July 12, 2016 • 47 mins
Fortunately, science has very few instances where humans have been exposed to acute radiation poisoning to study for clues to treating radiation sickness. They have found, though, that those few instances have been grave.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
So this is, as they say, stuff you should know.
Who's who? Is that? Me? Okay? Just me? Gotcha? No
(00:25):
one else calls it this. Everybody called it that. Um,
what do you call that? That's what they call it, right,
you know the one with the dudes, right, it was Rambalan, Right,
go on, tangents, Oh stuff, you should know. I have
a family member that even you know, not blood relative.
(00:48):
I'll just say that who A couple of years ago,
were like, you know you guys, you need to get
to the point. You can't even Sometimes it's like six
to ten minutes of stuff before you even start talking
about the thing. It's like a no, sir, glad you
enjoy it. This is not someone I see a lot.
(01:10):
I'm just trying to be vague. Would he know who who?
He probably didn't even remember saying this. It was at
a party or something. No, I'm just I'm banking on
that maybe if I see him again, he'll say, I
know what you were saying. I heard your message. I
know you were talking a thinly veiled message. Right. It
(01:31):
came on the heels of the neighbor's dog telling me
to do stuff I didn't want to do. Right, Here's
messages everywhere. That's what I'm trying to say. He's not
the son of Sam No, no, David Berkowitz. Right, Yeah,
we should do a show on him. We really should. Well,
you know what, we should do a show where we
(01:52):
talk about all the ones that we said we would
do a show on and just forgot. Just a list, Yeah,
the David Berkowitz number twenty eight to start some Andy
Kaufman esque thing, to see how much will people take
before they hate us. I wrote a really cool Rolling
Stone profile of him from like nineteen eighty one maybe
(02:15):
something like that, really really good um on Andy Kaufmann
Uh huh. Yeah, he's a really interesting cat. I know
he was basically just doing it all for himself. Yeah,
that's why he was in the comedy, just to amuse
himself nobody else. Yeah. So it takes a lot of colonists,
and I think he inspired a lot of people who
(02:36):
ended up bastardizing what he did too. I think a
lot of people that thought they followed in his footsteps,
brought a mean spirit like Bob Newhart to things, to
their to their work. Uh, like Gilbert Godfrey. No like
you know, um, like you know and stuff like that,
(02:56):
where you're where you're masquerading as someone to get a
eyes out of somebody, but the jokes really on that person. Yeah.
I mean, I like bored at two, But I don't
think any Kaufman. I think he always had a sweetness
about him. I see what you mean. I don't think
he's ever mean spirited and tried to make other people
look dumb. Yeah, yeah, that's my dumb opinion. I think
(03:19):
the joke wasn't between him and the audience on another person.
The joke was on the audience, and the joke was
to himself. Yeah, it was between him and himself. Whereas
with like um, Sasha Baron Cohen, you're laughing, everybody's laughing
at Ron Paul right, you know, well, like you know
(03:40):
you saw did you See a Man on the Moon?
The movie? I was in a long time. It was good.
And when he uh first did the wrestling thing with
his future wife and afterwards she was so mad and
he was like wasn't that great? Like, you were so terrific,
you were wonderful, And she's like, what what's going on?
He's like, that was such a great performance and she
was like, oh you were some jerk? Was that Courtney Love? Yeah?
(04:04):
What a bizarre casting, I know. So that's a radiation
sickness is intro. Man, Well, we had to mention something
light because this isn't no, this is this is rough stuff,
pretty heavy. The one good thing about radiation this is
a grab Star article, by the way, is that the
one good thing about it? Yeah, And the one good
(04:24):
thing about radiation sickness is it's surprisingly tough to get
most people who just go about their average day exposed
the sunlight or um you know, even microwave in their coffee, yes, yes,
or you know, tuning in their favorite radio program while
it's around still um or I'm talking on their cell phone.
(04:45):
That's another controversial one. Sure, you're not going to get
radiation sickness. And the reason why you may get cancer
from these things who knows. But the you're not gonna
get radiation sickness because that the energy, the radiation coming
from these things like your cell phone, from the sun,
from the microwave are of a low enough frequency and
(05:06):
a low enough energy that they don't have the potential
to ionize. Um, they create ionizing radiation, which is, oh, well,
that's where a that's where radiation knocks an electron off
of an atom that's creating an ion, and ions can
wreak serious havoc. Yeah, in a in a human body
(05:28):
in particular. Yeah, so you're not gonna in fact, even
the cancer that you might get one day due to
long term exposure to your cell phone, if that's even
a thing. Um, that's not called radiation sickness. If you
worked at a power plant that leaked and ended up
getting cancer, that's not even considered radiation sickness. Or if
(05:50):
you're an X ray technician and you get radiation poisoning
or cancer years later, it's still not radiation sickness. Radiation
sickness is where you are hit with such a huge
immediate dose of ionizing radiation that you die pretty quickly
from it, and you're going to also experience immediate symptoms,
(06:12):
or you become the incredible hulk right in the court
in the in the case of gamma rays, it was gamma,
wasn't it. I think so right, Yeah, he wouldn't have
turned into a monster. That's that's fictitious. He instead would
have um possibly lost consciousness, maybe had diarrhea, vomited. Uh.
(06:32):
He probably would have had blistered skin that would have
never fully healed and would have formed scars under the
skin called kelloid's scars that eventually you are outside of
the skin. Yeah, and and then it would have just
gotten even worse. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we. Well,
what people should know what they're getting into. So, radiation
(06:54):
sickness is an acute situation, and it's accumulative effect. Um,
after you get that acute dose of radiation poisoning, there's
another way to call it. Uh. And there are three
kinds of ionizing radiation? Or is this article that the grabster?
He had a couple of nice little clips in here?
(07:15):
Did you notice the Neil Young. It would have to
say dash Neil Young after it for me, and he
still wouldn't get it. Well. One of his his paragraphs
is entitled ionizing radiation and the damage Done. I think
he was playing on the needle and the damage done.
Maybe probably Neil Young song, he's a cool cat, grabs
(07:35):
the so um like, he says. It's comes in three flavors,
alpha particles, bata particles, and the gamma raise the aforementioned
gamma rays alpha particles. The good news is they're the
least dangerous uh for external exposure. And the other good
news is your T shirt. Well, you're not wearing a
(07:57):
T shirt. I'm wearing one underneath my undershirt. Well, then
you're doubly protected, your friend, because your clothing is even
um strong enough to stop an external alpha particle. Right,
they just bounce harmlessly off of your clothing, that's right,
and go want want Right, So you would think that
they're not dangerous at all. Not true, because you can
(08:19):
still inhale this stuff uh and ingest it in the
form of radon gas. And that's where things can get bad. Yeah.
When you ingest um a radioactive particle, an ionizing particle,
you um, it gets into your body, it gets transported around,
and as it does, it goes through and it's like, hey, Adam,
(08:39):
good to meet you. I'm gonna knock this electron off.
And now you're a free radical. If you're a water molecule,
and if you're gonna that's the way we say molecule
from now on, by the way, and you're gonna go
off and reak havoc on other stuff, right because when
this when the um, when the the radioactive particle interacts
with an atom and knocks the electron off, that's not
(09:01):
the only damage done. When that electron is released or
knocked off, energy in the form of what thirty three
electron volts thirty three evs are released, and that weakens
the chemical bonds holding the atom together. So it just
totally alters the structure of the atom. Right. Well, when
(09:22):
you're altering the structure of an atom, atoms make up molecules,
so you alter the structure of the molecule. When you're
talking about molecules, these things make up the basis of everything,
from the proteins that are expressed in your body that
carry out functions, to the cells that house these functions
their act as factories. And all of a sudden you
have all these weird alterations and like flawed and damaged
(09:46):
um processes in your body, and it leads to systemic
malfunction which leads to your at least severe illness, if
not death. And all of this has to do with
these little particles going through your body and bombar and
knocking electrons off of their atoms. Yeah, and we'll get
into the um specifics of how much is too much
(10:07):
in a bit. But to continue, the beta particles are
next up. They move very fastly with a lot of energy,
and can travel a few feet when they're admitted from
its source. The good news here is is that they
can be blocked out by solid objects. Not your clothing,
it's not solid enough, but like concrete or for Micah,
(10:31):
if you were fighting under your kitchen counter, probably I
like for Mica still it still has its you have
what do you have like marble or quartz or some No,
my my dining room table is would no, no, no,
your kitchen counter like if you got into a cabinet. Yeah,
you know, I don't know what my countertop is. I should.
(10:52):
I thought it was something, but then when I redid
my kitchen and went to cut it, it's black and stone, right,
that's sort of the brownish thing. Now, I don't think
it's a real stone. You went to cut it and
did it just like completely mangle your ACKs off? No,
because I got the right kind of blade. Um. I
did my research, but it was it was not what
(11:14):
I thought it was. And it's impossible to find this
stuff now. Yeah, so we're just kind of begin to
redo your countertops. Well at some point we have to.
Are you going to redo them? No? Okay, that's gonna say.
That's wow. That project right there. I tried to make
my own concrete countertop you know those? Yeah, yeah, and
you can do it yourself. I didn't know that. Yeah,
(11:35):
you build a frame and you pour the stuff and um,
but it was it turned out okay for a first try,
but not good enough. Yeah, you don't want okay for
the first try for your kitchen counters. Man, that stuff
is heavy. Yeah, it's concrete and breaks easily if you
drop it or if you just like are carving a turkey.
