moves
Speaker 3: as waves and we're familiar with that microwaves, radio waves,
Speaker 3: X rays, gamma rays, and things like that. But then
Speaker 3: there's another less well known type called particulate radiation that
Speaker 3: is actually little pieces of atoms, and we also have
Speaker 3: heard of those terms too, like alpha particles, beta particles,
Speaker 3: things like that. Those are the particular types of radiation.
Speaker 3: So it comes in two flavors, electromagnetic and particulate. But
Speaker 3: the ones that we're most concerned about are those that
Speaker 3: are called the ionizing radiations, so they have enough energy
Speaker 3: that they can actually damage chemicals, they can break covalent bonds,
Speaker 3: and that's what we think the mechanism for all health
Speaker 3: effects are. So we focus a lot on the electro
Speaker 3: the ionizing radiation is because those are the ones that
Speaker 3: pack a punch in terms of health effects.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned at the beginning that there are these
Speaker 2: different types of radiation electromagnetic particle. Could you go into
Speaker 2: a little bit more detail on what those different types
Speaker 2: are and sort of the differences between them.
Speaker 3: Sure, So let's start out with the electromagnetic radiation. So
Speaker 3: these are all essentially the same thing. There are waves
Speaker 3: of electromagnetism that are going through space, and they're all
Speaker 3: the same. The only thing that's different is their wavelength.
Speaker 3: So usually people talk about light first because that's right
Speaker 3: in the middle waves of lengths of light are around
Speaker 3: just a few hundred nanimeters. And the thing that's interesting
Speaker 3: about this is this is the only part of the
Speaker 3: entire spectrum that humans can see. When things get longer
Speaker 3: than light, then we start getting wavelengths are longer. These
Speaker 3: are weaker types of radiation, and think radio waves, think microwaves,
Speaker 3: and things like that. These are traditionally called the non
Speaker 3: ionizing radiations. So some of these are very long, like
Speaker 3: radio waves are about the length of a football field,
Speaker 3: and X rays on the opposite side, they're just like
Speaker 3: a hundredth of the width of the human hair. So
Speaker 3: that's the that's the range that we're talking about. So
Speaker 3: as we go to the shorter waves lengths, the energy
Speaker 3: keeps going up and up and up. First we hit
Speaker 3: the X rays, and then beyond them are the gamma rays.
Speaker 3: Gamma rays are much shorter, so they have they have
Speaker 3: the highest energies, and everything would be shorter wavelengths shorter
Speaker 3: than visible light. These are called the ionizing radiations because
Speaker 3: they have enough energy to actually rip electrons off of
Speaker 3: atoms and produce ions. That's what we call them ionizing radiation.
Speaker 3: And the reason that that that's not good is because
Speaker 3: they break chemical bonds, particularly in biological molecules. So they're capable,
Speaker 3: for example, of ripping electrons off of DNA and causing
Speaker 3: breaks in DNA and other chemical reactions to happen. And
Speaker 3: so this is the mechanism of what we think all
Speaker 3: the biological consequences are. So we worry about the ionizing radiation.
Speaker 3: We don't worry so much about the non ionizing radiation.
Speaker 3: And then there are the particular radiations. So the particular
Speaker 3: radiations are released from radioactive materials. So radioactive materials are
Speaker 3: all atoms are a combination of protons and neutrons in
Speaker 3: their nucleus. The stable ones, the ones that are non radioactive,
Speaker 3: tend to have an equal number of protons and neutrons
Speaker 3: in their nucleus, but that doesn't have to be the case,
Speaker 3: and whenever there's excess protons or excess neutrons, the atom
Speaker 3: is unstable. And what it does is it does something
Speaker 3: we call decay, and that means that either a proton
Speaker 3: becomes a neutron or a neutron becomes proton, and when
Speaker 3: that happens, energy is released. Now, the energy can be
Speaker 3: released in the form of gamma rays, which are the electromagnetegration,
Speaker 3: and or it can also release particles, and so those particles,
Speaker 3: the most common ones are something called the beta particle okay,
Speaker 3: which is a negative particle equal in size and mass
Speaker 3: to an electron in net but except that it comes
Speaker 3: out of the nucleus. That's a beta particle larger particles
Speaker 3: are alpha particles. An alpha particle is really really like
Speaker 3: a helium nucleus without the electrons on it. Alpha particles
Speaker 3: on beta particles are the classic examples. There are other
Speaker 3: examples of things that are emitted fission products and things
Speaker 3: like that, but those are the main ones. And these
Speaker 3: particles also because they're charged and they have high energy,
Speaker 3: they move through materials and ionize things along the way,
Speaker 3: and so that's why we call them ionizing radiations as well.
Speaker 3: And we believe for the most part, they act on materials,
Speaker 3: biological materials in the same way they rip electrons off
Speaker 3: cause damage to chemicals, particularly biological chemicals, and that's the
Speaker 3: mechanism of their action.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Can you talk a bit about why there's no
Speaker 1: safe level quote unquote for radiation exposure because of the
Speaker 1: cellular damage.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the key in terms of safety is that
Speaker 3: everything is related to dose. And so what we mean
Speaker 3: by dose is the amount of energy that's deposited in
Speaker 3: the material. And so the more energy you deposit in something,
Speaker 3: the more likely you are to damage it. So you
Speaker 3: can have relatively high doses. At very high doses, the
Speaker 3: damage is so severe that it will actually kill a cell,
Speaker 3: and the way that it kills a cell is by
Speaker 3: damaging the DNA. So the DNA is the critical target
Speaker 3: and the reason we keep saying DNA DNA. Everything else
Speaker 3: in the cell can be replaced, All the proteins can
Speaker 3: be replaced, all the RNA's carbohydrates, everything can be fixed
Speaker 3: and replaced. But there's only one set of DNA and
Speaker 3: each gene only has two copies. If you cause a
Speaker 3: lot of damage to the DNA, the DNA can repair
Speaker 3: some of that damage, but it can't repair a lot
Speaker 3: of damage, and so the cell will die. So these
Speaker 3: are consequences when the dose is a relatively high and
Speaker 3: that's what causes radiation syndromes, radiation sickness, and things like that.
Speaker 3: But when you get to doses below which you cannot
Speaker 3: kill cells, then essentially you don't have any of those effects,
Speaker 3: and what you really have now is an increase risk
Speaker 3: of mutagenesis. Now, most of the time this grambling or
Speaker 3: mutation is of little consequence. Let's, for example, suppose you
Speaker 3: have a liver cell and the radiation damages the hemoglobe
Speaker 3: and gene liver cell. Well, liver cells don't produce hemoglobin.
Speaker 3: They don't really care that their chemoglobal is damage. They
Speaker 3: just keep going on.
Speaker 4: But if you.
Speaker 3: Should get a mutation in the gene that regulates growth,
Speaker 3: then you can have a problem. Because growth regulation is
Speaker 3: what's keeping us from having a cancer. So if the
Speaker 3: cell loses its ability control its growth, it starts to
Speaker 3: proliferate and then you have a cancer. So we say
Speaker 3: that there is risk involved at every dose. That's rather controversial,
Speaker 3: and the reason it's controversial is there are some scientists
Speaker 3: that believe that that's not true. And the reason they don't
Speaker 3: think it's true is because we know that cells can
Speaker 3: repair low levels of damage, but these levels are so
Speaker 3: low that we cannot measure the amount of damage and
Speaker 3: repair at those levels. So that may be true, It
Speaker 3: could very well be true, but conservative assumptions are that
Speaker 3: some damage happens at every level because we cannot rule
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, So kind of switching gears a little bit and
Speaker 1: talking about radiation not as much of something that will
Speaker 1: give you cancer, but something that is used to treat cancer.
Speaker 1: We've come a long way in terms of the specificity
Speaker 1: and how accurately you can target certain tumors and so on.
Speaker 1: But you know, can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how that works maybe in some of the risks associated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the actual the initial thought with radiation therapy
Speaker 3: is that it would be an ideal agent for treating
Speaker 3: cancer because it exploits that sensitivity of rapidly dividing cells.
Speaker 3: So when you have a tumor embedded within a normal tissue,
Speaker 3: the tumor is dividing more rapidly than the normal tissue is.
Speaker 3: So if you hit it with radiation, it's the tumor
Speaker 3: that will be preferentially killed by the radiation radiation, and
Speaker 3: that is the underlying basis for radiation therapy. So it's
Speaker 3: also given infractionated doses because so if you've known't anyone
Speaker 3: who's had radios and therapy, usually they come back every
Speaker 3: day for a period of time and they spread the
Speaker 3: dose over several weeks. And the reason for that is
Speaker 3: is that the normal cells repair better than the tumor cells.
Speaker 3: So by giving a rest between doses, the normal cells
Speaker 3: can exploit that rest and repair themselves better than the
Speaker 3: tumor cells can. So you have another differential, So you
Speaker 3: have two differentials. You have capitally dividing cells and the
Speaker 3: better ability of the normal tissue to repair itself compared
Speaker 3: to the tumor, and for that reason, it's a very
Speaker 3: effective treatment for cancers.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people also don't necessarily realize
Speaker 1: that we're exposed to a certain level of background radiation
Speaker 1: all the time just by living. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what that is and where it comes from?
Speaker 3: Yes, so we had We receive background radiation from a
Speaker 3: number of sources, both external and external to our bodies. Okay,
Speaker 3: a lot of natural chemicals that we have in our
Speaker 3: body have atoms that are radioactive, and some of the
Speaker 3: most famous ones that we hear are about potassium. And
Speaker 3: potassium is a major part of the electrolytes in our body,
Speaker 3: and potassium forty component of that potassium is radioactive. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of potassium bananas, So if you eat a
Speaker 3: banana and you have excess potassium, you pee out the
Speaker 3: same amount of potassium that you just ate. So there's
Speaker 3: the radioactivity that's in your body. I believe that your
Speaker 3: internal normal radioactivity contributes just a couple of percentage points
Speaker 3: to your total annual background does. But then there are
Speaker 3: external sources of exposure, and a lot of that comes
Speaker 3: from the ground, for example, your uranium and radium in
Speaker 3: the ground. That varies tremendously about where you are in
Speaker 3: the country, but you get some of that. So people
Speaker 3: who live in in brick buildings or mortar buildings, they
Speaker 3: get some more radiation exposure, and people who live in
Speaker 3: wooden buildings we get a lot from cosmic radiation. So
Speaker 3: cosmic radiation is radiation it's coming from the from the
Speaker 3: Sun and out other areas of the solar system and
Speaker 3: pinging on Earth. And then we have exposure from raydon.
