3. What happens when someone is exposed to ionizing radiation? That depends on how long you are exposed.
4. How does radiation released from nuclear plants compare with a nuclear bomb? A nuclear explosion produces two types of radiation that have lethal effects.
5. What makes cesium-137 and iodine-131 dangerous? Iodine-131 is absorbed preferentially in the thyroid gland, where it can cause tumors.
6. Iodine-131 is absorbed preferentially in the thyroid gland, where it can cause tumors. It has a half-life of eight days and is most dangerous to children because it damages rapidly dividing cells. The problem can be substantially ameliorated by taking tablets of ordinary iodine, which bind to the thyroid and prevent the radioactive iodine from binding.
7. How much exposure is enough to make someone sick? The biological risk of exposure to radiation is measured in sieverts.
8. In terms of long-term effects, experts estimate that if 10,000 people were each exposed to 10,000 microsieverts of ionizing radiation in small doses over a lifetime, about five or six more people in the group would die of cancer than would be expected without the radiation exposure.