If it's if you have too long of a piece
and like you just have a person on each end
(11:57):
can snap in half. You know you need a short
person in the middle. Yeah, with a hard head. Uh. Anyway,
beta particles, Uh, like we said, where were we what
they can move through? Um? The problem with the beta
particles is they're tiny, eight thousand times smaller than the
alpha particle. Uh, and that means it can penetrate through
(12:19):
your clothing. Into your skin. Uh. This is the stuff
that if it enters the local food supply or the groundwater, uh,
and it gets in the body that way, you can
inhale it. Then you're in big trouble. Right, any time
this stuff gets into your body, you're in big trouble. Yeah,
and we should do you want to talk a real
quick here about the difference between a radiation and contamination.
(12:41):
Did you see that? Yeah, Well, let's finish gamma quickly
because I feel like gammas just sort of sitting out
there sad. Yeah, Gamma smash, gamma raise. They're the most dangerous,
very high energy, uh, and can travel through most anything,
which is why anything with gamma rays is gonna be
lined with like a few inches of lead or several
(13:02):
feet of concrete or both to block those gamma rays. Um.
And this is the stuff that gets in your bone,
marrow and your toast. Yeah. This stuff just goes right
through your body all the way through. And as it does,
it's it's just think of like these radioactive particles as
tiny bullets that are ricocheting around. Electron seeking bullets are
(13:25):
just going after your atoms with a vengeance. They're dying
hard with a vengeance. So contamination versus a radiation. Uh,
that's two ways that you can be dosed, and they're
both a little different. Yeah. So, so contamination is what
it sounds like. It's where you actually have uh, some
(13:46):
sort of radioactive material maybe like a liquid or a
powder or something on your body, on your clothing. In
your body is even worse. But you are, for all
intents and purposes, radioactive. You can transfer that radioactivity to
other people. You're contaminated. Like you said, it's still pinging
around in your body. Yeah, when it gets into your body,
it can be transported through your blood, through other processes
(14:10):
to transport processes in your body, and it's just reaking
havoc everywhere. Um. And it reeks the most havoc on
places where cells regenerate the fastest. Um, because the damage
is done and spread more quickly. Right. Um. But that's contamination.
You're radioactive. You can spread the radioactivity if you're contaminated.
(14:33):
A radiation is different. Yeah, that's when like when you
go to get your X chest X ray, you are
technically getting irradiation, uh, irradiated irradiated. Um. The difference is
you're not coming into actual contact uh. And when the
sources turn when they shut off that machine, it's over right,
(14:54):
You're you're no longer you're not radioactive, so you can't
make other people radioactive and you're you're not just sitting
there with radioactive particles in your body. It's done. It's done,
leaving in the past. That's right, is the motto of
a radiation Where are we still talking about it? So
they're they're different, right, um, And they're they're different ways
you can get contaminated. But I mean, if you stood
(15:14):
there in front of an X ray machine long enough,
you wouldn't be contaminated, but you could still have and
you could still develop a cute radiation poisoning um, because
the length of exposure would be long enough. Yeah, because
you're just standing there like a jackass in front of
an X ray machine turned on. It's a problem. Moved
to the side, and X rays are safe. But I
(15:37):
still get a little weirded out every time I go
in there and like they put the lead vest on
and then out of the run out of the room,
like they detonated a bomb. Yeah, I'm I was like,
oh wait a minute, um, especially like the mouth ones
in your teeth which have gotten. Obviously a lot of
you are supposed to UM, and I know you're in
a You're in a ticklish situation in that case. But
(16:00):
d Dennists like to take a lot of X rays
is because they can charge and get insurance very I'm
sure there are plenty of instances where you they do
need a new set of X rays or whatever, and
you do need to get them, but you should be
UM a lot more prone to calling your last dentist
if you're moving Dennis and saying I needs you to
(16:21):
transfer those X rays and they should do it for free,
willingly so you don't have to get another set, you know,
if you change dentists, you know within a single year,
you shouldn't have too many X rays. Now, cut down
on that whenever you can. I've always had the suspicion
that they give you the maximum allowable number of X
rays that they can build for. Yeah, I don't know
(16:43):
if I was just being cynical or if that's a
real thing. And I feel like Dennis says a profession
of really gotten into upselling in the last like decade,
really upselling. I'm not saying anything you had done was
up selling, but like there's a lot of like offers
and and there's a lot of marketing that goes on
(17:03):
during average dental visit. Now, yeah, from the dentist, there's
a special uh liquid that they have it maybe fluoride.
Now they think about it some you know the thing
that they say and now here's your thing, and they say,
rents with this for a minute and then you go
leave and it's like fifty dollars for this rinse treatment.
I'm like, you didn't even ask me if I wanted that.
(17:27):
So this last time I went, I have to go
four times a year now because I have short roots, um,
which is my worst nightmare to have to double the
amount of time at the dentist. Hate it. And that's
not including any of my stupid tooth stuff. This is
just for cleaning. Oh I see, Like I just have
to go in four times a year now for cleaning.
But do you have your own chair? I do? I
(17:48):
should I certainly bought one by this point, but um,
I went in this last time. I was like, all right,
I'm not gonna I'm gonna decline that rents. I was
so ready to fight with this lady, um, and she
didn't give it to me. I think they can sense that.
I really consense when you're paying attention. When's a good
time to upsell, when's it, when's again? You gotta know
when to hold them and no when to fold them.
(18:10):
Is the new motto for for dentistry. All right, well
we got on this because of X rays, and we're
going to take a break and stop venting our frustrations
and come back and talk a little bit more about
ionizing radiation. You know what, it really stinks the dentist
(18:48):
just kidding. Um. So Ed points out, if you're going
to talk about radiation poisoning, Um, what you're looking at
is a total dosage, and that includes different factors like
what it came from, like we talked about with the alpha,
beta or gamma rays, um, how much it was, how
(19:11):
long you were exposed, how much was absorbed. It's not
an exact science. It's taken as a total accumulative effect. Right.
But the the sivert which takes all those things into account,
is it's pretty close to exact science as far as
measuring human absorption of radiation, right, Um. And so based
(19:32):
on these calculations which I couldn't find anywhere, how you
calculate siverts specifically, but apparently there are people who know
how to do this right, and when you calculate siverts,
you're able to say, okay, well, just flying in an
airplane gets you x number of millisiverts or micro siverts
on a five hour airplane flight or something like that, right, um,
(19:55):
And we we've come to realize that just living on
planet Earth, we are exposed to background radiation on the
order of something like um I think three point six
millisieverts per year. Yeah, that's point zero zero three six siverts, right,
And that's that's fine, you can totally deal with that.
It's when you start getting closer and closer to a
(20:16):
full sivert because if you'll notice, think siver or radiation
exposure is measured in millisieverts and even microceiver it's a
million of a fever. Which we love those members, and
we should say, you know, if you're getting an X
ray at the dentist or something like that, you're getting
a low level of of UM exposure to potentially deadly radiation.
(20:38):
If if it were just if you were standing next
to what's producing the X rays outside of an X
ray machine and you're holding that you'd be a big
trouble the fact that you're not exposed to it like that.
You're exposed to doses that, as far as we understand
scientifically right now, the human can take and it's not
going to have any adverse effects. It's when you start
getting closer to a full sivert that you really run
(20:59):
the risk of acute radiation poisoning. Yeah, like point seven
five siverts will get you sick, um and weaken your
immune system. Three siverts. Uh, you need medical attention or
you will probably die. Um, but you will probably live
if you do have medical care. Um, if you get
a dose of tin siverts at once, you are dead.
(21:20):
Even if you do get medical care. That's like a
death sentence basically. Um. But you're not going to encounter
that at all. So you don't need to worry about
that unless you work in a lab or something and
there's an accident, yeah, which we'll talk about some of
those that have happened. But um, tin siverts is really
bad news. Yeah. Um, between ten, I'm sorry, between one
(21:44):
and ten, you got about a fifty chance of dying
within a month. And if it's uh, a less if
it's not just one big blast, and it's over time,
then it's your odds are a little bit better, totally different,
but it's a totally different, like prolonged exposure is different
than the kind of acute exposure that that creates radiation sickness. Right,
(22:07):
and Ed points out to the factors that are included
in the formulation of a Sivert radiation dose is they're
not absolute. It's not like, hey, buddy, here's ten doses
or here's ten siverts of radiation your toast. It would
be slightly I think that actually probably is absolute. But
let's say too, it's going to be different depending on
(22:28):
where you were exposed, what part of your body, how
old you are, what kind of immune health you have, um,
and a number of different factors, the type of particle
that you're exposed to. So it's different. But for the
most part, once you get higher and higher along the
Sivert scale, it does become kind of absolute as far
as human mortality is concerned. Uh, if you do get exposed,
(22:51):
you're going to get sick very very quickly. Um. I
mean sometimes it's like you immediately start vomiting or lose
conscious Yeah, your body is just so immediately poisoned. Um.
It's hardcore nausea, diarrhea, headache, fever. Um. Like you said,
you can be knocked unconscious. And I looked everywhere to
find out what happens that makes you lose consciousness, and
(23:14):
I have the impression that they don't really know. It
doesn't make sense. What what about radiotion makes you lose
consciousness unless it just completely alters the effects of your
or the the action of your neurons. I guess. Yeah,
see you get a little more inquisitive about that stuff.