Speaker 3: Raydon is a major source of exposure for those people
Speaker 3: who have radon in their homes largely, but it's it
Speaker 3: acts more like a spring, so you know how a
Speaker 3: spring will pop up here and not be there. So
Speaker 3: you could put one house on top of a Raydon
Speaker 3: spring and the next the neighbor have nothing. But anyway,
Speaker 3: raydon is a concern because you can breathe it and
Speaker 3: it can produce It can irradiate your lung, and it
Speaker 3: can produce lung cancer. It doesn't do anything else other
Speaker 3: than produce lung cancer. Those are the major sources. But
Speaker 3: then apart from those things, we also have to consider
Speaker 3: the average number of diagnostic and therapeutic radiation procedures that
Speaker 3: people have, and so now that's amounting to I think
Speaker 3: about a third of the total background those that people
Speaker 3: are getting annually. But again that's spotty because one person
Speaker 3: may have a lot of procedures and then the other
Speaker 3: person may have none. So anyway, but on average, for
Speaker 3: people living at sea level, they get about three milliseiverts
Speaker 3: of background radiation a year, but again it varies. So
Speaker 3: for example, people that live in Denver they get about twelve,
Speaker 3: okay milli siverts. And the reason that they're getting it
Speaker 3: is because Denver is the mile high city, right, so
Speaker 3: the air is thinner up there. They end up getting
Speaker 3: more exposure to cosmic rays and so they have a
Speaker 3: higher background level. So within the United States, the range
Speaker 3: is generally between three and twelve milliseiverts per year, but
Speaker 3: it's very heterogeneous among the population. But that's the general range.
Speaker 2: Awesome. So you kind of touched briefly earlier about this,
Speaker 2: but I was wondering if you could explain a little
Speaker 2: bit more about the differences in elements and what makes
Speaker 2: some elements radioactive and others not.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's go back to the supernova that that
Speaker 3: created our solar system. So you can think of this
Speaker 3: as as a huge explosion like the Big Bang, and
Speaker 3: all the elemental subatomic particles, the protons and the neutrons,
Speaker 3: they all just scrambled and coalesced and came back together.
Speaker 3: The ones that came back together with five protons and
Speaker 3: fourteen neutrons, they were so unstable they disappeared instantly, and
Speaker 3: so the further away from being one to one ratio
Speaker 3: of protons to neutrons, every combination was possible, but the
Speaker 3: ones that were too far out of the mainstream instantly disappeared,
Speaker 3: and so we're left with after time are those things
Speaker 3: that are pretty close to one to one, and they're
Speaker 3: still in the process of becoming one to one. They're
Speaker 3: still in the process that decay. So if you draw
Speaker 3: a line they call the diagonal of stability, you put
Speaker 3: the number of protons, put the number of neutrons on
Speaker 3: a chart, and you wrote all the stable ones, they
Speaker 3: would fall along this line of stability. And then if
Speaker 3: you if you had things with other combinations, the further
Speaker 3: away from that line, the shorter their half life would be.
Speaker 3: So everything we're left with now is clustered around the line,
Speaker 3: because these are things that have half lives anywhere from
Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of years or so to thousands of years,
Speaker 3: you know, so they're long enough to persist in our environment, okay,
Speaker 3: but they're still on their way to this everything becoming stable.
Speaker 1: That is so cool. I just it's fascinating, son. Talking
Speaker 1: about some of the times where we see these unstable
Speaker 1: elements is when we talk about nuclear bombs or we
Speaker 1: talk talk about meltdown at nuclear power plants. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about, first of all, just a
Speaker 1: little brief overview about maybe what criticality is or what
Speaker 1: these self sustaining reactions are and how that works in
Speaker 1: nuclear energy, and then also a bit about what happens
Speaker 1: in nuclear bombs in that same sort of in a
Speaker 1: parallel way.
Speaker 3: So basically we're talking about now fission. So I didn't
Speaker 3: really talk about fission when I talked about radioactivity. But
Speaker 3: there is another way that very very large things become
Speaker 3: stable more stable quickly, okay, and that is they just split.
Speaker 3: So uranium is up there. The common uranium elements are
Speaker 3: like two thirty five to two thirty eight. These are
Speaker 3: huge atoms. Some of those atoms will just spontaneously break apart.
Speaker 3: That's what fission is. When that happens, you will have
Speaker 3: fission particles, you have two smaller pieces, but also you'll
Speaker 3: have neutrons that will just break off and fly out.
Speaker 3: So the thing about these neutrons are that if they
Speaker 3: hit a neighboring uranium atom, they can induce them to split.
Speaker 3: And the ice specific isotope we're talking about is uranium
Speaker 3: two thirty five, and when it splits, it releases about
Speaker 3: two or three neutrons I believe for every fission. Okay,
Speaker 3: so you can imagine that if this one were to
Speaker 3: split and release two let's just say two, and it
Speaker 3: would hit two other atoms and they produce two, and
Speaker 3: then two other atoms and they produce two. You can
Speaker 3: see you have a chain reaction. And so you have
Speaker 3: all the uranium atoms disintegrating. That's a nuclear chain reaction.
Speaker 3: Is so why doesn't that happen. The reason that doesn't
Speaker 3: happen is because neutrons are very penetrating, and so if
Speaker 3: you have a massive uranium like this, most of them
Speaker 3: will escape that mass before they interact with another uranium.
Speaker 3: But if you keep increasing the size of the mass
Speaker 3: of uranium. You get to a point where most of
Speaker 3: them are not escaping anymore, they're staying within that mass,
Speaker 3: and that is a critical mass. And what makes it
Speaker 3: critical is you have enough mass there now that you
Speaker 3: will have a chain reaction. You have a self sustained
Speaker 3: chain reaction because the neutrons cannot escape. So in terms
Speaker 3: of how that's used in nuclear power, if you can
Speaker 3: control that, and you can control that by determining they
Speaker 3: usually put the uranium in rods and they move them
Speaker 3: in and out of a out of a contraption. That
Speaker 3: determines how many neutrons are going to escape and how
Speaker 3: many you're going to stay, and they can control that reaction.
Speaker 3: Those reactions produce heat and after that it works just
Speaker 3: like any other power plant. It produces heat, heat turns
Speaker 3: a turbine. Turbines make steam, you know, on electricity, and
Speaker 3: that's how it works. It's just a means to produce heat.
Speaker 3: And as long as you can control that, you having
Speaker 3: a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear bomb, it's the
Speaker 3: same principle, but you produce criticality instantly. You push all
Speaker 3: the uranium together at the same moment, and you produce
Speaker 3: this instantaneous criticality. Which results in it in a huge explosion,
Speaker 3: and that's the basis of a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: That was awesome. Thank you so very much, doctor Jorgensen.
Speaker 1: It was so great to talk with you, and thanks
Speaker 1: again for writing such an credible book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really appreciate the time that you took to
Speaker 2: explain everything so clearly and how awesome that book is
Speaker 2: really great. Yes, well, then, now that we understand some
Speaker 2: of the physics of how radiation works, let's talk about
Speaker 2: the symptoms that we see, shall we.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, like doctor Jorgenson so beautifully explained, a lot
Speaker 2: of the damage that is due to radiation has to
Speaker 2: do with the free radicals that it creates that damage
Speaker 2: DNA directly. So we'll talk a little bit more in
Speaker 2: detail about that, and then we'll talk about the acute
Speaker 2: and the chronic effects that we see from radiation exposure.
Speaker 1: Sound good, sounds great?
Speaker 2: All right? I mean sounds terrible, but yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: That's that's true of all of our episodes though, so
Speaker 2: nothing new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: So acutely, right, like shortly after exposure to radiation, like
Speaker 2: doctor Darkinson explained, you're making these free radicals that are
Speaker 2: damaging your DNA. So we can guess then, and we
Speaker 2: are correct that the cells that are going to be
Speaker 2: the most affected by that type of damage are cells
Speaker 2: that divide rapidly or divide often. So we can exploit
Speaker 2: this when we think of tumor cells, which are rapidly
Speaker 2: dividing cells, and that's why we can use radiation as
Speaker 2: a treatment for cancers. But it's also going to affect
Speaker 2: things like our epithelial cells, which are the linings of
Speaker 2: our gut and our lungs, our skin cells, the hair follicles,
Speaker 2: our cells that replicate rapidly are blood cells, all right.
Speaker 1: So it explains leukemia, it explains the GI symptoms exactly.
Speaker 1: And it also I think I remember reading this, But
Speaker 1: like cells, you know, if you think about the opposite
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum of like tumor cells, you think
Speaker 1: of nerve nerves. YEA, why we don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that in detail. But yes, you are
Speaker 2: one hundred percent correct. In general, nerves and your brain
Speaker 2: cells are actually quite resistant to the effects of radiation,
Speaker 2: and it's largely because they replicate so infrequently.
Speaker 1: If that's so interesting, it just makes like it's just like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it makes sense, Like that makes such
Speaker 1: a big I feel like there is such a big
Speaker 1: black box around how radiation works that makes people like
Speaker 1: very scared of it or very but like also rightfully
Speaker 1: so yeah, and I think that, you know, part of
Speaker 1: assessing where our fear level should really be is just
Speaker 1: breaking down that black box.
Speaker 2: Absolutely understanding like how it actually works. I agree entirely.
Speaker 2: But another thing I do want to say that another
Speaker 2: mechanism of damage beyond just this DNA damage is that
Speaker 2: these free radicals that are produced by radiation. So radiation
Speaker 2: isn't the only thing in the world world that causes
Speaker 2: free radicals to be produced, and actually bacterial infections often
Speaker 2: results in the formation of free radicals. So our body
Speaker 2: knows how to respond to the production of free radicals
Speaker 2: and can actually go ahead and like minimize the damage.
Speaker 2: The way that it does that is through the inflammatory pathway.
Speaker 2: So exposure to radiation also results in our pro inflammatory
Speaker 2: pathways being activated. So that means that kind of long
Speaker 2: term and chronic exposure to radiation can result in a
Speaker 2: lot of like long term inflammatory symptoms, Okay, does that
Speaker 2: make sense?
Speaker 1: Yes, And long term inflammatory symptoms isn't that like also
Speaker 1: increase your risk for cancer?
Speaker 2: And absolute absolutely, absolutely absolutely yeah. Hey, okay, so now
Speaker 2: that we have that even more context, let's talk about
Speaker 2: some of the different symptoms that we see depending on
Speaker 2: the amount of radiation that you're exposed to. Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: So first we'll get the worst of it out of
Speaker 2: the way. And you heard about this in our first
Speaker 2: hand accounts, and that is acute radiation sickness or acute
Speaker 2: radiation syndrome. So this is what we saw from people
Speaker 2: who worked at Chernobyl, this is what we saw after
Speaker 2: the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's also
Speaker 2: been described in some cases after total body irradiation for
Speaker 2: treatment of cancers. But that's not normal and pretty rare. Okay,
Speaker 2: well so yeah, oh I guess you'll probably tell me
Speaker 2: why in modern day okay, yeah, all right, So there
Speaker 2: are a couple of different three different clinical syndromes that
Speaker 2: can happen after acute radiation exposure, and the type that
Speaker 2: you will get will depend on the amount of radiation
Speaker 2: you were exposed to. Three are neurovascular which means central
Speaker 2: nervous system, and vascular, so blood supply effects, hematopoetic which
Speaker 2: means your stem cells that produce blood cells, white blood
Speaker 2: cells and red blood cells and platelets, and gastrointestinal. Those
Speaker 2: are the three syndromes, so let's go through them. The
Speaker 2: neurovascular syndrome requires the highest doses of radiation to see
Speaker 2: that syndrome. In general, it's over twenty thousand millisiverts of exposure,
Speaker 2: which is a huge, huge amount of radiation. Okay, if
Speaker 2: you're exposed to that much radiation, that's how much it
Speaker 2: takes for your brain and blood vessels to actually become affected.
Speaker 2: So the symptoms that you see are things like headache
Speaker 2: which is very severe headache, apathy, lethargy, seizures. Yes, because
Speaker 2: it affects the blood vessels, you'll your heart will start
Speaker 2: to go into an arrhythmia, and basically you're dead within
Speaker 2: twenty four to forty.
