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Radiation article from the BBC, and my comments

Here are some important news items in an article about the effects of nuclear radiation, which I find interesting.

How does radiation have an impact on health?

Radioactive materials decay spontaneously to produce ionising radiation, which has the capacity to cause significant damage to the body's internal chemistry, breaking the chemical bonds between the atoms and molecules that make up our tissues. Damage to the DNA of a cell is particularly important.

The body responds by trying to repair this damage, but at high doses it is too severe or widespread to make repair possible, leading to short-term acute health effects.

There is also a danger of mistakes in the natural DNA repair process, which can lead in the long-term to cancer.

Comment: These "mistakes" in the repair process are addressed by the antioxidants in our six-pack, because antioxidants are known to prevent ill effects from the radiation...

What are the most likely long-term health effects?

Cancer is the biggest long-term risk. Usually when the body's cells reach their "sell-by date" they commit suicide. Cancer results when cells lose this ability, and effectively become immortal, continuing to divide and divide in an uncontrolled fashion.

Comment: We are the Body of Christ. Health is the equivalent of "salvation." When God judged Adam and all mankind with mortality (death), He was judging each cell of the Body, limiting their time on earth until they die.

Thus, if we were to "become immortal" apart from salvation, we would be a cancer in the Body of Christ. That is why God would not allow us to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever while we were in the state of sin. If we could become immortal sinners, we would be a cancer in the Body.

Are children at greater risk?

Potentially yes. Because they are growing more rapidly, more cells are dividing, and so the potential for things to go wrong is greater.

Following the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the Ukraine in 1986, the World Health Organization recorded a dramatic increase inthyroid cancer among children in the vicinity.

This was because the radioactive materials released during the accident contained high levels of radioactive iodine, a material that accumulates in the thyroid.

Children continued to eat and drink heavily contaminated foodstuffs, such as milk.....

The radioactive form of iodine - iodine-131 - is easily absorbed by the thyroid, the gland which regulates growth and cell production.

This would raise the risk of thyroid cancer in those exposed as children.

To counter that risk, people - in particular children - can be given tablets containing a stable form of iodine which would prevent the body absorbing the radioactive version.

Radioactive iodine decays quite quickly and will disappear from the environment within weeks or months.

Comment: This is why we offer potassium iodate, which saturates the thyroid gland with "good" iodine so that it has no room to absorb the radioactive iodine-131 that not only gives people cancer but also destroys the thyroid gland.

Fortunately, radioactive iodine has a half-life of just 8 days, and so it breaks down to a "safe" level after about 45 days. So we only need to contend with this problem for about 6 weeks. On our site, we offer potassium iodate as a "cheap thyroid insurance" to be stored in a cabinet in the event of a nearby nuclear event that could affect one's thyroid.