I hear that, and I just think, you know, your
brain just overloads. Well, now I'm like, what happened? Why that?
(23:38):
Why that? Why that person just lose consciousness by being
exposed to an X ray machine? That's not good? What's
the science behind that? That's what I sound like in
my head? Um burns on the body. We talked about
external exposure, UM, bad scarring. Uh. There's something called a
(23:59):
latent period after that initial set of symptoms. Yeah, this
is just mean where you don't have symptoms, you get better. Yeah,
they you know, things gonna go away. But I don't
think anyone thinks are going to get better because they
know about the now, but I'll be the first few
people who die from radiation sytince. You're like, wow, this
is miraculous. And then yeah, so the the initial symptoms
(24:20):
are very obvious and very bad, and then there's that
latent period like you said, it was a lull and
then yeah, and apparently what's going on at that point
is the damage that has been done immediately. And I
mean like, when, for example, your DNA is altered, it
happens on the in in the billions trillions of a
(24:43):
second that that damage is done. If a free radical
is created, it still takes on the order of like
a second to to do this damage. So it's very quick,
but the effects of that damage take a little while
to appear. But when they when they do appear, it's like,
oh man, and you're you're having multi organ failure right
now because you were exposed to so much ionizing radiation,
(25:06):
your cells were so totally altered um and your DNA
was ultimately altered too, that your body is not functioning
properly and some parts of your body are definitely more
susceptible than others. Like I said, the ones where cells
replicate more frequently, like the lining of your gut. And
that's a big problem if your guts messed up, because
you're prone to infections, which is not good. You don't
(25:29):
want a gut infection. You had one of those. You
had staff a staff stomach confection. And I've never seen
a human being sicker than you were. And you had
to fly home. Do you remember you had to get
on a plane as that was hitting you. I felt
so bad. Dude's pretty bad. You were green, Yeah, green,
(25:51):
Your face was green like the whole You had a
gamma ray burst of radiation. I had a gamma ray
burst in my shorts. That's so growth. Uh, standing up,
sitting down, lying down, everywhere. Um. So, that latent period,
if it's it's shorter, the smaller the dose, wait shorter,
(26:16):
the larger the dose, the latent period. Yeah. And in fact,
if you get dose with more than ten, there is
no latent period at all. It's that it doesn't take
a break. So um, like you said, after that latent
period wears off is when it's really clear what's happened
inside your body. And one thing we haven't specifically talked
(26:38):
about yet is the is your bone marrow, which is
a very bad place to get radiation poisoning because it
basically what's you know, where you produce blood cells to
make your body better, and it basically shuts down your
immune system because there's so much damage and now you
can't even make yourself better or try to make yourself better. Yeah.
(27:01):
It either it either directly damages the cells and kills
them right, so therefore you're just not making as many cells.
You don't have as many white blood cells. And then
it also can damage the d n A in your
cells so that when they are when it is making
more white blood cells, is not making them correctly, so
there's malfunctioning white blood cell. So yeah, your immune systems
(27:23):
total anemic at that point. Yeah, well that's from the
red blood cells being affected as well. And then again
when your gut gets um assaulted, You've got a lot
of bacteria in your gut and it's beneficial so long
as it's in your gut. When it leaks into the
rest of your body, you can get blood infections from
that because the the stomach lining is not is not
(27:44):
protecting your stomach like it's supposed to any longer. It's
bad news, man, it is bad news, all right. Well,
let's take another break and UM. We'll talk about some
of these tragedies and accidents when we get back. So
(28:18):
Chuck UM. We know actually, fortunately very little about the
effects of ionizing radiation on the human body because there's
not that many people who have died from it. UM.
Basically everything we know it comes from industrial accidents like
Three Mile Island or Fukushima. UM. And then the nuclear
(28:42):
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, by the way,
any time that comes up, I feel it's it's totally
worth mentioning going to see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,
Like I think everybody in the world should have to
go to this. It's so well done, it's so asked
Lee some of the stuff that they're showing UM and
(29:03):
and it's it's basically here Ashima saying, this happened to us,
So we're going to take UM this terrible gift that
was bestowed on us and turned it into UM a
way to keep it from ever happening again. And that's
what they did with it. Carl Or in Japan make
a trip to hear is Human to check it out.
(29:24):
We'll talk about those then since we're there. I ran
across a cool article on a website called Today I
found Out, which is a neat site. You ever been there? Yeah,
it's pretty cool. This was called why can people live
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Now? But not chernobyl Um. So
here's a little background, and I think it it should
have its own podcast at some point for sure. Which
(29:45):
one the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, But here's here's
a short version. UM. On August the bomb Little Boy
was a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, hundred and
forty pounds of uranium. But these were detonated both of
more above each city. It's like two thousand feet above Hiroshima.
(30:09):
Only two pounds of the hundred and forty pounds underwent
nuclear fission um and then sixteen kilo tons of explosive force.
So because Hiroshima was on a plane, it caused a
lot of damage. UM estimated seventy thousand people were killed
on that day period seventy thousand, another seventy thousand injured,
(30:33):
and about seventy of the buildings gone UM for fat
Man which was a few days later on Nagasaki on
August nine, only two pounds. This was plutonium and only
two pounds of that underwent fission and that was about
sixteen feet in the air. But because it's a valley,
(30:54):
a lot of the city was protected. Still killed about
between forty five thousand and seventy thousand peep immediately. And
I get the feeling that a lot of that stuff
was just the blast impact for these were just so immense. Yeah,
so bring in Chernobyl because this article compares you know,
the conditions there at these places. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster,
(31:19):
nuclear disaster that had, uh the way they say been
this article was that the reactors had a built in
instability was the quote. Um. So basically, when the reaction
got hotter and hotter, the coolant would decrease and just
make everything less stable and they couldn't control it. So
they did some went to do some test one day
(31:40):
on ap uh to see how long these turbines would
run after the reactor was down. So in order to
do this, they had to turn off all these safety
controls and remove you know, I think we talked about
the control rods and um, how a nuclear meltown works, Yeah,
how nuclear mount work. So these control rods absorbed the
(32:02):
neutrons and limit the reaction. They had to remove cheese.
How many, only all but six of the two five
control rods for this test, and they shut down the
safety system, so it was just ready for disaster. Basically,
why were they doing that just for fun? No, they
were trying to see how long these turbines would run
(32:22):
once everything was shut down. But in order to do that,
you had to do all these other things. That's like
figuring out how much weight a bridge can take by
driving increasingly heavy trucks across the until it collapses. Yeah,
and systematically waking as you do it. That's insane. Yeah,
it was not a good idea. And they said it
all came down to like the hubrists of the people
who designed it, and we're working there. It was totally preventable.
(32:45):
So uh, a lot of these graphite rods they tried
to put them back in there, and they fractured because
there was a design flaw in them, and there was
an explosion. Uh, it basically just blew it up. UM
seven to ten tons of nucle your fuel were released
that day. Only eight people died immediately, and over ninety
thousand square miles of land were contaminated. How many people
(33:09):
died immediately? Eight that were just like in the area. Uh.
And of course you can't get accurate numbers on fallout
since then because they're not really sharing that information. But
by two thousand five, there were seven thousand cases of
thyroid cancer uh in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia alone,
So obviously it had an effect. But um, nowadays people
(33:32):
can live in Japan in those two places, and they
say that the levels of background radiation are basically like
anywhere else in the world. But Chernobyl is still they
have a zone where like you can't live there at
all anymore. So the difference is basically, Uh, the amount
of fuel only two pounds, like I said, of each
of those bombs, um, only two pounds underwent fission and
(33:55):
a hundred there was a hundred and eighty tons of
nuclear fuel. Really Chernobyl. That's crazy that there's any of
Chernobyl even left. Yeah, they just blow up the whole town. Well,
and they're studying um. Well, I think the explosion wasn't
anything like Nagasaki Hiroschma. It was just but they're studying
(34:18):
that area now because it's a big you know, like
you said, you don't have this opportunity to see what
it means for the ecology of that area and the ecosystem,
and like they found some things have like adapted and
are thriving, and lately they've been reports that they're like
animals they're living there. Yeah, like normal animals that aren't
you know, three eyed bears and stuff like that. And
(34:40):
the other difference was that, um, it was on the
ground and these other you know, the bombs are detonated
two thousand feet in the air, so while it's airborne,
it just has a bigger impact obviously if it's like
literally ground level. So that's sort of the deal on
why you can not live in Chernobyl anytime soon. Yeah. Finally,
(35:00):
in tumbing the reactor, that's it's just yeah, I mean
they tried before, but they did a pretty terrible job
of it and it was already leaking and cracking. So
now they're building I think other countries are helping them
with it. They're building like this huge tomb to go
around it, so nobody can enter for I think at
least a century. Jeez. Yeah. Well there have been some
(35:23):
scientists too though that had minor well not minor for them,
but minor accidents and labs that were exposed heavily, like
the stuff that that created there that led to their
deaths were just so small. With anything else, you would
probably even barely noticed that you'd messed up. But these
guys died because of it. Yeah, two dudes notably working
(35:45):
on the same core plutonium core, not at the same time,
like a year apart, and it came to be called
the Demon core for that reason because it killed two people. Yeah.