Speaker 1: Eight hours, just to your body just shuts down.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Your brain and all of your blood vessels just
Speaker 2: are wiped out. The cells are just destroyed, and so
Speaker 2: you die. Not great, Okay. Next syndrome, the gastrointestinal syndrome.
Speaker 2: This generally happens after exposure to also very very high
Speaker 2: amounts of radiation between ten and twenty thousand milliseiverts. Okay,
Speaker 2: and your GI tract we already talked about is very
Speaker 2: susceptible to the effects of radiation. So these symptoms are
Speaker 2: going to be like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia, so not
Speaker 2: wanting to eat anything, huge amounts of abdominal pain. You
Speaker 2: can get distension. It can affect the cells of your
Speaker 2: gastrointestinal attract so much that they are unable to undergo
Speaker 2: paris dolcis, so they stop moving, so you're not basically
Speaker 2: able to move any food or liquid through, so you're
Speaker 2: not absorbing things properly. You can become massively dehydrated and
Speaker 2: you'll likely die, but it's a slower, more prolonged death
Speaker 2: than with the neurovascular syndrome. Wow. The hematopoetic syndrome is
Speaker 2: what happens when your bone marrow, your blood cell regeneration
Speaker 2: stem cells are affected. So the first cells that tend
Speaker 2: to be affected are your lymphocytes, which are one group
Speaker 2: of your white blood cells, and then your granulocytes, which
Speaker 2: are like your neutrophils, another white blood cell, then your platelets,
Speaker 2: than your red blood cells, so basically, whichever cells turn
Speaker 2: over the quickest are the first ones to start to
Speaker 2: die off and not be able to be replaced. Those
Speaker 2: purple spots that you described in the first hand account,
Speaker 2: those are because of hemorrhages because your platelet count is low,
Speaker 2: so that's not good. And so basically because your blood cells,
Speaker 2: especially your white blood cells, as those start to decrease,
Speaker 2: your body is defenseless against other pathogens. So if you
Speaker 2: don't die from that and then from bleeding because you
Speaker 2: don't have any platelets to clot your blood, then you
Speaker 2: die from superinfections, so bacterial infections or viral infections, or
Speaker 2: reactivation of any latent infections. So it's really common if
Speaker 2: you have like an underlying A lot of us have
Speaker 2: viruses just sort of hanging out in our bodies that
Speaker 2: never cause problems until you have no white blood cells
Speaker 2: to fight them off. Right, So you generally see the
Speaker 2: hematopoetic stem cell effects anywhere from about a thousand millisverts
Speaker 2: all the way up to ten thousand millisiverts of exposure
Speaker 2: to radiation, but you usually won't die from it unless
Speaker 2: it's at least more than five thousand milliseiverts of exposure.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: is that in one of the books that I was reading,
Speaker 1: it talked about how, you know, in some of these
Speaker 1: tests when they tested like the hydrogen bomb or something,
Speaker 1: there would be soldiers at different distances from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and within that same distance, which first of all you
Speaker 1: could then see like the stages of the very dose dependent,
Speaker 1: but even within a certain quote unquote dose, you had
Speaker 1: differences in reaction. Why absence is that?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, don't I don't fully know the answer.
Speaker 2: Whether it has to do with like how much your
Speaker 2: body just happens to be able to be resistant to it,
Speaker 2: Like if you're really young and healthy and you don't
Speaker 2: have any latent infections, then maybe you can survive that
Speaker 2: hematopoetic effect, whereas someone else who like has CMV, you know,
Speaker 2: that gets reactivated so they end up deteriorating faster, or
Speaker 2: whether it just has to do with like maybe even
Speaker 2: though you were standing at the same distance, you were
Speaker 2: at a different angle, so you got exposed differently. You
Speaker 2: were wearing different clothes, so your exposure was different. It's
Speaker 2: a really good question. Yeah, But so that's kind of
Speaker 2: the acute radiation syndrome. And again this if you are
Speaker 2: exposed to less than about five hundred milliseiverts of total
Speaker 2: body radiation, you basically won't see any of these syndromes
Speaker 2: of the acute of the acute exactly. And there are
Speaker 2: also phases of this illness, especially as you're exposed to
Speaker 2: the lower, lower but still higher than five hundred dosages,
Speaker 2: where first onset you'll have like a prodromal phase where
Speaker 2: you'll still get nausea and vomiting even minutes or hours
Speaker 2: after exposure, or it might be kind of days or
Speaker 2: weeks after exposure, and then there'll be a period of
Speaker 2: time where you're kind of asymptomatic, where like your GI
Speaker 2: symptoms have cleared up, and then you'll go on to
Speaker 2: have more of the stem cell of your blood cell
Speaker 2: effects where your blood cell council drop, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: you go through all of these phases, and how long
Speaker 2: each of those phases last and how long it takes
Speaker 2: between them depends on the total total body exposure to
Speaker 2: that radiation. What symptoms you're going to see, depend on
Speaker 2: what cell type, and how long the turnover is, how
Speaker 2: quickly those cells replicate, So the GI symptoms are some
Speaker 2: of the first that you see because the turnover of
Speaker 2: our epithelial cells of the GI tract are like seven
Speaker 2: or eight days, like it's really fast. Whereas our red
Speaker 2: blood cells have a lifetime of about one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty days, so it takes a long time before you'll
Speaker 2: see any anemia from radiation exposure. Uh huh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: but then white blood cells have a shorter half life.
Speaker 2: Platelets are somewhere in between. So yeah, so it's really gnarly.
Speaker 2: But again, that's all acute radiation syndrome, which is from
Speaker 2: exposure to very very high light levels of radiation, which
Speaker 2: is very very rare in the modern day and age.
Speaker 2: It's not impossible, but it's very rare. Right, So what
Speaker 2: about chronic effects? What about the normal kind of radiation
Speaker 2: that we're all exposed to?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 2: How does that affect us? Okay, Basically the biggest risk
Speaker 2: overall of late radiation exposure, so kind of cumulative radiation
Speaker 2: exposure over your lifetime, whether small amounts over time or
Speaker 2: a large amount all at once but not enough to
Speaker 2: cause ars. The biggest risk is the development of cancer. Oka.
Speaker 1: Question, Yeah, is there any treatment?
Speaker 2: Oh? Good question. So for acute radiation syndrome, no, absolutely
Speaker 2: not if you have, for example, like the hematopoetics. So
Speaker 2: if you don't die from the CNS effects, the central
Speaker 2: nervous system effects, or the GI syndrome, if you have
Speaker 2: high amounts of exposure and you have this hematopoetic response,
Speaker 2: the best treatment is essentially supportive care, making sure they're
Speaker 2: supersterile so they don't get a secondary infection, so that
Speaker 2: there are stem cells have time to regenerate and heal. Essentially,
Speaker 2: they have used blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants to
Speaker 2: try and give someone back those stem cells. But again,
Speaker 2: because it's generally so rare and there's been so few
Speaker 2: cases of it throughout the world comparatively, there isn't like
Speaker 2: a treat there's not like an antidote to radiation exposure
Speaker 2: and then even chronically like from you know, overall exposure
Speaker 2: when we use radiation for cancer treatment, there's no treatment
Speaker 2: for those effects. There's symptomatic relief. So for radiation induced nausea,
Speaker 2: for example, which is really common, we have drugs that
Speaker 2: help to treat the nausea associated with it. They don't
Speaker 2: do anything to change the effects that radiation is having
Speaker 2: on the GI tract, but they help your brain deal
Speaker 2: with the nausea so that you don't feel nauseous.
Speaker 1: Okay, but so in any case, like you cannot reverse
Speaker 1: the effects of radiation on yourselves.
Speaker 4: Nope.
Speaker 1: I mean we're not even in the history yet, Aaron, No,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So tell me about that, Aaron. I want to
Speaker 2: know how depressing it can get and where this all
Speaker 2: came from, Like how did we first figure out radiation? Oh?
Speaker 1: I can't wait to tell you. We'll take a quick
Speaker 1: break first. Okay, this is a massive history, as you
Speaker 1: might expect, with tons and tons of different aspects to cover,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do the best that I can
Speaker 1: to tell the story, but it's not going to be
Speaker 1: super in depth because then we'd have literally like a
Speaker 1: ten hour episode. We could do a mini series on this,
Speaker 1: of course, but each part of the story of radiation
Speaker 1: has its own history, and I'll recommend a ton of
Speaker 1: books and some documentaries to watch to get more in
Speaker 1: depth info on each of these topics. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, just across the board, every single book that
Speaker 1: I read for this was absolutely incredible, like really fascinating
Speaker 1: and interesting and well written and horrifying and all.
Speaker 2: The things everything you want in a book, basically.
Speaker 1: All right, So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start with the early discovery of radiation from a physics perspective,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to talk about how the harmful
Speaker 1: effects of radiation were first discovered, particularly from an occupational
Speaker 1: exposure standpoint, and then a little bit about human experimentation
Speaker 1: because of the studies, of course, and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about how radiation has been used as medical therapy.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go into too much of the story
Speaker 1: of meltdowns like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl or Fukushima,
Speaker 1: simply because like each one of those is an entire
Speaker 1: story and I wouldn't be able to do it justice.
Speaker 1: But I'll recommend some reading, so perfect there you go. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's dive in. I have discovered something interesting, but I
Speaker 1: do not know whether or not my observations are correct.
Speaker 2: God if that is not written in every student's lab notebook.
Speaker 1: And then but most of the time, ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the time, it's like, Nope, just miscounted. Nope, my
Speaker 1: model had a weird variable in it. But those are
Speaker 1: the words that Wilhelm Conrad Rotkin said to a colleague
Speaker 1: of his in December eighteen ninety five, just a few
Speaker 1: days after discovering invisible rays that could pass through solid objects.
Speaker 1: And I mean, it's maybe not that surprising that he
Speaker 1: was so skeptical of his own observations, because invisible rays
Speaker 1: that don't follow the rules of physics, it seems like magic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sci fi novel type stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ronkin who was an experimental research, empirical evidence kind of guy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like a super big thinking theoretician. He had
Speaker 1: been conducting some experiments in his lab on running an
Speaker 1: electric current through a Crooks tube looking at cathode rays,
Speaker 1: and he had observed a faint glow that appeared on
Speaker 1: fluorescent's screens that weren't near the tube where he was
Speaker 1: doing his experiments. Okay, this glow even appeared if he
Speaker 1: blocked the tube with books or cardboard, anything he could
Speaker 1: find in his lab. So he was like, okay, this
Speaker 1: has to be a new kind of ray. Was one
Speaker 1: that couldn't be bent by a prism, it couldn't be
Speaker 1: deflected by a magnet, but it could pass through solid objects.
Speaker 1: So he gave these rays a temporary name X ray
Speaker 1: because X. He wasn't really sure what X stood for yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like disease X.
Speaker 1: We don't know. But then it stuck and he continued
Speaker 1: to toy around with these rays and discovered that while they
Speaker 1: could pass through wood, they couldn't pass through metal. So
Speaker 1: then he got to wondering, what about human flesh?
Speaker 2: Of course, isn't that the next thing you would wonder?
Speaker 1: I mean human flesh kind of, And so when he
Speaker 1: held his hand in front of the screen, he could
Speaker 1: see his bones, but not his flesh. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: I I would love to imagine. Is there a show
Speaker 2: about this yet? Because I want to watch that episode?