One guy was a physicist named Harry kay dag Lean Jr.
He got a five point one severt exposure uh and
died days later. Who's the other guy, Lewis Slawton Slaughton.
(36:11):
Um he was. He was basically messing with the core
with the screwdriver from what I read, and um, just
the screwdriver just barely slipped just a little bit, and
I guess came and allowed the cover to come in
contact with the core and the core went subcritical for
(36:31):
half a second. He luckily was like able to like
throw the core off, so it didn't really lead to
an even bigger problem that killed bore people, but it
led to his death. And um, he got a twenty
one severt dose. We've been saying ten is almost, you know,
instantly fatal. He lost consciousness and threw up immediately, and
he died I think nine days later. I can't believe
(36:53):
it took that long, you know, but the air turned
blue around him. Yeah, and there was like a visible
wave of heat. Yeah, and he was Immediately after his death,
I think he was kind of praised for containing the accident,
but then later on, even after that, they were like, yeah,
but he did something wrong that led to it to
begin with. Oh yeah, yeah, so it was kind of
(37:15):
a you did a good job, but you shouldn't have
done it. Well, what said? It also killed somebody else. Um,
a guard who was in the room died years later
from cancer. That they're like, that was definitely from exposure. Yeah,
don't surprise me. So what happens if you, I mean,
how can they treat this stuff? Surprisingly, they can't treat it.
Like if you think about radioactive particles entering your body,
(37:36):
you just think it'd be like, well, here's some morphine.
I hope you had a nice life. But there's actually
stuff they can do to treat it. Um. And one
of the first things they do if you're contaminated. Is
they wash you off. It seems like a good step
one because you didn't get some of that stuff off.
But if it's in your body, they have to give
you drugs that are known to actually bind to radioactive
(37:57):
materials and then flush out of your system. Yeah, like
Prussian blue dye. It's actually good for um, caesium and
thallium poisoning UM. It's like it's a blue dye that
goes in and it binds to the stuff and um
holds it so it's no longer going through your body
making havoc. Since you're coming with me. Then you poop
(38:18):
it out. There's another one. You're gonna try this one, Oh,
dia thy leen, try a mind penatic acid band or
d t p A been to acetic acid. That was
the easier part. Yeah, let's call it that. So that
(38:38):
one's good for plutonium among other things. And they inject
you with that and it does basically the same thing.
It seeks out those radioactive particles, binds to them, and
then you pee it out. So it I mean, it
is possible to treat people who have been contaminated with
radioactive stuff. I just want to point out every time
Josh said, binds to him. You hug your stomach. What
(38:59):
is that all? I don't know. I hadn't really noticed.
I hadn't done that, but it's both times. Uh. What
else can they do? They can prevent infection. Uh. If
your immune systems compromise because of the bone marrow, you
could have a bone I'm sorry, blood transfusion. If you
only have a little bit of bone marrow damage, um,
that could help you out. But if it is too severe,
(39:22):
you would have to have a complete bone marrow transplant.
And then and even then you're not guaranteed to be Okay,
you're in pretty bad shape if that's going on. Um.
Did you read about this Goyana, Brazil accident? I did.
It is nuts, It's crazy. So back in there were
I guess some people who were just wandering around an
(39:44):
abandoned hospital in Guyana, Brazil. Yes to two dudes, Uh,
scrap salesman, like scavenger salesman. Okay. So they found I
guess maybe an X ray machine or something like that,
and cracked it open and there was a cake of
glowing blue caesi um inside and they said, well, this
looks pretty let's take it with us and they did,
(40:05):
and they sold it to people, including some children who
rubbed it on their skin so that they would glow
in the dark. Yeah, and a lot of these people
died very shortly afterwards. Yeah, they took I mean, it
wasn't just the raw stuff. They took the machine in
a wheelbarrow and then spent the next few days like
trying to take this machine apart to get to this
(40:25):
glow because they, I mean, they thought it was like supernatural.
They didn't know what it was. Um, these dudes started
vomiting and stuff. Of course, went to the doctor and
they're like, it's food poisoning. Um, here's a here's a coke,
go home, clam. Uh. So one of the guys finally
freed some of this glowing blue goo. He thought it
(40:47):
was gunpowder and tried to light it on fire. It
didn't light. It's not flammable. Uh. And then he sold
it to a scrap yard, like you said, for bucks. Um.
And this guy, the owner of the scrap rd I
think was his uncle, was like, man, everyone come and
see this, and he invited like for three days, like
family and guests could all come over and look at
(41:08):
They called the carnival glitter and like you said this,
I mean it's really sad. But this guy's daughter was
like rubbing it on her skin and her bed sheets,
and uh, they were just enamored with this stuff. So again,
a lot of people died from this. Um well, four
people died for still, it's a lot, you know, four
people died, but they two people had significant levels of
(41:31):
material in their body. And hundred and twelve thousand people
were examined and they demolished several square city blocks, just
gone like this is contaminated, we have to get rid
of it. They just leveled parts of that city. Yeah,
it was crazy, all because some guys like broke into
an X ray machine because somebody just left it in
(41:53):
an abandoned hospital. Yeah. I think there were guards, but
the guard was off duty or something. There still shouldn't
be like X ray machines in a hospital. Yeah, that
was I think. I think they ended up there being
lotsuits and I would hope so, man, So that's it, right,
I got nothing else I don't either. That's a radiation sickness.
(42:15):
We hope that this save you or someone you love
if you're ever going through an abandoned hospital and you
come across an extray machine. Don't crack it open, just
observe it from afar. Well, we always talk about exploring
abandoned structures and it's super dangerous. Oh yeah, they're all
fraught with dangers. They definitely are, and probably when you
wouldn't think about something like this, you know, have I
(42:39):
ever talked about Grossingers? I don't think so. Man, there's
this one side about Grossingers. It's just it's a it's
a cat skills resort that was abandoned in the eighties.
It's just now it's almost completely reclaimed by the forest.
But about five ten years ago somebody went and documented it.
(42:59):
I like peak decay where the structures are still there
because it's totally coming in so fascinating. I don't know,
but it's there. There's I can't remember what the name
of the site is, but it's grossing Jersey. And this
guy went many many years, like over many times over
the years and documented it. And I think his dad
was the caretaker there as the place was shutting down,
(43:20):
so he knew the place really well. And he has
like old photos from while it was still in use
to compare and contrast. It's just amazing. Yeah, I thought
you were gonna say it was completely overtaken now by
forest fairies, and that's what I meant. And the Hulk.
Have you ever seen Hulk Hodgeman? It's a Twitter account
(43:40):
where it's like stuff Hodgeman says that. I would say, yeah,
but as the Hulk. I mean, I've heard the Hulk
for other things, but not there's one for I'm not
sure how he feels about it. Sounds you gotta check
it out. Well, mind is swirling? Alright? Uh did you
say listener mail? Oh no, If you want to know
(44:01):
more about radiation sickness, you can type those words in
the search bar. How stuff works. And since I said
search parts, time for listening. Now, I'm gonna call this
something I've never really thought about before. Hey, guys, my
loyal listener from the very beginning, I've listened to every
podcast and watched all of your TV shows episodes, um,
(44:25):
and most, if not all, of your Internet roundups. How
about that this person is Yeah, yeah, I'm writing about
a very serious topic and one that is dear to
my heart. Uh. The high rate of physician and medical
students suicide. Uh. This one of the highest stress careers
in terms of training, debt, work schedule and trying not
to take on the stress of every one of your
(44:45):
patients that you see. You are not allowed. I'm sorry.
We she's speaking first person. We are not allowed to
have any mental health weaknesses where we risk being labeled
a liability by medical board, employers, are peers, and even
our own patients. Um, I really thought about that. You
know you can't like stoic doctors. Whateverybody wants our school
(45:06):
I see, I want a wacky doctor Adams. Yeah, like
a whoopie cushion or joy buzzer. Every now and then
our schooling and training or grueling, it can be emotional
roller coaster. We're sleep deprived, made to feel inadequate on
a daily basis, and often humiliated and belittled in front
of our peers. She said it was tougher than eleven
years in the army. We're supposed to convince our patients
(45:28):
to seek help when they need it, but we are
certain to harm our own careers if we personally reach
out for help. So she said that in recent years
she had a hit close to home. Classmate committed suicide
before graduating, and his parents have spoken out UH and
have gotten together with a filmmaker to create a documentary
(45:49):
called Do No Harm UH exposing the silent epidemic. So
they have a lot of support. Um, you can go
to their Facebook page UH Facebook dot com slash do
No Harm the film, and um they have a Kickstarter
that you can look up if you just google kickstarter
do No Harm documentary there really close. That's just a
couple of thousand away from their benching funds. So I
(46:11):
think they are going to maybe even by this time
it will be done. But if anyone out there felt
like phone a few dollars their away, they'll be great.
So that's from Brooklyn Bertel's, a fourth year medical student.
Thanks a lot, Brooklyn, It's really that was a great email.
It took a really a turn at the at the beginning, right, Yeah,
So thanks for that. Um. And if you guys want,
(46:34):
you can go help that kickstarter out. If you want
to hang out with us, you can hang out with
us on Twitter at s y s K podcast in
the same for Instagram. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com and as always, joined us at at Home
on the Web Stuff you Should know dot com. For
(46:58):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff Works dot com. MHM
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
So this is, as they say, stuff you should know.