Speaker 1: Good question? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there should be, Like, I mean, to see
Speaker 2: your bones when no one has ever seen their bones
Speaker 2: unless they take off the skin and muscle to take
Speaker 2: a look at it, Like to see your bones without
Speaker 2: cutting your skin?
Speaker 1: What? Yep? Oh yeah, it's magic. Well, and it gets
Speaker 1: even better because, like, he was never described as a
Speaker 1: big theoretical thinker, but he connected these dots pretty quickly
Speaker 1: between this new technology and its possible application in medicine.
Speaker 1: Like he was like, oh, this could be used for medicine.
Speaker 1: We could use we could look for things inside the
Speaker 1: body like yeah, okay, I mean it makes sense, but
Speaker 1: like holy cow. And he also realized that if he
Speaker 1: replaced the fluorescent screen in his lab with photographic film,
Speaker 1: we could capture the images.
Speaker 2: Side note, I still think that photographic film is also
Speaker 2: like magic, like oh totally.
Speaker 1: I mean sc records and CDs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and computers all of its actual like records especially.
Speaker 1: I remember laying X my record player being like, I
Speaker 1: don't understand. I've since I have since watch YouTube videos
Speaker 1: about how it works. I still don't get it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you have probably seen one of the very first
Speaker 1: X rays ever taken. It's of his wife's hand with
Speaker 1: her wedding ring on it. It's very cool. And apparently
Speaker 1: after he showed her the image, she was like, I've
Speaker 1: seen my own death. Oh that's what you said. But
Speaker 1: I mean it is sort of like this is eventually
Speaker 1: what you return to. It's very interesting anyway. So I
Speaker 1: feel like in so many of the histories that I've researched,
Speaker 1: it's like someone discovers something amazing and then people ignore
Speaker 1: it for decades or they don't believe them, or whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not the case with radiation and X rays
Speaker 1: at all at all. So in almost record time, Ronkin
Speaker 1: got his finding published in a scientific journal, and less
Speaker 1: than two weeks later, there were newspapers all over the
Speaker 1: world announcing this discovery, this new kind of ray that
Speaker 1: allowed you to peak at your skeleton.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Researchers were able to easily replicate Ronkin's experiments because the
Speaker 1: equipment was pretty simple, and some kicked it up a
Speaker 1: notch like immediately applying it to medical intervention. So the
Speaker 1: first time that it was used in a medical intervention
Speaker 1: way was to help surgeons locate a bullet in a
Speaker 1: guy's leg, which they were able to successfully remove.
Speaker 2: And we still do that.
Speaker 1: How cool we still do that? Okay, So December twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five, X rays are first published in a
Speaker 1: scientific journal. Okay, February fourth, eighteen ninety six, So like
Speaker 1: less than two months later later, they are used to
Speaker 1: help save a person. Has anything ever moved from discovery
Speaker 1: to applications so quickly.
Speaker 2: Certainly nothing we've ever talked about.
Speaker 1: No, And you know, like it's sort of a mixed
Speaker 1: blessing because we had this amazing power. You know, ethics
Speaker 1: and knowledge moves at a much slower pace than technology.
Speaker 1: So anyway, for his work, Ronken was awarded the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize in Physics in nineteen oh one. And side note,
Speaker 1: in the first half of the twentieth century there were
Speaker 1: over twenty one Nobel Prizes in physics for research related
Speaker 1: to radiation and one in physiology or medicine. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of Nobel prizes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, the history of radiation is filled
Speaker 1: with many, many sad stories, and some of those are
Speaker 1: about people not knowing the danger of radiation and dying
Speaker 1: horrible early deaths. Rotkin actually always protected himself. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it was out of just like and you know,
Speaker 1: extreme caution, but he died in old age, apparently not
Speaker 1: ever having been negatively impacted by the rays that he discovered.
Speaker 1: But not so lucky were Edison, who, through his work
Speaker 1: on a fluoroscope, nearly lost his eyesight. And Edison's assistant
Speaker 1: Clarence Dally, fared even worse. So you first got severe
Speaker 1: burns that covered his hands, leading to ampitated fingers and
Speaker 1: then a hand, and then cancer creeping up his arms
Speaker 1: into his chest, which is what ultimately killed him. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: as we have talked about, radiation is a broad word
Speaker 1: for you know, this whole episode, because there's ionizing and
Speaker 1: non ionizing radiation, there's particulate and there are differences in
Speaker 1: which of these types of radiations can hurt you and
Speaker 1: how they can hurt you, and the doses and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've talked about one type of radiation and how
Speaker 1: it was discovered, X rays, But I want to talk
Speaker 1: about how particular radiation was discovered. Yes, and it actually
Speaker 1: wasn't long after Ronkin's discovery of X rays when a
Speaker 1: guy named Antoine Bequerel started wondering about the link between
Speaker 1: X rays and fluorescence, in particular, where was that visible
Speaker 1: glow from the fluorescence coming from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Becquerel, isn't that a unit or something?
Speaker 1: Uh huh? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Basically, if you worked in if you were one of
Speaker 1: the first people who worked on radiation, you had a
Speaker 1: unit named after you. Curi's next Rokin, Bequerel, Currie.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen ninety six, Becherel tested a bunch of
Speaker 1: chemicals and long story, short, found that the presence of
Speaker 1: uranium sulfate alone would expose film without the help of
Speaker 1: other light source or X rays. So he concluded that
Speaker 1: uranium atoms emitted so some kind of invisible radiation along
Speaker 1: the same lines as X rays. In short, he discovered radioactivity. Yes,
Speaker 1: so Becherel along with Marie Currie and Pierre Curie aka
Speaker 1: the French Trifecta is what they were called. They were
Speaker 1: awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in nineteen oh three.
Speaker 1: So again just rapid pay stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen oh three, that's only a few years later.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah. And uranium, of course would go on
Speaker 1: to play a major role in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: as I'll talk about later, with the development and deployment
Speaker 1: of atomic bombs as well as with human experimentation naturally.
Speaker 1: So Beckerel got out of the radioactivity game pretty early,
Speaker 1: but the Curis would go on to contribute to the
Speaker 1: field for years and years. They were the ones who
Speaker 1: actually coined the term radioactive, which is pretty cool for
Speaker 1: their share of the Nobel Prize. The Curies realized that
Speaker 1: uranium or actually emitted more radioactivity than could be accounted
Speaker 1: for by just uranium alone. They found that there were
Speaker 1: at least three radioactive elements in the ore uranium and
Speaker 1: two new ones, one which they named polonium after Poland,
Speaker 1: which was where Marie was from, and radium, which is
Speaker 1: from the Latin word for ray. Side note, Marie also
Speaker 1: died of radiation poisoning, and her body is in like
Speaker 1: a lead casket that's protected by like a lead whatever
Speaker 1: because there was so much radiation in it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Research on X rays and radioactive elements continued at full
Speaker 1: speed throughout the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties, and
Speaker 1: the start of World War Two brought this increased urgency
Speaker 1: to it, as well as a narrowing focus on the
Speaker 1: possibility of nuclear weapons, which.
Speaker 2: Is just so typical of humans. I know, you know,
Speaker 2: so powerful thing. How can we weaponize it?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, rinse and repeat.
Speaker 2: That's let's experiment on our most vulnerable populations without their
Speaker 2: permission and find out.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, let's not jump the gun now, Aaron, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of that, plenty of that in here, Okay. So
Speaker 1: for a while it had been thought to be too impractical,
Speaker 1: like there's no way we could actually make these nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: But then when the concept of these self sustaining chain reactions,
Speaker 1: so criticality is doctor Jorganson talked about. Once that was discovered,
Speaker 1: then it was like, oh, we can do this. So
Speaker 1: if you can get that criticality to happen, you've harnessed
Speaker 1: an absolute, unbelievable amount of energy. But if you lose
Speaker 1: control of it, you're looking at a meltdown as we've
Speaker 1: seen happen or a bomb. Okay. In a project headed
Speaker 1: by Enrico Fermie under the University of Chicago, criticality was
Speaker 1: achieved on December twod nineteen forty two. Wow, about the
Speaker 1: midway point of World War two. Okay, Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: work would pave the way for the Manhattan Project and
Speaker 1: the development of nuclear weapons. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go too much into the history of the Manhattan Project itself,
Speaker 1: but by the time that the project was underway, the
Speaker 1: dangers of working with radiation had been well recognized and
Speaker 1: research done by Hermann Muller. So he was a Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winner and also a huge proponent of eugenics. He
Speaker 1: loved eugenics.
Speaker 2: Great, what a stand up guy, not at all.
Speaker 1: So he showed that radiation induced genetic mutations in fruitflies,
Speaker 1: and that finding attracted a lot of medical science attention
Speaker 1: because if it caused mutations in fruit flies and their DNA,
Speaker 1: what would it do to humans? How much could hurt you?
Speaker 1: What was a safe level was their safe level? And
Speaker 1: as more and more people worked with radiation, it's dangers,
Speaker 1: both short and long term, became more clear. So whereas
Speaker 1: the dangers of electricity were very much feared in its
Speaker 1: early days, maybe helped along by the alternating current smear
Speaker 1: campaign by Edison more, I would love to do an
Speaker 1: episode on Edison in Tesla, just because the history is
Speaker 1: so interesting.
Speaker 2: I was waiting for you to smear Edison like you
Speaker 2: mentioned him earlier, and then didn't smear him, and I
Speaker 2: was a little shocked.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's happening now. It's not even really relevant
Speaker 1: to the discussion of radiation, but I just had to.
Speaker 2: Throw in that.
Speaker 3: But did you know.
Speaker 1: Anyway? So, but electricity, you could directly see the damage
Speaker 1: that it could cause, right, you could electrocute a person,
Speaker 1: an animal, a tree, whatever. But the effects of radiation
Speaker 1: were mostly invisible, right, And so precautions weren't all taken,
Speaker 1: and when they were taken, it was often too late.
Speaker 2: Well, and also, like we talked about, sometimes the effects
Speaker 2: are so long after exposure it's even hard to correlate back, right.
Speaker 1: But still a lot of the people who had been
Speaker 1: working with radiation were working with these incredibly high doses,
Speaker 1: and so the negative health effects of radiation had been
Speaker 1: known basically ever since its discovery.
Speaker 2: Man, oh ma'am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, many of the people who used
Speaker 1: X rays and had studied radioactive elements had suffered or
Speaker 1: died from their exposure to radiation. But I think it's
Speaker 1: really interesting that these people, the researchers who worked on this,
Speaker 1: weren't actually the first to experience this. That prize goes
Speaker 1: to some miners in Schneberg, Germany, who, for as long
Speaker 1: as people could remember, had gotten sick with a mysterious
Speaker 1: lung ailment. Later research showed the mind to be full
Speaker 1: of radon gas, which is produced when radium decays and
Speaker 1: so is a source of radiation.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. So they all had lung cancer at a
Speaker 1: time when lung cancer wasn't as common as it is now. Wow,
Speaker 1: And so that was sort of a pre x ray thing.
Speaker 1: But those mines full of raid on gas weren't the
Speaker 1: only radioactive workplaces. Fluorescent paint containing radium glowed in the dark,
Speaker 1: which made it perfect to paint the numbers on a
Speaker 1: watch face so that people could tell the time in
Speaker 1: the dark. So in the early nineteen hundreds, wrist watches
Speaker 1: were largely worn by women while men used pocket watches.
Speaker 1: But World War One changed that because you needed to
Speaker 1: see the time in a trench. It was much you
Speaker 1: needed to have when it was much faster to just
Speaker 1: look at your wrist rather than pull something out of
Speaker 1: your pocket which could easily be lost. And so these
Speaker 1: glow in the dark wrist watches with the numbers painted
Speaker 1: made coordinating night maneuvers possible. WHOA and World War One
Speaker 1: once it was over, also made these watches like the
Speaker 1: thing to have, like they were super popular. Everyone had
Speaker 1: to have one. I mean, demand absolutely skyrocketed, and so
Speaker 1: these these watch factories were a great place for a
Speaker 1: young woman to work. At the time. You were paid
Speaker 1: by the dial, so if you were a fast painter,
Speaker 1: you could make up to twenty four dollars a week,
Speaker 1: which is three hundred and seventeen dollars in twenty fifteen dollars.
Speaker 1: And that was at a time when the average weekly
Speaker 1: wage for a woman was fifteen dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it was good money.
Speaker 1: It's good money. Factories popped up all over in New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and it was in Connecticut where a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: named Francis sweat Choker had started working in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: Four years later, Francis went to the dentist complaining of
Speaker 1: facial pain and toothaches. The dentist pulled a two and
Speaker 1: a piece of her jaw came out with it. Oh yep.
Speaker 1: The tissues in her mouth basically at that point started
Speaker 1: to deteriorate. A hole appeared in her cheek, and a
Speaker 1: month later she was dead. And unfortunately, her story is
Speaker 1: not unique, not at all. All Over these factories, dial
Speaker 1: painters were getting sick and dying, earning them the name
Speaker 1: Radium Girls, which is an excellent piece of nonfiction. You
Speaker 1: should definitely read it. Apparently it's also a movie, but
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it.
Speaker 2: I've heard of it. Yeah, I haven't seen it either.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the book is so good. Okay. One
Speaker 1: of the keys to being a good dial painter was
Speaker 1: that if you ever tried to paint like fine, you
Speaker 1: have to keep the bristles get so smudged so easily,
Speaker 1: and you have to keep them together. And so in
Speaker 1: order to keep that brush point super sharp to paint
Speaker 1: accurate numbers, you would put the tip of that paint
Speaker 1: brush in your mouth and twist it.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 1: If you did this, which by the way, was a
Speaker 1: technique taut at the factories, Oh like, this is what
Speaker 1: you should do, you would end up consuming about a
Speaker 1: coffee cup worth of radium containing paint over the course
Speaker 1: of a year. You would literally sometimes come home and
Speaker 1: your clothes and your body you would glow in the
Speaker 1: dark because of the radium dust. Oh my god, the
Speaker 1: fluorescent dust. And while a lot of this radium would
Speaker 1: end up being passed through the gut, about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of it would be absorbed in the bones, essentially leading
Speaker 1: to a radioactive skeleton. And the jaw was one of
Speaker 1: the places, of course first, because you're putting pregar in
Speaker 1: your mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the blood supply too, is just going to
Speaker 2: go straight into those bones right there from your oh no.
Speaker 1: And so this led to an unbelievable amount of these
Speaker 1: radium girls becoming sick and dying or permanently disabled or
Speaker 1: injured by these by this radiation exposure, and the companies
Speaker 1: fought and fought and fought to acknowledge that they did
Speaker 1: any wrong, to enact safety measures, and to give any
Speaker 1: sort of compensation to the girls or the families of the.
Speaker 2: Girls surprises me not at all. Erin Oh, I know,
Speaker 2: I know, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Eventually a handful of the women got some compensation, but
Speaker 1: at any amount of time, about two thousand women were
Speaker 1: working at these factories, with a substantial portion of those
Speaker 1: getting sick. So the Radium Girl's story is this horribly
Speaker 1: sad reminder of how a company can value greed and
Speaker 1: the bottom line over the health than safety of their
Speaker 1: employees because they viewed them as dispensable. But I think
Speaker 1: it's also inspiring in a way because despite being ignored
Speaker 1: and told they were faking it and being told no,
Speaker 1: you have no right to argue this, despite literally nearly
Speaker 1: dying of radiation sickness while giving their testimonies in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: these women fought and fought and fought and eventually won
Speaker 1: the battle that they should never have had to be
Speaker 1: a part of. It's a really great book. So while
Speaker 1: the biggest obstacle in the way of the Radium Girls
Speaker 1: was the I think evil is a fair word company,
Speaker 1: evil company that refused to acknowledge their wrongdoing. Another challenge
Speaker 1: was fighting against the popular opinion that radiation was this
Speaker 1: miracle cure, because that was just sort of how it
Speaker 1: had been advertised. Yeah, like, name any household product and
Speaker 1: you could probably get a radioactive version of it. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen tens, the nineteen twenties into the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: weird low levels were thought to be beneficial for overall.
Speaker 2: Health okay, cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and any negative outcomes from larger exposures were thought
Speaker 1: to be relatively short lived.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just don't yeah yep.
Speaker 1: One medication medication is in quotes called ratathor, was simply
Speaker 1: radium dissolved in water.
Speaker 4: Oh no, that's it.
Speaker 1: It was prescribed to people to help them heal after
Speaker 1: a broken bone.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh huh uh huh. Yep.
Speaker 1: So one of the people who had been prescribed ratathor
Speaker 1: was a golfer named Eben Byers who drank over fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred bottles of ratathor and he eventually developed holes in
Speaker 1: his skull and he lost his jaw and his body
Speaker 1: is now in a lead lined coffin to protect people
Speaker 1: who visit the seminary from getting radiation from home my unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing to point out is that
Speaker 1: radium containing medications didn't cause an epidemic of radiation poisoning necessarily,
Speaker 1: mostly because the vast majority of these treatments contain no
Speaker 1: radium at all.
Speaker 2: They were snake oil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the ones that actually did were too expensive
Speaker 1: for most people to use regularly.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: But radiation was also used to like irradiate hair, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you want hair removal, Let's irradiate your you know, upper lip,
Speaker 1: and then your upper lip falls off.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Like the hair will be gone too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they wasn't false advertising necessarily.
Speaker 2: Right, oh effective, But.
Speaker 1: So early in the twentieth century, those that worked with
Speaker 1: radiation were well aware of these hazards. But what was
Speaker 1: more difficult to determine was what levels of radiation were
Speaker 1: necessary to cause harm. Right, And a big, you know,
Speaker 1: a big challenge or a big hurdle was not having
Speaker 1: a standardized way to measure radiation exposure. But that sort
Speaker 1: of is a whole separate story. But eventually standards were
Speaker 1: put into place for the safe level of exposure to
Speaker 1: radium and X rays and gamma rays, but debates over
Speaker 1: whether these standards were accurate continued, and when the Manhattan
Speaker 1: Project to develop the atomic bomb began, it was clear
Speaker 1: that more fine scale information on the dangers of radiation
Speaker 1: exposure was necessary for the researchers to understand their level
Speaker 1: of risk. After all, two researchers died in two separate
Speaker 1: instances in the Manhattan Project after experiencing a massive dose
Speaker 1: of radiation when an experiment went wrong. But where would
Speaker 1: they get this information on radiation exposure. Well, for one,
Speaker 1: the atomic bombs themselves. Okay, the catastrophic impact of the
Speaker 1: atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Speaker 1: without any warning in World War Two was not just
Speaker 1: the enormous loss of life from the direct impact of
Speaker 1: the bomb, but also in the lingering effects of radiation
Speaker 1: sickness that would only be felt weeks, months, and years
Speaker 1: after the bombs. I mean, the trauma is immeasurable yep.
Speaker 1: And a lot of what we know today about the
Speaker 1: harmful effects of radiation on the body, both acute and chronic,
Speaker 1: come not from early occupational exposure to X rays or radium.
Speaker 1: But from these bombings in the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima,
Speaker 1: only six out of the thirty doctors and ten out
Speaker 1: of the two hundred nurses were able to function after
Speaker 1: the bomb was dropped, and estimated ninety percent of Hiroshima's
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses had been killed or injured by the bomb.
Speaker 1: The six hundred bed hospital was completely unprepared for the
Speaker 1: ten thousand bomb victims that would head there that day alone.
Speaker 1: Many of these people would die vomiting and with burns
Speaker 1: all over their bodies, and many others would be left
Speaker 1: with this insidious internal radiation injuries whose effects would only
Speaker 1: manifest later on in their life. And the world had
Speaker 1: never seen radiation illness on this scale before, and the
Speaker 1: doctors at the hospitals in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were unprepared
Speaker 1: to deal not only with the sheer number of people
Speaker 1: needing help, but they also didn't even know how to
Speaker 1: help them because no one had told them anything about radiation.
Speaker 1: No one had ever experienced anything like this before. And
Speaker 1: like you said, there were no treatments.
Speaker 2: There's no treatments. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing you can do. Yep.
Speaker 1: The number of people killed in Hiroshima is not quite certain,
Speaker 1: like how many were actually just vaporized by the bomb
Speaker 1: and didn't survive the initial blast, but estimates range from
Speaker 1: ninety to one hundred and sixty five thousand deaths. About
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of those died from fire and trauma,
Speaker 1: and the other twenty five percent died from the direct
Speaker 1: effects of radiation. And that's like the immediate death immediately
Speaker 1: ye And then once those three waves of death had ended,
Speaker 1: it was just a waiting game to see how radiation
Speaker 1: poisoning would continue to manifest in those who had been
Speaker 1: exposed in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the health
Speaker 1: outcomes of these bombs wouldn't be seen for several years
Speaker 1: after the bomb had been dropped leukemia, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that the rates of leukemia among atomic bomb survivors
Speaker 1: were skyrocketing, and soon it became apparent that other types
Speaker 1: of cancers were also on the rise, and the effects
Speaker 1: of the bomb would continue to be felt for decades
Speaker 1: and decades. To some of the people in power in
Speaker 1: the US, a lot of the people, one might say,
Speaker 1: these bombings were viewed as an absolute win. Not only
Speaker 1: did they result in the absolute surrender of Japan and
Speaker 1: the end of World War two. But they also provided
Speaker 1: this fantastic opportunity to see how different doses and types
Speaker 1: of radiation impacted people. It's horrible. So the US immediately
Speaker 1: sent physicians to Japan to study the effects of the
Speaker 1: bomb and write down what they witnessed, and what they
Speaker 1: witnessed obviously horrified them. They had expected to see acute
Speaker 1: radiation poisoning, they had seen that before, but the increase
Speaker 1: in cancers later on, and the huge geographic radius of fallout,
Speaker 1: like so much larger than they anticipated, was new. And
Speaker 1: so the word fallout, just to define it is radioactivity
Speaker 1: that settles to Earth's surface from the sky. So like
Speaker 1: if you drop the atomic bomb, all of that dust
Speaker 1: and dirt and debris that goes up into the air
Speaker 1: and then settles down is radioactive, and that can cover
Speaker 1: a much larger radius than like the direct impact of
Speaker 1: the bomb itself.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But these doctors who went to Japan, they couldn't make
Speaker 1: these horrible observations known because maintaining trust in the government
Speaker 1: and a positive image in radiation and nuclear weapons was
Speaker 1: cited as a reason to not be forthcoming about the
Speaker 1: risks involved in nuclear weapons testing and the horrors involved
Speaker 1: in nuclear weapons deployment, and other people viewed widespread fallout
Speaker 1: from nuclear weapons testing a small price to pay for
Speaker 1: advancement of technology and global superiority of the United States.