Who's who? Is that? Me? Okay? Just me? Gotcha? No
(00:25):
one else calls it this. Everybody called it that. Um,
what do you call that? That's what they call it, right,
you know the one with the dudes, right, it was Rambalan, Right,
go on, tangents, Oh stuff, you should know. I have
a family member that even you know, not blood relative.
(00:48):
I'll just say that who A couple of years ago,
were like, you know you guys, you need to get
to the point. You can't even Sometimes it's like six
to ten minutes of stuff before you even start talking
about the thing. It's like a no, sir, glad you
enjoy it. This is not someone I see a lot.
(01:10):
I'm just trying to be vague. Would he know who who?
He probably didn't even remember saying this. It was at
a party or something. No, I'm just I'm banking on
that maybe if I see him again, he'll say, I
know what you were saying. I heard your message. I
know you were talking a thinly veiled message. Right. It
(01:31):
came on the heels of the neighbor's dog telling me
to do stuff I didn't want to do. Right, Here's
messages everywhere. That's what I'm trying to say. He's not
the son of Sam No, no, David Berkowitz. Right, Yeah,
we should do a show on him. We really should. Well,
you know what, we should do a show where we
(01:52):
talk about all the ones that we said we would
do a show on and just forgot. Just a list, Yeah,
the David Berkowitz number twenty eight to start some Andy
Kaufman esque thing, to see how much will people take
before they hate us. I wrote a really cool Rolling
Stone profile of him from like nineteen eighty one maybe
(02:15):
something like that, really really good um on Andy Kaufmann
Uh huh. Yeah, he's a really interesting cat. I know
he was basically just doing it all for himself. Yeah,
that's why he was in the comedy, just to amuse
himself nobody else. Yeah. So it takes a lot of colonists,
and I think he inspired a lot of people who
(02:36):
ended up bastardizing what he did too. I think a
lot of people that thought they followed in his footsteps,
brought a mean spirit like Bob Newhart to things, to
their to their work. Uh, like Gilbert Godfrey. No like
you know, um, like you know and stuff like that,
(02:56):
where you're where you're masquerading as someone to get a
eyes out of somebody, but the jokes really on that person. Yeah.
I mean, I like bored at two, But I don't
think any Kaufman. I think he always had a sweetness
about him. I see what you mean. I don't think
he's ever mean spirited and tried to make other people
look dumb. Yeah, yeah, that's my dumb opinion. I think
(03:19):
the joke wasn't between him and the audience on another person.
The joke was on the audience, and the joke was
to himself. Yeah, it was between him and himself. Whereas
with like um, Sasha Baron Cohen, you're laughing, everybody's laughing
at Ron Paul right, you know, well, like you know
(03:40):
you saw did you See a Man on the Moon?
The movie? I was in a long time. It was good.
And when he uh first did the wrestling thing with
his future wife and afterwards she was so mad and
he was like wasn't that great? Like, you were so terrific,
you were wonderful, And she's like, what what's going on?
He's like, that was such a great performance and she
was like, oh you were some jerk? Was that Courtney Love? Yeah?
(04:04):
What a bizarre casting, I know. So that's a radiation
sickness is intro. Man, Well, we had to mention something
light because this isn't no, this is this is rough stuff,
pretty heavy. The one good thing about radiation this is
a grab Star article, by the way, is that the
one good thing about it? Yeah, And the one good
(04:24):
thing about radiation sickness is it's surprisingly tough to get
most people who just go about their average day exposed
the sunlight or um you know, even microwave in their coffee, yes, yes,
or you know, tuning in their favorite radio program while
it's around still um or I'm talking on their cell phone.
(04:45):
That's another controversial one. Sure, you're not going to get
radiation sickness. And the reason why you may get cancer
from these things who knows. But the you're not gonna
get radiation sickness because that the energy, the radiation coming
from these things like your cell phone, from the sun,
from the microwave are of a low enough frequency and
(05:06):
a low enough energy that they don't have the potential
to ionize. Um, they create ionizing radiation, which is, oh, well,
that's where a that's where radiation knocks an electron off
of an atom that's creating an ion, and ions can
wreak serious havoc. Yeah, in a in a human body
(05:28):
in particular. Yeah, so you're not gonna in fact, even
the cancer that you might get one day due to
long term exposure to your cell phone, if that's even
a thing. Um, that's not called radiation sickness. If you
worked at a power plant that leaked and ended up
getting cancer, that's not even considered radiation sickness. Or if
(05:50):
you're an X ray technician and you get radiation poisoning
or cancer years later, it's still not radiation sickness. Radiation
sickness is where you are hit with such a huge
immediate dose of ionizing radiation that you die pretty quickly
from it, and you're going to also experience immediate symptoms,
(06:12):
or you become the incredible hulk right in the court
in the in the case of gamma rays, it was gamma,
wasn't it. I think so right, Yeah, he wouldn't have
turned into a monster. That's that's fictitious. He instead would
have um possibly lost consciousness, maybe had diarrhea, vomited. Uh.
(06:32):
He probably would have had blistered skin that would have
never fully healed and would have formed scars under the
skin called kelloid's scars that eventually you are outside of
the skin. Yeah, and and then it would have just
gotten even worse. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we. Well,
what people should know what they're getting into. So, radiation
(06:54):
sickness is an acute situation, and it's accumulative effect. Um,
after you get that acute dose of radiation poisoning, there's
another way to call it. Uh. And there are three
kinds of ionizing radiation? Or is this article that the grabster?
He had a couple of nice little clips in here?
(07:15):
Did you notice the Neil Young. It would have to
say dash Neil Young after it for me, and he
still wouldn't get it. Well. One of his his paragraphs
is entitled ionizing radiation and the damage Done. I think
he was playing on the needle and the damage done.
Maybe probably Neil Young song, he's a cool cat, grabs
(07:35):
the so um like, he says. It's comes in three flavors,
alpha particles, bata particles, and the gamma raise the aforementioned
gamma rays alpha particles. The good news is they're the
least dangerous uh for external exposure. And the other good
news is your T shirt. Well, you're not wearing a
(07:57):
T shirt. I'm wearing one underneath my undershirt. Well, then
you're doubly protected, your friend, because your clothing is even
um strong enough to stop an external alpha particle. Right,
they just bounce harmlessly off of your clothing, that's right,
and go want want Right, So you would think that
they're not dangerous at all. Not true, because you can
(08:19):
still inhale this stuff uh and ingest it in the
form of radon gas. And that's where things can get bad. Yeah.
When you ingest um a radioactive particle, an ionizing particle,
you um, it gets into your body, it gets transported around,
and as it does, it goes through and it's like, hey, Adam,
(08:39):
good to meet you. I'm gonna knock this electron off.
And now you're a free radical. If you're a water molecule,
and if you're gonna that's the way we say molecule
from now on, by the way, and you're gonna go
off and reak havoc on other stuff, right because when
this when the um, when the the radioactive particle interacts
with an atom and knocks the electron off, that's not
(09:01):
the only damage done. When that electron is released or
knocked off, energy in the form of what thirty three
electron volts thirty three evs are released, and that weakens
the chemical bonds holding the atom together. So it just
totally alters the structure of the atom. Right. Well, when
(09:22):
you're altering the structure of an atom, atoms make up molecules,
so you alter the structure of the molecule. When you're
talking about molecules, these things make up the basis of everything,
from the proteins that are expressed in your body that
carry out functions, to the cells that house these functions
their act as factories. And all of a sudden you
have all these weird alterations and like flawed and damaged
(09:46):
um processes in your body, and it leads to systemic
malfunction which leads to your at least severe illness, if
not death. And all of this has to do with
these little particles going through your body and bombar and
knocking electrons off of their atoms. Yeah, and we'll get
into the um specifics of how much is too much
(10:07):
in a bit. But to continue, the beta particles are
next up. They move very fastly with a lot of energy,
and can travel a few feet when they're admitted from
its source. The good news here is is that they
can be blocked out by solid objects. Not your clothing,
it's not solid enough, but like concrete or for Micah,
(10:31):
if you were fighting under your kitchen counter, probably I
like for Mica still it still has its you have
what do you have like marble or quartz or some No,
my my dining room table is would no, no, no,
your kitchen counter like if you got into a cabinet. Yeah,
you know, I don't know what my countertop is. I should.
(10:52):
I thought it was something, but then when I redid
my kitchen and went to cut it, it's black and stone, right,
that's sort of the brownish thing. Now, I don't think
it's a real stone. You went to cut it and
did it just like completely mangle your ACKs off? No,
because I got the right kind of blade. Um. I
did my research, but it was it was not what
(11:14):
I thought it was. And it's impossible to find this
stuff now. Yeah, so we're just kind of begin to
redo your countertops. Well at some point we have to.
Are you going to redo them? No? Okay, that's gonna say.
That's wow. That project right there. I tried to make
my own concrete countertop you know those? Yeah, yeah, and
you can do it yourself. I didn't know that. Yeah,
(11:35):
you build a frame and you pour the stuff and um,
but it was it turned out okay for a first try,
but not good enough. Yeah, you don't want okay for
the first try for your kitchen counters. Man, that stuff
is heavy. Yeah, it's concrete and breaks easily if you
drop it or if you just like are carving a turkey.