Speaker 1: Here in this is not it's awful.
Speaker 4: It's worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it does. This podcast will kill you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. After the atomic bomb was developed, the US continued
Speaker 1: working on making a bigger and better bomb. The US
Speaker 1: decided to use Bikini, a toll which they took control
Speaker 1: over from Japan after the end of the war, to
Speaker 1: use as a nuclear weapons testing grounds. One day, as
Speaker 1: the entire community of Bikini Islanders were leaving church, so
Speaker 1: around one hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy people,
Speaker 1: the US military governor said, Hey, the US needs your
Speaker 1: island for important research, so you're going to need to
Speaker 1: move to another island, and so they moved them, even
Speaker 1: though archaeological evidence showed that this island had been inhabited
Speaker 1: since two thousand BCE.
Speaker 2: Conism doesn't care, does not care.
Speaker 1: There's a documentary called Atomic Cafe which shows some footage.
Speaker 1: It's such a fascinating documentary holy cow. It's from the
Speaker 1: early eighties, and they show footage of like propaganda footage
Speaker 1: of the US military. You know, this very paternalistic white
Speaker 1: savior colonialism, like, you know, we're doing what's best for you,
Speaker 1: and don't you want the world to be protected from
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons?
Speaker 2: It's so great voice they're using too where doing what's
Speaker 2: best for you exactly, we know exactly what's right for you.
Speaker 2: So give us your island and will make the world
Speaker 2: up better place.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, honestly, I think you just watched the documentary.
Speaker 1: You just quoted directly from it. So anyway, with these
Speaker 1: with now the island empty for their own use. The
Speaker 1: US was able to test the hydrogen bomb on March first,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. This bomb produced a fireball four and
Speaker 1: a half miles in diameter. That's just the fireball.
Speaker 2: Size of the town that I live in.
Speaker 1: It was visible over two hundred and fifty miles away,
Speaker 1: and it produced a crater over a mile wide and
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty feet deep. The mushroom cloud was
Speaker 1: twenty five miles high and sixty two miles in diameter.
Speaker 1: It's huge, it's huge.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, my.
Speaker 1: Nearly seven thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean were contaminated,
Speaker 1: which was far beyond, far beyond what the US calculated
Speaker 1: it might.
Speaker 2: Be shock of all shocks.
Speaker 1: It was probably like, oh, well, it'll be fine, everything's fine. Everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 1: The ground was contaminated, marine life was contaminated, reefs, fish,
Speaker 1: people died, and unfortunately the US missed in their scans
Speaker 1: a Japanese fishing vessel who happened to be in the
Speaker 1: direct proximity of this. The fishermen were close enough to
Speaker 1: see this blinding light and hear the blast, and they
Speaker 1: started showing signs of radiation poisoning. Shortly after returning to shore,
Speaker 1: all the fish that they had caught with them and
Speaker 1: sold at the markets was full of radiation. People started
Speaker 1: experiencing radiation symptoms who had purchased the fish and ingested it,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And the US soldiers who were present also experienced both
Speaker 1: short and long term health consequences from this and other
Speaker 1: weapons testing. And they weren't told about the risks. They
Speaker 1: were just said stand in place.
Speaker 2: They're soldiers. They're just supposed to stand there and do
Speaker 2: what they're told.
Speaker 3: M hm.
Speaker 1: And you know, but ultimately the US, the people in charge,
Speaker 1: viewed these as unfortunate consequences and a small price to
Speaker 1: pay for the advancement of technology.
Speaker 2: A small price to pay human lives ANDBD lives.
Speaker 1: And the sad story doesn't end there. The Bikini Islanders
Speaker 1: ended up suffering malnutrition on the smaller island that they
Speaker 1: had been relocated to, and later tests showed dangerously high
Speaker 1: levels of radioactive elements in their bodies and in the
Speaker 1: food that they consumed, and so in nineteen eighty the
Speaker 1: atoll was entirely evacuated, which.
Speaker 2: Is like, there are so many levels of horrificness to that,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like it's forcibly removing people
Speaker 2: from an island they've inhabited for thousands of years, absolutely
Speaker 2: decimating their culture. Now you can't eat the food that
Speaker 2: you've been eating because it's all radioactive. Now you can't
Speaker 2: even live anywhere on any of these islands. Like oh,
Speaker 2: and by the way, you're all going to die from
Speaker 2: radioactivity poisoning and developed cancers down the line.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I hope that you have it in you to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more of the dark side of this,
Speaker 1: I mean, and The thing is, like, I think it's
Speaker 1: really important to tell these stories because one of the
Speaker 1: things that I wrote down in my notes was, like,
Speaker 1: any one of us who is doing any sort of job,
Speaker 1: particularly in research, where does our information come from? Where
Speaker 1: did we get this knowledge when it comes to medicine,
Speaker 1: when it comes to ecology, when it comes to chemistry,
Speaker 1: when it comes to physics. What lives were sacrificed, unknowingly, unwillingly,
Speaker 1: at what cost?
Speaker 2: At what cost to make sure that we don't do
Speaker 2: it again? Yeah, I agree entirely. I think it's so
Speaker 2: important to know where we got this information because you
Speaker 2: can talk about what we know about the symptoms of
Speaker 2: radiation poisoning, but if you don't understand how we got
Speaker 2: that information, then then you're missing such an important part
Speaker 2: of the story.
Speaker 1: The humanity part of it, which is the only thing
Speaker 1: that keeps you know, like we need to keep that
Speaker 1: sense of humanity so that this doesn't happen again. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb victims in Japan and the Marshall Islanders,
Speaker 1: the American soldiers ordered to stand at varying distances from
Speaker 1: test bomb sites, the people in fallout regions, these were
Speaker 1: all unwilling and unknowing participants in the search for information
Speaker 1: on how radiation affected the human body. But they weren't
Speaker 1: the only ones. Earlier, when I asked how researchers would
Speaker 1: get information on radiation exposure, if you had guessed human
Speaker 1: experimentation in addition to nuclear weapons, you would be correct. Yes,
Speaker 1: by US scientists, Yes, often without the people's knowledge or consent.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend the book The Plutonium Files for more
Speaker 1: information on these horrific examples of medicalized torture. Which so
Speaker 1: someone pointed out on Insta that that's what people are
Speaker 1: using in place of the words experiment or study for
Speaker 1: these types of things, since those words experiment or study
Speaker 1: can give them this air of legitimacy. Oh, totally, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. That's so important to a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, during the last couple of years of World War
Speaker 1: two and throughout the Cold War, the US was involved
Speaker 1: in a multitude of different medicalized tortures or I don't
Speaker 1: know how the plural of that is, but to examine
Speaker 1: the effects of radiation, for instance, plutonium was injected into
Speaker 1: people without their knowledge or consent.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: These people were followed for years and years surreptitiously by
Speaker 1: the researchers, and when they died, samples from their bodies
Speaker 1: were taken, often without consent from the family. This was
Speaker 1: in what year this was, I don't know when. I
Speaker 1: don't know when the first injections were. It might have
Speaker 1: been in the late nineteen forties, but throughout the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, like into the early nineties. The last person
Speaker 1: died in the early nineties.
Speaker 2: When we knew the effects of radioactivity.
Speaker 1: Right, but what about plutonium compared to uranium.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess what these people looked like?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. It was always disproportionately minorities, people who
Speaker 1: were below the poverty line, children who were disabled, orphans,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Oh my god. Like I mentioned these, some
Speaker 1: of the children who lived at orphanages or children who
Speaker 1: were disabled were fed radioactive milk to see how that
Speaker 1: affected their growth. Since, according to at least one scientist,
Speaker 1: samples from children were far too few and far between.
Speaker 1: So Willard Libby, who was the head of the Atomic
Speaker 1: Energy Commission during the time this was in the fifties,
Speaker 1: I think he said this quote, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to get them, but I do say that it is
Speaker 1: a matter of prime importance to get them referring to samples,
Speaker 1: and particularly in the young age group. So human samples
Speaker 1: are often of prime importance. And if anybody knows how
Speaker 1: to do a good job of body snatching, they will
Speaker 1: really be serving their country. That's a quote from who
Speaker 1: was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time.
Speaker 1: Prisoners had their testicles irradiated, often without their consent, or
Speaker 1: without at least informed consent, rendering them sterile and often
Speaker 1: resulting in cancer. And then you know what does consent
Speaker 1: really mean if you're imprisoned ys Pregnant people were given
Speaker 1: injections of caesium to see whether radioactive elements could pass
Speaker 1: through the placenta to the fetus. And as we talked about,
Speaker 1: the people who were sought out to perform this medicalized
Speaker 1: torture on were those who didn't have the power, the voice,
Speaker 1: the ability to stop what was happening. They weren't deemed
Speaker 1: to be worthy of being protected by the scientists and
Speaker 1: project heads, the perpetrators of these crimes. And of course
Speaker 1: there were disproportionately high numbers of black people and poor
Speaker 1: people unknowingly and unwillingly enrolled in this medicalized torture throughout
Speaker 1: the Cold War. Body parts from an estimated fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: humans were used in this quote unquote research, according to
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety five General Accounting Office study, so bodies
Speaker 1: or organs or tissue samples were taken from people without
Speaker 1: any consent from their families and much less. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't inform them of course, of course, not in
Speaker 1: the US. All over the world they would do this.
Speaker 1: They would ship internationally specimens, especially from the poorest regions
Speaker 1: of the world. Read up on Project Sunshine, which was
Speaker 1: the largest of these projects.
Speaker 2: That's a disgusting name, because sunshine is something beautiful.
Speaker 1: Isn't that horrible? So one of the theories as to
Speaker 1: why it was named Project Sunshine is because, like sunshine,
Speaker 1: fallout from radiation impacts the entire world.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also sunshine, like it sounds like beautiful and happy,
Speaker 2: but it also has UV radiation which can cause cancer
Speaker 2: get break out. It's insidious. Wow.
Speaker 1: And I think it is important to consider the historical
Speaker 1: context of this time, and this is in the opposite
Speaker 1: of excusing it. So at the height of these studies,
Speaker 1: the world was barely ten years out from World War
Speaker 1: Two and Nazi Germany and the horrible human experimentation and
Speaker 1: medicalized torture that went on, and the Nuremberg trials during
Speaker 1: which many of these Nazi doctors were put on the
Speaker 1: stand and made to account for their crimes. And yet
Speaker 1: when conducting this medicalized torture on people, these American researchers
Speaker 1: and doctors involved in Project Sunshine and other radiation projects
Speaker 1: didn't for once think that they were in the wrong.
Speaker 1: To a great many of them, the Nuremberg Code was
Speaker 1: written for barbarians, not for them. They were doing this
Speaker 1: research for a higher purpose, for the technological superiority and
Speaker 1: might of the United States. And upon reflection of this time,
Speaker 1: one doctor involved in the projects said, quote, the connection
Speaker 1: between these horrendous acts and our everyday investigation was not
Speaker 1: made for reasons of self interest. To be perfectly frank
Speaker 1: as I see it now, I am saddened that we
Speaker 1: didn't see the connection, but that was what was done.