If it's if you have too long of a piece
and like you just have a person on each end
(11:57):
can snap in half. You know you need a short
person in the middle. Yeah, with a hard head. Uh. Anyway,
beta particles, Uh, like we said, where were we what
they can move through? Um? The problem with the beta
particles is they're tiny, eight thousand times smaller than the
alpha particle. Uh, and that means it can penetrate through
(12:19):
your clothing. Into your skin. Uh. This is the stuff
that if it enters the local food supply or the groundwater, uh,
and it gets in the body that way, you can
inhale it. Then you're in big trouble. Right, any time
this stuff gets into your body, you're in big trouble. Yeah,
and we should do you want to talk a real
quick here about the difference between a radiation and contamination.
(12:41):
Did you see that? Yeah, Well, let's finish gamma quickly
because I feel like gammas just sort of sitting out
there sad. Yeah, Gamma smash, gamma raise. They're the most dangerous,
very high energy, uh, and can travel through most anything,
which is why anything with gamma rays is gonna be
lined with like a few inches of lead or several
(13:02):
feet of concrete or both to block those gamma rays. Um.
And this is the stuff that gets in your bone,
marrow and your toast. Yeah. This stuff just goes right
through your body all the way through. And as it does,
it's it's just think of like these radioactive particles as
tiny bullets that are ricocheting around. Electron seeking bullets are
(13:25):
just going after your atoms with a vengeance. They're dying
hard with a vengeance. So contamination versus a radiation. Uh,
that's two ways that you can be dosed, and they're
both a little different. Yeah. So, so contamination is what
it sounds like. It's where you actually have uh, some
(13:46):
sort of radioactive material maybe like a liquid or a
powder or something on your body, on your clothing. In
your body is even worse. But you are, for all
intents and purposes, radioactive. You can transfer that radioactivity to
other people. You're contaminated. Like you said, it's still pinging
around in your body. Yeah, when it gets into your body,
it can be transported through your blood, through other processes
(14:10):
to transport processes in your body, and it's just reaking
havoc everywhere. Um. And it reeks the most havoc on
places where cells regenerate the fastest. Um, because the damage
is done and spread more quickly. Right. Um. But that's contamination.
You're radioactive. You can spread the radioactivity if you're contaminated.
(14:33):
A radiation is different. Yeah, that's when like when you
go to get your X chest X ray, you are
technically getting irradiation, uh, irradiated irradiated. Um. The difference is
you're not coming into actual contact uh. And when the
sources turn when they shut off that machine, it's over right,
(14:54):
You're you're no longer you're not radioactive, so you can't
make other people radioactive and you're you're not just sitting
there with radioactive particles in your body. It's done. It's done,
leaving in the past. That's right, is the motto of
a radiation Where are we still talking about it? So
they're they're different, right, um, And they're they're different ways
you can get contaminated. But I mean, if you stood
(15:14):
there in front of an X ray machine long enough,
you wouldn't be contaminated, but you could still have and
you could still develop a cute radiation poisoning um, because
the length of exposure would be long enough. Yeah, because
you're just standing there like a jackass in front of
an X ray machine turned on. It's a problem. Moved
to the side, and X rays are safe. But I
(15:37):
still get a little weirded out every time I go
in there and like they put the lead vest on
and then out of the run out of the room,
like they detonated a bomb. Yeah, I'm I was like,
oh wait a minute, um, especially like the mouth ones
in your teeth which have gotten. Obviously a lot of
you are supposed to UM, and I know you're in
a You're in a ticklish situation in that case. But
(16:00):
d Dennists like to take a lot of X rays
is because they can charge and get insurance very I'm
sure there are plenty of instances where you they do
need a new set of X rays or whatever, and
you do need to get them, but you should be
UM a lot more prone to calling your last dentist
if you're moving Dennis and saying I needs you to
(16:21):
transfer those X rays and they should do it for free,
willingly so you don't have to get another set, you know,
if you change dentists, you know within a single year,
you shouldn't have too many X rays. Now, cut down
on that whenever you can. I've always had the suspicion
that they give you the maximum allowable number of X
rays that they can build for. Yeah, I don't know
(16:43):
if I was just being cynical or if that's a
real thing. And I feel like Dennis says a profession
of really gotten into upselling in the last like decade,
really upselling. I'm not saying anything you had done was
up selling, but like there's a lot of like offers
and and there's a lot of marketing that goes on
(17:03):
during average dental visit. Now, yeah, from the dentist, there's
a special uh liquid that they have it maybe fluoride.
Now they think about it some you know the thing
that they say and now here's your thing, and they say,
rents with this for a minute and then you go
leave and it's like fifty dollars for this rinse treatment.
I'm like, you didn't even ask me if I wanted that.
(17:27):
So this last time I went, I have to go
four times a year now because I have short roots, um,
which is my worst nightmare to have to double the
amount of time at the dentist. Hate it. And that's
not including any of my stupid tooth stuff. This is
just for cleaning. Oh I see, Like I just have
to go in four times a year now for cleaning.
But do you have your own chair? I do? I
(17:48):
should I certainly bought one by this point, but um,
I went in this last time. I was like, all right,
I'm not gonna I'm gonna decline that rents. I was
so ready to fight with this lady, um, and she
didn't give it to me. I think they can sense that.
I really consense when you're paying attention. When's a good
time to upsell, when's it, when's again? You gotta know
when to hold them and no when to fold them.
(18:10):
Is the new motto for for dentistry. All right, well
we got on this because of X rays, and we're
going to take a break and stop venting our frustrations
and come back and talk a little bit more about
ionizing radiation. You know what, it really stinks the dentist
(18:48):
just kidding. Um. So Ed points out, if you're going
to talk about radiation poisoning, Um, what you're looking at
is a total dosage, and that includes different factors like
what it came from, like we talked about with the alpha,
beta or gamma rays, um, how much it was, how
(19:11):
long you were exposed, how much was absorbed. It's not
an exact science. It's taken as a total accumulative effect. Right.
But the the sivert which takes all those things into account,
is it's pretty close to exact science as far as
measuring human absorption of radiation, right, Um. And so based
(19:32):
on these calculations which I couldn't find anywhere, how you
calculate siverts specifically, but apparently there are people who know
how to do this right, and when you calculate siverts,
you're able to say, okay, well, just flying in an
airplane gets you x number of millisiverts or micro siverts
on a five hour airplane flight or something like that, right, um,
(19:55):
And we we've come to realize that just living on
planet Earth, we are exposed to background radiation on the
order of something like um I think three point six
millisieverts per year. Yeah, that's point zero zero three six siverts, right,
And that's that's fine, you can totally deal with that.
It's when you start getting closer and closer to a
(20:16):
full sivert because if you'll notice, think siver or radiation
exposure is measured in millisieverts and even microceiver it's a
million of a fever. Which we love those members, and
we should say, you know, if you're getting an X
ray at the dentist or something like that, you're getting
a low level of of UM exposure to potentially deadly radiation.
(20:38):
If if it were just if you were standing next
to what's producing the X rays outside of an X
ray machine and you're holding that you'd be a big
trouble the fact that you're not exposed to it like that.
You're exposed to doses that, as far as we understand
scientifically right now, the human can take and it's not
going to have any adverse effects. It's when you start
getting closer to a full sivert that you really run
(20:59):
the risk of acute radiation poisoning. Yeah, like point seven
five siverts will get you sick, um and weaken your
immune system. Three siverts. Uh, you need medical attention or
you will probably die. Um, but you will probably live
if you do have medical care. Um, if you get
a dose of tin siverts at once, you are dead.
(21:20):
Even if you do get medical care. That's like a
death sentence basically. Um. But you're not going to encounter
that at all. So you don't need to worry about
that unless you work in a lab or something and
there's an accident, yeah, which we'll talk about some of
those that have happened. But um, tin siverts is really
bad news. Yeah. Um, between ten, I'm sorry, between one
(21:44):
and ten, you got about a fifty chance of dying
within a month. And if it's uh, a less if
it's not just one big blast, and it's over time,
then it's your odds are a little bit better, totally different,
but it's a totally different, like prolonged exposure is different
than the kind of acute exposure that that creates radiation sickness. Right,
(22:07):
and Ed points out to the factors that are included
in the formulation of a Sivert radiation dose is they're
not absolute. It's not like, hey, buddy, here's ten doses
or here's ten siverts of radiation your toast. It would
be slightly I think that actually probably is absolute. But
let's say too, it's going to be different depending on
(22:28):
where you were exposed, what part of your body, how
old you are, what kind of immune health you have, um,
and a number of different factors, the type of particle
that you're exposed to. So it's different. But for the
most part, once you get higher and higher along the
Sivert scale, it does become kind of absolute as far
as human mortality is concerned. Uh, if you do get exposed,
(22:51):
you're going to get sick very very quickly. Um. I
mean sometimes it's like you immediately start vomiting or lose
conscious Yeah, your body is just so immediately poisoned. Um.
It's hardcore nausea, diarrhea, headache, fever. Um. Like you said,
you can be knocked unconscious. And I looked everywhere to
find out what happens that makes you lose consciousness, and
(23:14):
I have the impression that they don't really know. It
doesn't make sense. What what about radiotion makes you lose
consciousness unless it just completely alters the effects of your
or the the action of your neurons. I guess. Yeah,
see you get a little more inquisitive about that stuff.