Speaker 1: We wrapped ourselves in the flag, which is such such saddened.
Speaker 2: That's it. I'm just saddened.
Speaker 1: How regretful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whoops, might be might be Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, I mean there's a lot more where
Speaker 1: that comes from. Please go read the plutonium files. It
Speaker 1: is an incredible book.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Okay, gosh, Aaron.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of what we know about the
Speaker 1: effects of radiation on the human body come from atomic
Speaker 1: weapons or come from this medicalized torture. And while a
Speaker 1: great deal of this medicalized torture was not at all therapeutic,
Speaker 1: as in the doctors weren't trying to improve the health
Speaker 1: or treat the disease of someone. It was just to
Speaker 1: see what happened. But some were actually intended to help people.
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to end on what I hope
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a happier note by talking
Speaker 1: about the development of radiation therapy.
Speaker 4: Okay, we'll see if we can get there.
Speaker 1: I know. So in the early years of radiation therapies,
Speaker 1: most were actually snake oil, as we pointed out, just
Speaker 1: designed to make money. Snake oil still exists today a goop.
Speaker 1: But some physicians began to recognize that while radiation can
Speaker 1: cause cancer, it may also be able to treat it
Speaker 1: as well. And this is super early on too. This
Speaker 1: is a great story. Okay, So a man named Emil
Speaker 1: Grub was simultaneously the owner of a light bulb company
Speaker 1: and a med student, Like you do, fuck you do.
Speaker 1: So he shut up to med school one day with
Speaker 1: his hands all bandaged up, and one of his professors
Speaker 1: was like, are you okay? What happened to you? And
Speaker 1: Grub explained, Oh, yeah, I've been working on X rays
Speaker 1: at this factory, just like you know, testing things out.
Speaker 1: And the professor, whose named John Gilman, was like, hmm,
Speaker 1: so X rays are damaging to normal tissue. I wonder
Speaker 1: if they would damage or destroy disease tissues as well
Speaker 1: like and then thus the field of radiation oncology began.
Speaker 1: WOW Team ninety six.
Speaker 2: It's like months after they were discovered.
Speaker 1: A month a month after Wow, after his professor made
Speaker 1: this remark, Grub decided to test it out on people
Speaker 1: with cancer. And again probably you know, there wasn't informed
Speaker 1: consent or consents at all. A lot of the people
Speaker 1: that he initially started with there was big resistance to
Speaker 1: allowing him to do this to people who were had
Speaker 1: cancer but maybe not terminal cancer. And so the earliest,
Speaker 1: the earliest people that he tested it on were people
Speaker 1: who had terminal cancer.
Speaker 2: Okay, and a lot of sense, it makes sense, and
Speaker 2: their pain did seem to be reduced, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them died anyway, simply because they were in such
Speaker 2: late stages of cancer.
Speaker 1: But Grub wasn't discouraged. Doctors would send him people with
Speaker 1: late stage cancer. Grub would continue to blast them with
Speaker 1: X rays. Most died, but some actually did seem to
Speaker 1: be improving, which is amazing. Like, this was eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: before this is before basically any effective medical interventions had
Speaker 1: been developed, before antibiotics even.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the time that radiation therapy began to be developed,
Speaker 1: the biology of cancer hadn't even been fully clarified. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. And obviously there was a trial and error
Speaker 1: process to find the right dose to kill cancer cells
Speaker 1: without killing the patient, doing a better job of targeting
Speaker 1: the affected area, and overall standardization of equipment. At first,
Speaker 1: radiation therapy was used primarily on tumors close to the
Speaker 1: skin surface, which is where it seemed to have the
Speaker 1: best effect, because that way you're not trying to penetrate
Speaker 1: too deeply into the body, and tumors deeper in the
Speaker 1: body didn't seem to decrease as much as well. So
Speaker 1: we know now why that might be. But Alexander Grambell
Speaker 1: said he said he thought it might be because the
Speaker 1: radiation had to travel through layers of healthy tissue. Cancer's
Speaker 1: tissue is more susceptible to radiation before it got to
Speaker 1: the tumor. And he then suggested that quote, there is
Speaker 1: no reason why a tiny fragment of radium sealed upon
Speaker 1: a fine glass ampule should not be inserted into the
Speaker 1: very heart of the cancer, thus acting directly on the
Speaker 1: disease material. We do that, We do that brachytherapy. That's
Speaker 1: like widely used today. Yeah, wow, how Cooln't that amazing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Anyway, so, in the early history of radiation therapy, X
Speaker 1: rays took a backseat to radium and rad on. The
Speaker 1: X rays produced from the X ray tube couldn't penetrate
Speaker 1: tissue very well, and their applications seemed limited. Okay, But
Speaker 1: then the physicists developed something called the linear accelerator or LINAC,
Speaker 1: I think that's how you say it, which could produce
Speaker 1: a higher energy X rays than those that came from
Speaker 1: these X ray tubes. And one of the first clinical
Speaker 1: trials to use the LINAC was for Hodgkin's disease, a
Speaker 1: type of cancer that is very localized in lymph nodes,
Speaker 1: often within the chest, and the people in the trial
Speaker 1: had well defined early stage Hodgkin's disease, which was crucial
Speaker 1: to the success rate of the treatment, since later stages
Speaker 1: could mean that the cancer had spread out of the
Speaker 1: target area. The trial was a huge success. Fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the people with Hodgkins had been cured, and that
Speaker 1: rate continued to increase.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's super cool. The development and successful application of the
Speaker 1: LINEK was also an important lesson in choosing the right
Speaker 1: therapy for a person, since cancer is not a catch
Speaker 1: all disease. It's not a one type of disease. It's
Speaker 1: super variable. Even when you're talking about the same type
Speaker 1: of cancer, you're gonna have different manifestations, different areas, and
Speaker 1: you can't. Not all treatments are created equal.
Speaker 2: That's why it's so hard to treat still today, still today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's also why now today, you know, we
Speaker 1: have some cancers that are treated with radiation, others with
Speaker 1: chemotherapy or maybe a combination or in different times or
Speaker 1: surgery yep, or all three or all three. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another big step forward in radiation therapy was when a
Speaker 1: researcher named William Bragg discovered that there was a big
Speaker 1: burst of energy released just before an alpha particle reaches
Speaker 1: the end of its track. This is now called the
Speaker 1: brag peak. Okay, what does that mean. It's important because
Speaker 1: you can use this brag peak to more precisely target
Speaker 1: a tumor and avoid the surrounding healthy tissue. And because
Speaker 1: of this super high specificity and efficiency in tumor killing,
Speaker 1: proton accelerators are apparently now being installed in clinics all over.
Speaker 1: How cool is that.
Speaker 2: That's very cool.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Okay, So that was
Speaker 1: a quick and dirty history. I didn't talk much about
Speaker 1: the whole body radiation that was performed on people without
Speaker 1: their consent, all in the name of oh this will
Speaker 1: help you. No, sure, Yeah, basically this is just read
Speaker 1: more books to learn more. But anyway, so intro, it's
Speaker 1: an intro. Yeah, this is a not even a primer.
Speaker 1: It's a very surface level.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean, it is true that we have come
Speaker 1: a very long way from the early days of rotkin
Speaker 1: playing around with crooks tubes and from injecting plutonium into
Speaker 1: people without their knowledge or consent. Radiation therapy is incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful and so much safer than it once was. But
Speaker 1: other things like three Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima
Speaker 1: aren't so far away. And I had been planning initially
Speaker 1: on talking about these meltdowns a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: realized I just couldn't do them justice. Don't worry, I'll
Speaker 1: recommend books. And I'm definitely not equipped either to go
Speaker 1: into the pros and cons of nuclear power plants. But
Speaker 1: I do want to say that the thing that I
Speaker 1: that one of the things that I've taken away from
Speaker 1: all this reading about radiation is that it seems to
Speaker 1: have unlimited potential, potential to do good and potential to
Speaker 1: do harm. And like some of the poisons that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in these episodes, so radiation is this Janice
Speaker 1: like thing, this just duality of nature. It's good and bad,
Speaker 1: dose dependent, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and I
Speaker 1: don't really know how the scales are currently tipped in
Speaker 1: terms of the good or bad. Probably bad, But I
Speaker 1: think we do need to fight very hard and to
Speaker 1: be very vigilant to make sure that the harm doesn't
Speaker 1: outweigh the good or won't outweigh.
Speaker 2: The good in the future.
Speaker 1: And I think the story of radiation also serves, like
Speaker 1: I said, before is this very important reminder to think
Speaker 1: about where our knowledge comes from and at what cost
Speaker 1: so we don't make these same mistakes again, because they're
Speaker 1: probably still being made right now. I mean, we're just
Speaker 1: not going to learn about it for thirty years.
Speaker 2: Right anyway, and then we'll be more horrified than ever.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm. Anyway, So he ever tell me some good
Speaker 1: stuff question mark about the use of radiation today?
Speaker 2: We might end on a note.
Speaker 4: Right after this break.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is going to be a
Speaker 2: happy or a sad note to end on, but it is.
Speaker 2: It's a note, and so this.
Speaker 5: Is so I've decided to end this episode is basically
Speaker 5: to just kind of talk about how we use radiation
Speaker 5: in medicine today, like where do we see it?
Speaker 2: How do we use it? Because I think, like you said,
Speaker 2: of course, understanding where this knowledge came from is so
Speaker 2: important and moving forward, understanding the risks and benefits I
Speaker 2: think is super important in terms of how we use
Speaker 2: radiation because it does sound scary, right, The word radiation
Speaker 2: sound scary? Yeah, So how scary is it?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: Where do we use radiation in medicine today? A few
Speaker 2: different things we use radiation for diagnostics. So is your
Speaker 2: arm broken or not? We use an X ray to
Speaker 2: see that. Do you have diverticulitis, We can use a
Speaker 2: CT scan to see that. So that's diagnosing. If you
Speaker 2: come in with a disease or an illness or a problem,
Speaker 2: we can use radiation to try and diagnose that problem.
Speaker 2: We use radiation for screening, which is a very interesting
Speaker 2: and potentially controversial area to use radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all about Like, yeah, okay, are you going to
Speaker 1: talk about that?
Speaker 2: We can talk about it, yeah, absolutely, okay, But so
Speaker 2: we use radiation in screening. That's like, for example, a mammogram. Okay,
Speaker 2: So a mammogram is a CT scan of your breasts,
Speaker 2: So we can use that to look at the tissue
Speaker 2: to see to screen, which means screening is essentially using
Speaker 2: these tools in healthy people with no evidence of disease.
Speaker 2: That's what a screening tool is, right to see if
Speaker 2: you have evidence for concerning for breast cancer. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: an example of radiation for screening. And then we also
Speaker 2: use radiation for therapy, right, we use radiation for therapy
Speaker 2: for cancers. I think those are kind of the three
Speaker 2: big areas that we use radiation in medicine today. So
Speaker 2: let's kind of talk about what are the risks of
Speaker 2: radiation overall, and then we can talk in a little
Speaker 2: more detail about those three areas. Cool, because the risks
Speaker 2: and benefits are, of course different in all those three scenarios,
Speaker 2: whether you're talking about diagnosing something where you come in
Speaker 2: with something wrong versus screening healthy people, versus treating a
Speaker 2: potentially fatal disease. Okay, So overall, the biggest long term
Speaker 2: risk of radiation exposure long term is cancer, which we've
Speaker 2: talked about. So what is that actual risk like per
Speaker 2: unit exposure? Luckily, doctor Jorkinson in his book told me this, Okay,
Speaker 2: if you calculate it per unit of ionizing radiation, the
Speaker 2: risk of cancer is point zero zero five percent per
Speaker 2: millisevert of whole body radiation. That's what your risk of
Speaker 2: cancer is per one millisvert exposure. Okay.