I hear that, and I just think, you know, your
brain just overloads. Well, now I'm like, what happened? Why that?
(23:38):
Why that? Why that person just lose consciousness by being
exposed to an X ray machine? That's not good? What's
the science behind that? That's what I sound like in
my head? Um burns on the body. We talked about
external exposure, UM, bad scarring. Uh. There's something called a
(23:59):
latent period after that initial set of symptoms. Yeah, this
is just mean where you don't have symptoms, you get better. Yeah,
they you know, things gonna go away. But I don't
think anyone thinks are going to get better because they
know about the now, but I'll be the first few
people who die from radiation sytince. You're like, wow, this
is miraculous. And then yeah, so the the initial symptoms
(24:20):
are very obvious and very bad, and then there's that
latent period like you said, it was a lull and
then yeah, and apparently what's going on at that point
is the damage that has been done immediately. And I
mean like, when, for example, your DNA is altered, it
happens on the in in the billions trillions of a
(24:43):
second that that damage is done. If a free radical
is created, it still takes on the order of like
a second to to do this damage. So it's very quick,
but the effects of that damage take a little while
to appear. But when they when they do appear, it's like,
oh man, and you're you're having multi organ failure right
now because you were exposed to so much ionizing radiation,
(25:06):
your cells were so totally altered um and your DNA
was ultimately altered too, that your body is not functioning
properly and some parts of your body are definitely more
susceptible than others. Like I said, the ones where cells
replicate more frequently, like the lining of your gut. And
that's a big problem if your guts messed up, because
you're prone to infections, which is not good. You don't
(25:29):
want a gut infection. You had one of those. You
had staff a staff stomach confection. And I've never seen
a human being sicker than you were. And you had
to fly home. Do you remember you had to get
on a plane as that was hitting you. I felt
so bad. Dude's pretty bad. You were green, Yeah, green,
(25:51):
Your face was green like the whole You had a
gamma ray burst of radiation. I had a gamma ray
burst in my shorts. That's so growth. Uh, standing up,
sitting down, lying down, everywhere. Um. So, that latent period,
if it's it's shorter, the smaller the dose, wait shorter,
(26:16):
the larger the dose, the latent period. Yeah. And in fact,
if you get dose with more than ten, there is
no latent period at all. It's that it doesn't take
a break. So um, like you said, after that latent
period wears off is when it's really clear what's happened
inside your body. And one thing we haven't specifically talked
(26:38):
about yet is the is your bone marrow, which is
a very bad place to get radiation poisoning because it
basically what's you know, where you produce blood cells to
make your body better, and it basically shuts down your
immune system because there's so much damage and now you
can't even make yourself better or try to make yourself better. Yeah.
(27:01):
It either it either directly damages the cells and kills
them right, so therefore you're just not making as many cells.
You don't have as many white blood cells. And then
it also can damage the d n A in your
cells so that when they are when it is making
more white blood cells, is not making them correctly, so
there's malfunctioning white blood cell. So yeah, your immune systems
(27:23):
total anemic at that point. Yeah, well that's from the
red blood cells being affected as well. And then again
when your gut gets um assaulted, You've got a lot
of bacteria in your gut and it's beneficial so long
as it's in your gut. When it leaks into the
rest of your body, you can get blood infections from
that because the the stomach lining is not is not
(27:44):
protecting your stomach like it's supposed to any longer. It's
bad news, man, it is bad news, all right. Well,
let's take another break and UM. We'll talk about some
of these tragedies and accidents when we get back. So
(28:18):
Chuck UM. We know actually, fortunately very little about the
effects of ionizing radiation on the human body because there's
not that many people who have died from it. UM.
Basically everything we know it comes from industrial accidents like
Three Mile Island or Fukushima. UM. And then the nuclear
(28:42):
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, by the way,
any time that comes up, I feel it's it's totally
worth mentioning going to see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,
Like I think everybody in the world should have to
go to this. It's so well done, it's so asked
Lee some of the stuff that they're showing UM and
(29:03):
and it's it's basically here Ashima saying, this happened to us,
So we're going to take UM this terrible gift that
was bestowed on us and turned it into UM a
way to keep it from ever happening again. And that's
what they did with it. Carl Or in Japan make
a trip to hear is Human to check it out.
(29:24):
We'll talk about those then since we're there. I ran
across a cool article on a website called Today I
found Out, which is a neat site. You ever been there? Yeah,
it's pretty cool. This was called why can people live
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Now? But not chernobyl Um. So
here's a little background, and I think it it should
have its own podcast at some point for sure. Which
(29:45):
one the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, But here's here's
a short version. UM. On August the bomb Little Boy
was a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, hundred and
forty pounds of uranium. But these were detonated both of
more above each city. It's like two thousand feet above Hiroshima.
(30:09):
Only two pounds of the hundred and forty pounds underwent
nuclear fission um and then sixteen kilo tons of explosive force.
So because Hiroshima was on a plane, it caused a
lot of damage. UM estimated seventy thousand people were killed
on that day period seventy thousand, another seventy thousand injured,
(30:33):
and about seventy of the buildings gone UM for fat
Man which was a few days later on Nagasaki on
August nine, only two pounds. This was plutonium and only
two pounds of that underwent fission and that was about
sixteen feet in the air. But because it's a valley,
(30:54):
a lot of the city was protected. Still killed about
between forty five thousand and seventy thousand peep immediately. And
I get the feeling that a lot of that stuff
was just the blast impact for these were just so immense. Yeah,
so bring in Chernobyl because this article compares you know,
the conditions there at these places. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster,
(31:19):
nuclear disaster that had, uh the way they say been
this article was that the reactors had a built in
instability was the quote. Um. So basically, when the reaction
got hotter and hotter, the coolant would decrease and just
make everything less stable and they couldn't control it. So
they did some went to do some test one day
(31:40):
on ap uh to see how long these turbines would
run after the reactor was down. So in order to
do this, they had to turn off all these safety
controls and remove you know, I think we talked about
the control rods and um, how a nuclear meltown works, Yeah,
how nuclear mount work. So these control rods absorbed the
(32:02):
neutrons and limit the reaction. They had to remove cheese.
How many, only all but six of the two five
control rods for this test, and they shut down the
safety system, so it was just ready for disaster. Basically,
why were they doing that just for fun? No, they
were trying to see how long these turbines would run
(32:22):
once everything was shut down. But in order to do that,
you had to do all these other things. That's like
figuring out how much weight a bridge can take by
driving increasingly heavy trucks across the until it collapses. Yeah,
and systematically waking as you do it. That's insane. Yeah,
it was not a good idea. And they said it
all came down to like the hubrists of the people
who designed it, and we're working there. It was totally preventable.
(32:45):
So uh, a lot of these graphite rods they tried
to put them back in there, and they fractured because
there was a design flaw in them, and there was
an explosion. Uh, it basically just blew it up. UM
seven to ten tons of nucle your fuel were released
that day. Only eight people died immediately, and over ninety
thousand square miles of land were contaminated. How many people
(33:09):
died immediately? Eight that were just like in the area. Uh.
And of course you can't get accurate numbers on fallout
since then because they're not really sharing that information. But
by two thousand five, there were seven thousand cases of
thyroid cancer uh in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia alone,
So obviously it had an effect. But um, nowadays people
(33:32):
can live in Japan in those two places, and they
say that the levels of background radiation are basically like
anywhere else in the world. But Chernobyl is still they
have a zone where like you can't live there at
all anymore. So the difference is basically, Uh, the amount
of fuel only two pounds, like I said, of each
of those bombs, um, only two pounds underwent fission and
(33:55):
a hundred there was a hundred and eighty tons of
nuclear fuel. Really Chernobyl. That's crazy that there's any of
Chernobyl even left. Yeah, they just blow up the whole town. Well,
and they're studying um. Well, I think the explosion wasn't
anything like Nagasaki Hiroschma. It was just but they're studying
(34:18):
that area now because it's a big you know, like
you said, you don't have this opportunity to see what
it means for the ecology of that area and the ecosystem,
and like they found some things have like adapted and
are thriving, and lately they've been reports that they're like
animals they're living there. Yeah, like normal animals that aren't
you know, three eyed bears and stuff like that. And
(34:40):
the other difference was that, um, it was on the
ground and these other you know, the bombs are detonated
two thousand feet in the air, so while it's airborne,
it just has a bigger impact obviously if it's like
literally ground level. So that's sort of the deal on
why you can not live in Chernobyl anytime soon. Yeah. Finally,
(35:00):
in tumbing the reactor, that's it's just yeah, I mean
they tried before, but they did a pretty terrible job
of it and it was already leaking and cracking. So
now they're building I think other countries are helping them
with it. They're building like this huge tomb to go
around it, so nobody can enter for I think at
least a century. Jeez. Yeah. Well there have been some
(35:23):
scientists too though that had minor well not minor for them,
but minor accidents and labs that were exposed heavily, like
the stuff that that created there that led to their
deaths were just so small. With anything else, you would
probably even barely noticed that you'd messed up. But these
guys died because of it. Yeah, two dudes notably working
(35:45):
on the same core plutonium core, not at the same time,
like a year apart, and it came to be called
the Demon core for that reason because it killed two people. Yeah.
One guy was a physicist named Harry kay dag Lean Jr.
He got a five point one severt exposure uh and
died days later. Who's the other guy, Lewis Slawton Slaughton.
(36:11):
Um he was. He was basically messing with the core
with the screwdriver from what I read, and um, just
the screwdriver just barely slipped just a little bit, and
I guess came and allowed the cover to come in
contact with the core and the core went subcritical for
(36:31):
half a second. He luckily was like able to like
throw the core off, so it didn't really lead to
an even bigger problem that killed bore people, but it
led to his death. And um, he got a twenty
one severt dose. We've been saying ten is almost, you know,
instantly fatal. He lost consciousness and threw up immediately, and
he died I think nine days later. I can't believe
(36:53):
it took that long, you know, but the air turned
blue around him. Yeah, and there was like a visible
wave of heat. Yeah, and he was Immediately after his death,
I think he was kind of praised for containing the accident,
but then later on, even after that, they were like, yeah,
but he did something wrong that led to it to
begin with. Oh yeah, yeah, so it was kind of
(37:15):
a you did a good job, but you shouldn't have
done it. Well, what said? It also killed somebody else. Um,
a guard who was in the room died years later
from cancer. That they're like, that was definitely from exposure. Yeah,
don't surprise me. So what happens if you, I mean,
how can they treat this stuff? Surprisingly, they can't treat it.
Like if you think about radioactive particles entering your body,
(37:36):
you just think it'd be like, well, here's some morphine.
I hope you had a nice life. But there's actually
stuff they can do to treat it. Um. And one
of the first things they do if you're contaminated. Is
they wash you off. It seems like a good step
one because you didn't get some of that stuff off.
But if it's in your body, they have to give
you drugs that are known to actually bind to radioactive
(37:57):
materials and then flush out of your system. Yeah, like
Prussian blue dye. It's actually good for um, caesium and
thallium poisoning UM. It's like it's a blue dye that
goes in and it binds to the stuff and um
holds it so it's no longer going through your body
making havoc. Since you're coming with me. Then you poop
(38:18):
it out. There's another one. You're gonna try this one, Oh,
dia thy leen, try a mind penatic acid band or
d t p A been to acetic acid. That was
the easier part. Yeah, let's call it that. So that
(38:38):
one's good for plutonium among other things. And they inject
you with that and it does basically the same thing.
It seeks out those radioactive particles, binds to them, and
then you pee it out. So it I mean, it
is possible to treat people who have been contaminated with
radioactive stuff. I just want to point out every time
Josh said, binds to him. You hug your stomach. What
(38:59):
is that all? I don't know. I hadn't really noticed.
I hadn't done that, but it's both times. Uh. What
else can they do? They can prevent infection. Uh. If
your immune systems compromise because of the bone marrow, you
could have a bone I'm sorry, blood transfusion. If you
only have a little bit of bone marrow damage, um,
that could help you out. But if it is too severe,
(39:22):
you would have to have a complete bone marrow transplant.
And then and even then you're not guaranteed to be Okay,
you're in pretty bad shape if that's going on. Um.
Did you read about this Goyana, Brazil accident? I did.
It is nuts, It's crazy. So back in there were
I guess some people who were just wandering around an
(39:44):
abandoned hospital in Guyana, Brazil. Yes to two dudes, Uh,
scrap salesman, like scavenger salesman. Okay. So they found I
guess maybe an X ray machine or something like that,
and cracked it open and there was a cake of
glowing blue caesi um inside and they said, well, this
looks pretty let's take it with us and they did,
(40:05):
and they sold it to people, including some children who
rubbed it on their skin so that they would glow
in the dark. Yeah, and a lot of these people
died very shortly afterwards. Yeah, they took I mean, it
wasn't just the raw stuff. They took the machine in
a wheelbarrow and then spent the next few days like
trying to take this machine apart to get to this
(40:25):
glow because they, I mean, they thought it was like supernatural.
They didn't know what it was. Um, these dudes started
vomiting and stuff. Of course, went to the doctor and
they're like, it's food poisoning. Um, here's a here's a coke,
go home, clam. Uh. So one of the guys finally
freed some of this glowing blue goo. He thought it
(40:47):
was gunpowder and tried to light it on fire. It
didn't light. It's not flammable. Uh. And then he sold
it to a scrap yard, like you said, for bucks. Um.
And this guy, the owner of the scrap rd I
think was his uncle, was like, man, everyone come and
see this, and he invited like for three days, like
family and guests could all come over and look at
(41:08):
They called the carnival glitter and like you said this,
I mean it's really sad. But this guy's daughter was
like rubbing it on her skin and her bed sheets,
and uh, they were just enamored with this stuff. So again,
a lot of people died from this. Um well, four
people died for still, it's a lot, you know, four
people died, but they two people had significant levels of
(41:31):
material in their body. And hundred and twelve thousand people
were examined and they demolished several square city blocks, just
gone like this is contaminated, we have to get rid
of it. They just leveled parts of that city. Yeah,
it was crazy, all because some guys like broke into
an X ray machine because somebody just left it in
(41:53):
an abandoned hospital. Yeah. I think there were guards, but
the guard was off duty or something. There still shouldn't
be like X ray machines in a hospital. Yeah, that
was I think. I think they ended up there being
lotsuits and I would hope so, man, So that's it, right,
I got nothing else I don't either. That's a radiation sickness.
(42:15):
We hope that this save you or someone you love
if you're ever going through an abandoned hospital and you
come across an extray machine. Don't crack it open, just
observe it from afar. Well, we always talk about exploring
abandoned structures and it's super dangerous. Oh yeah, they're all
fraught with dangers. They definitely are, and probably when you
wouldn't think about something like this, you know, have I
(42:39):
ever talked about Grossingers? I don't think so. Man, there's
this one side about Grossingers. It's just it's a it's
a cat skills resort that was abandoned in the eighties.
It's just now it's almost completely reclaimed by the forest.
But about five ten years ago somebody went and documented it.
(42:59):
I like peak decay where the structures are still there
because it's totally coming in so fascinating. I don't know,
but it's there. There's I can't remember what the name
of the site is, but it's grossing Jersey. And this
guy went many many years, like over many times over
the years and documented it. And I think his dad
was the caretaker there as the place was shutting down,
(43:20):
so he knew the place really well. And he has
like old photos from while it was still in use
to compare and contrast. It's just amazing. Yeah, I thought
you were gonna say it was completely overtaken now by
forest fairies, and that's what I meant. And the Hulk.
Have you ever seen Hulk Hodgeman? It's a Twitter account
(43:40):
where it's like stuff Hodgeman says that. I would say, yeah,
but as the Hulk. I mean, I've heard the Hulk
for other things, but not there's one for I'm not
sure how he feels about it. Sounds you gotta check
it out. Well, mind is swirling? Alright? Uh did you
say listener mail? Oh no, If you want to know
(44:01):
more about radiation sickness, you can type those words in
the search bar. How stuff works. And since I said
search parts, time for listening. Now, I'm gonna call this
something I've never really thought about before. Hey, guys, my
loyal listener from the very beginning, I've listened to every
podcast and watched all of your TV shows episodes, um,
(44:25):
and most, if not all, of your Internet roundups. How
about that this person is Yeah, yeah, I'm writing about
a very serious topic and one that is dear to
my heart. Uh. The high rate of physician and medical
students suicide. Uh. This one of the highest stress careers
in terms of training, debt, work schedule and trying not
to take on the stress of every one of your
(44:45):
patients that you see. You are not allowed. I'm sorry.
We she's speaking first person. We are not allowed to
have any mental health weaknesses where we risk being labeled
a liability by medical board, employers, are peers, and even
our own patients. Um, I really thought about that. You
know you can't like stoic doctors. Whateverybody wants our school
(45:06):
I see, I want a wacky doctor Adams. Yeah, like
a whoopie cushion or joy buzzer. Every now and then
our schooling and training or grueling, it can be emotional
roller coaster. We're sleep deprived, made to feel inadequate on
a daily basis, and often humiliated and belittled in front
of our peers. She said it was tougher than eleven
years in the army. We're supposed to convince our patients
(45:28):
to seek help when they need it, but we are
certain to harm our own careers if we personally reach
out for help. So she said that in recent years
she had a hit close to home. Classmate committed suicide
before graduating, and his parents have spoken out UH and
have gotten together with a filmmaker to create a documentary
(45:49):
called Do No Harm UH exposing the silent epidemic. So
they have a lot of support. Um, you can go
to their Facebook page UH Facebook dot com slash do
No Harm the film, and um they have a Kickstarter
that you can look up if you just google kickstarter
do No Harm documentary there really close. That's just a
couple of thousand away from their benching funds. So I
(46:11):
think they are going to maybe even by this time
it will be done. But if anyone out there felt
like phone a few dollars their away, they'll be great.
So that's from Brooklyn Bertel's, a fourth year medical student.
Thanks a lot, Brooklyn, It's really that was a great email.
It took a really a turn at the at the beginning, right, Yeah,
So thanks for that. Um. And if you guys want,
(46:34):
you can go help that kickstarter out. If you want
to hang out with us, you can hang out with
us on Twitter at s y s K podcast in
the same for Instagram. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com and as always, joined us at at Home
on the Web Stuff you Should know dot com. For
(46:58):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff Works dot com. MHM
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