Speaker 1: And this is like a cumulative exposure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cumulative, absolutely, Okay, Right, so let's put some
Speaker 2: more concrete numbers on that because that's too tiny to
Speaker 2: talk about. Okay. A whole body spiral CT scan CET
Speaker 2: stands for computed tomography, I think, but it's basically X
Speaker 2: rays that they go in a circle around your whole
Speaker 2: body and take tiny like pictures of tiny layers of
Speaker 2: your whole body. So it's a relatively large dose of
Speaker 2: X rays compared to like an extra of your arm.
Speaker 2: A whole body spiral CT would expose you to twenty
Speaker 2: milliseverts of ionizing radiation. Okay, So that would be a
Speaker 2: point one percent increased lifetime risk of cancer one in
Speaker 2: a thousand. So are a thousand people that get a
Speaker 2: spiral CT scan, one of them is expected to develop
Speaker 2: cancer as a result of that spiral CT gotcha? Okay.
Speaker 1: And so two questions okay, One, how does age play
Speaker 1: a role in this in terms of making decisions?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: And number two, what about background radiation like what we
Speaker 1: experience on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: Okay, listen, Aaron, your questions are great, but they're totally
Speaker 2: getting ahead of the point.
Speaker 1: Okay, Sorry, I'm too excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there, those are the exact questions that you
Speaker 2: should be asking when you think about radiation, right, Because
Speaker 2: we can't look at exposure to a CT scan in
Speaker 2: a vacuum, because medicine is not the only place that
Speaker 2: you're exposed to radiation, right, We're exposed to it every day,
Speaker 2: and you also have a baseline risk of cancer, whether
Speaker 2: from environmental radiation or from genetic predisposition, or from other
Speaker 2: ex exposures. Everyone has an overall risk of cancer, right.
Speaker 2: Exposure to CT scans is not the only thing that
Speaker 2: causes risk of cancer. Okay, So we can't look at
Speaker 2: it in a vacuum. So let's talk about kind of
Speaker 2: what the overall lifetime risks of cancer are to get
Speaker 2: an understanding on how this CT scan increases that risk. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: It turns out that in the US, this is from
Speaker 2: Cancer dot Gov, the lifetime risk of developing a cancer
Speaker 2: is overall about forty percent, which is pretty high. About
Speaker 2: half of all males and one in three females will
Speaker 2: develop some type of cancer in their lifetimes.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And that's not including, by the way, Basil and squaymessell carcinoma,
Speaker 2: which is like the skin cancers that aren't invasive or
Speaker 2: aren't havent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, holy cow.
Speaker 2: And the risk of dying from cancer overall in the
Speaker 2: U is about twenty percent. Okay, it's really high.
Speaker 1: So I just keep saying wow, like Owen Wilson, Wow, sorry,
Speaker 1: but like.
Speaker 2: Why Yeah, it's really high.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So if if your overall average risk is forty percent
Speaker 2: and you increase that by getting a spiral CT to
Speaker 2: forty point one percent, is that significant?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: What is the threshold at which we declare something too
Speaker 1: high of a risk?
Speaker 2: Exactly? And the thing is that point one percent is
Speaker 2: significant to that one person who develops cancer from that
Speaker 2: spiral CT scan.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: But then there's nine hundred and ninety nine others who
Speaker 2: forty percent of them are going to still get cancer
Speaker 2: from some other source. And maybe even that person who
Speaker 2: might have developed cancer from a spiral CT got cancer
Speaker 2: from something else inste Okay. So so yeah, and this
Speaker 2: is something that makes it really difficult, or maybe at
Speaker 2: least really complicated to quantify the risks and benefits, especially
Speaker 2: when you think about the three different areas that we
Speaker 2: use radiation screening versus diagnosis versus treatment.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh huh, And so oh, the threshold is different.
Speaker 1: If it's for treatment, you're gonna want to it's like
Speaker 1: push the start button on radiation earlier, exactly necessarily for screening.
Speaker 2: Because the benefit is a lot greater for treatment of
Speaker 2: a potentially fatal cancer. So yes, there might be a
Speaker 2: risk of you going on to develop a secondary cancer.
Speaker 2: But the benefit is you're going to kill that breast
Speaker 2: cancer that you already have that's going to kill you
Speaker 2: in the next five years, right right.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of how antibiotics are easier to test
Speaker 1: than vaccines.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, exact.
Speaker 1: Therapeutic versus preventative, therapeutic versus preventative.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is even that number forty percent, okay,
Speaker 2: forty percent lifetime risk of developing a cancer in the US,
Speaker 2: that's an average. For some people that risk is going
Speaker 2: to be a lot higher and for others it's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot lower. And this will depend not
Speaker 2: only on like you mentioned aarin, your age, but also
Speaker 2: your genetics, the area that you live, like how much
Speaker 2: maybe your occupational exposures. For example, if you have a BCRA,
Speaker 2: a braca mutation that's the breast cancer mutation, your lifetime
Speaker 2: risk of breast cancer or ovarian cancer might be over
Speaker 2: eighty percent, which is really high. If you have a
Speaker 2: mutation in a gene called APC that leads to a
Speaker 2: disorder called familial adenomitous polyposis, your risk of colon cancer
Speaker 2: is one hundred percent. Like everyone with that genetic mutation
Speaker 2: is going to get colon cancer and has to have
Speaker 2: their whole colon remove prophylactically so they don't die, so
Speaker 2: versus someone else who, maybe for one reason or another,
Speaker 2: might have a very low lifetime risk of a certain
Speaker 2: type of cancer. Okay, and okay, it gets even better.
Speaker 2: This is fun. The other thing is that overall in medicine,
Speaker 2: our use of radiation has been increasing, while the dosages
Speaker 2: that you're exposed to in a single X ray or
Speaker 2: a single CT scan are vastly lower now than they
Speaker 2: were when we first discovered X rays, for example, like
Speaker 2: per unit. They're really really small doses. Overall, we're using
Speaker 2: them more and more often, but we're not using them equally.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Oh yeah, oh gosh.
Speaker 2: Uh So it makes that again even more difficult to
Speaker 2: overall balance the risks and benefits. So when you're thinking
Speaker 2: about do I need this test that involves radiation, you
Speaker 2: have to think about how much radiation have you been
Speaker 2: exposed to in the past, or has if you are
Speaker 2: the one ordering the test, how much radiation has this
Speaker 2: person been exposed to in the past, How often have
Speaker 2: they gotten these types of scans? What types of scans
Speaker 2: are they getting and how much radiation is it exposing
Speaker 2: them to because an X ray of your broken wrist
Speaker 2: is a lot less radiation than a CT scan of
Speaker 2: your head and neck or your abdomen and pelvis, right,
Speaker 2: And what are we using it for? Are we trying
Speaker 2: to diagnose a broken rist that we really need to treat,
Speaker 2: or are we trying to screen for breast cancer that
Speaker 2: this person maybe has a very low lifetime risk of overall,
Speaker 2: or are we trying to screen for a breast cancer
Speaker 2: in someone who has a genetic mutation that makes them
Speaker 2: very susceptible to breast cancer.
Speaker 1: Right, It's a very individual question. You have to consider
Speaker 1: the context very individual.
Speaker 2: So breast cancer is a really interesting example because there
Speaker 2: is no consensus guidelines on how often, depending on who's
Speaker 2: website you look at, whether it's like the like the
Speaker 2: Cancer Society versus the Breast Surgeons Society versus the United
Speaker 2: States Preventative Health Task Force, they have different guidelines on
Speaker 2: who needs to be getting mammograms and how often and
Speaker 2: how old to start them. M hmm, right, Because it's difficult,
Speaker 2: it's kind of it's a very individualized decision. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, that's kind of that's all
Speaker 2: I have to talk about in terms of how we
Speaker 2: use radiation today. But I think it's really it's really interesting,
Speaker 2: and I do think the most important thing to keep
Speaker 2: in mind is thinking about the risks and benefits depending
Speaker 2: on the scenario in which you're using radiation.
Speaker 1: Totally. Nah, it's it's yeah, super context dependent. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, Well, should we cite our sources for
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess there's gonna be a long list of them.
Speaker 1: Mine's like all books this time, there's no I didn't
Speaker 1: even have time for the article and documentaries. But okay,
Speaker 1: So first, Strange Glow, The Story of Radiation by doctor Jorgenson.
Speaker 1: It was awesome, like, such a good book, super interesting.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, I didn't talk about Chernobyl
Speaker 1: at all or Fukushima, but I did read a couple
Speaker 1: of books about Chernobyl. So the first is called Midnight
Speaker 1: in Chernobyl, The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear
Speaker 1: Disaster by Adam Higginbotham. Such a good book, really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And this also is what the show Chernobyl, which is
Speaker 1: excellent took a great deal from And then the other
Speaker 1: thing that I really want to mention about Chernobyl is
Speaker 1: a book called Voices from Chernobyl, which is an oral
Speaker 1: history of the disaster by Svetlana Alexevich. And then The
Speaker 1: Radium Girls, of Course by Kate Moore, great book about
Speaker 1: that struggle and the occupational exposure to radium containing fluorescent paint.
Speaker 1: And then Robert Yunk Right than a Thousand Sons, a
Speaker 1: personal history of the atomic scientists. I read that a
Speaker 1: long time ago in college, but it was really interesting
Speaker 1: about the Manhattan Project, the Plutonium Files, which is what
Speaker 1: I talked about, the America's secret medical experiments in the
Speaker 1: Cold War. So good that is by Eileen Wilson. And
Speaker 1: then also Harriet Washington's Medical Apartheid has a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about this as well. And then finally I'll recommend
Speaker 1: a documentary called Radio Bikini and a documentary called Atomic Cafe.
Speaker 1: Watch those they're both on YouTube. Read those books. There's more,
Speaker 1: definitely more than what I was able to tell.
Speaker 2: Strange also has a ton of information both on the
Speaker 2: current uses of radiation in a medical context and the
Speaker 2: biology of radiation. But there's a couple of other good
Speaker 2: articles that we will link to on our website, where
Speaker 2: you can find all of our sources from this episode
Speaker 2: and every single one of our episodes, so yeah, definitely
Speaker 2: check those out. And we also have a bookshop dot
Speaker 2: org affiliate link program if you'd like to purchase any
Speaker 2: of the books that we recommend. We get a small
Speaker 2: commission from that, and you can check out our good
Speaker 2: Reads list, which just has recommendations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you again so much to doctor Jorgensen. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us
Speaker 1: and explain radiation yep.
Speaker 2: And thank you also to Bloodmobile, who provides the music
Speaker 2: for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 1: And thank you to our listeners. We love you, we
Speaker 1: appreciate you. We hope that you enjoy this episode all right. Well,
Speaker 1: until next time, wash your hands.
Speaker 2: You filthy animals.
Speaker 3: M