Talk:Acute radiation syndrome

Due to their short half-lives they have now (2004) decayed, leaving the more long-lived caesium-137 and strontium-90 as main dangers. What is the half-life of these other two? Zarxos 01:47, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Fractionation graph

Where the heck does this graph come from? Graphs convey exact physical relationships, you are providing those relationships(which are very non-trivial) without citation, or even a good excuse. "Hypothetical" or no, you need to clear up what is ment by it. Either add a citation to the relationships being modeled, or remove them for being misleading(ie, without available citation).

Somatic Damage

This term redirects here, but I couldn't easily find anything about it in the article. What gives?68.228.80.106 (talk) 15:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Depleted uranium bullets

I don't find any reference in this wiki related with depleted uranium bullets and the radiation poisoning.

You might want to do a little research on depleted uranium. Current thinking is that the radiological hazard from DU is insignificant in comparison to the chemical toxicity of various uranium compounds. -- Rydra Wong 20:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

'Detonator', the film

This article has a 1992 film called 'Detonator' referenced, starring Pierce Brosnan and Patrick Stewart, which has an elderly scientist slowly dying of radiation poisoning. There's a film with that title and date, sure, but it's Russian, it's a comedy (according to IMDB) and sure as hell doesn't star those two actors. Could the author of this reference be thinking of [1] starring Brosnan and Michael Caine and something about nuclear weapons? Until this is cleared up I'm going to delete the reference as it's clearly wrong. Trent 900 15:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for clarity

While the table explaining the effects of radiation poisoning at various levels is certainly good, it's not terribly clear *how* radiation does these things. Sure, at the beginning it says radiation "interference causes particular problems for otherwise normally rapidly dividing cells," but it's not terribly specific. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson 12:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The sentence before the one you quoted is more relevant, I think. Ionization is what causes "particular problems". It's hard to find good information online. You might check out this page. It sounds like ionization of DNA makes it more difficult for a cell to divide. If nothing else, it would have to at least repair the damaged DNA first. Maybe it's possible that other molecules are ionized, creating radicals that interfere with division in other ways, though; I'm really not sure. In any case, I would also like to see the explanation expanded! HorsePunchKid 19:10, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Radiation destroys cells ready to undergo mitosis and inhibits mitosis. The effect is depopulation in tissues, therefore a disturbance of tissular functions. Cells that divide most quickly are affected first : epithelium of the cornea and the small intestine, bone marrow, base of the epidermis, ovocytes and spermatogonia. Hence the bone-marrow and intestinal syndroms, as well as the permanent infertility for woman and the temporary one among men. (see the French article)

I added the half-lives of strontium-90 and cesium-137 to the article. Now almost everyone is happy!

24 Reference?

I regret I didn't get a chance to see much of the 2nd season, but the article on 24_(television) doesn't say anything about anyone getting radiation sickness...there's mention of bioweapons and similar, but it's not what the reference here implies. I'll keep my grimy little mouseball away from the edit page for now, but if someone who saw the 2nd season could confirm what I'm thinking, the reference should be deleted (or at least modified). 67.101.113.10

I don't actually know much about the show, but a quick poke on Google suggests that there was a radiation poisoning incident. See here, for example. (Warning: may be spoilers there!) HorsePunchKid 22:26, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Hi, I added the reference; I own Season 2 on DVD and have watched it multiple times. The character George Mason becomes irradiated sometime in the first four hours, in a warehouse incident en route to Bakersfield. By the way, 67.101.113.10, I highly suggest renting or buying Season 2 if you enjoy the show at all — it's much more coherent than Season 1, and is considered by many to be the best season in 24. --Poiuyt Man ^talk 11:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, and actually, under 24 (television)#Season 2, bulleted under "Major subplots", is mention of George Mason's radiation poisoning. It seems to have been there for a while. --Poiuyt Man ^talk 11:16, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Request for treatment info, potassium iodide

I would like to see some information on the treatment of radiation poisoning, perhaps also some mention of Potassium iodide as an augment for radition sickness prevention or whatever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.9.107.195 (talk • contribs) 21:17, 1 August 2005

I made an initial try at this. --agr 11:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Note that potassium iodide only protects against internal contamination of the thyroid by radioactive isotopes, not against external and/or whole-body irradiation. Thus, it neither prevents nor cures radiation sickness. Its use is limited to the prevention of an induced thyroid cancer after a Chernobyl-like accidents. fr:User:Lachaume

Request to order the fiction section

This seems to have some references which do not directly portray radiation sickness and the dates are out of order. I believe the list should be restricted to books and films specifically dealing with radiation poisoning. Having a scene or two about this illness, or just being a more recent film or TV show should probably not be a qualification. However, it is probably necessary to include selections from TV, movies, and plays.

Grave of the Fireflies

This movie does not actually have anything to do with nuclear weapons or radiation poisoning. I am removing it from the fiction section.

Factual inaccuracies (use of Sv everywhere)

While trying to translate/adapt the article for the French Wikipédia, I started to look into the literature. And I noticed one important point :

effective dose/equivalent dose shall not be used for acute irradiation.

Sources :

• Draft of the International Commission on Radiological Protection : Dosimetric Quantities;
• Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety (publication of the International Labor Organization), vol. 2, part VI General Hazards, chap. 48 Radiation: Ionizing.
• Encyclopedia of the European Nuclear Society, Dose equivalent

Other quite serious papers on the topic systematically use Gy units (implies received dose) for doses >~ 1 Gy :

• Health Impacts from Acute Radiation Exposure, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Operated by Battelle for the US Department of Energy.
• Department of Homeland Security: Working Group on Radiological Dispersal Device, Medical Preparedness and Response Subgroup

So, I fear the article needs extensive rewriting, because the two sections Table of exposure levels and symptoms and Measuring radiation dosage are flawed... In addition, I don't see any medical/scientific bibliography at the end of the article.

Régis Lachaume (feel free to leave me a message on fr:Discussion_Utilisateur:Lachaume, Toubon Law does not apply there)

Query on terminology: 'anastasis', 'walking ghost phase', 'latent phase'

I did a couple of Google searches to try to find more information about the 'walking ghost' phase and 'anastasis'. It looks to me as though every single reference on the Web to either of these terms can be traced back to Wikipedia. Every occurrence Google pulled up was set in the wording of Wikipedia, complete with typos and peculiar word choices such as 'light symptoms' and 'comparable wellbeing' (where 'mild symptoms' and 'comparative well-being' would be idiomatic). Are these terms actually used at all, except by people who picked them up in Wikipedia? I checked a couple of dictionaries: no mention of 'anastasis'.

When eventually I dug my way back into medical literature on the Web, rather than regurgitated wiki, I found that the term actually used for this period of apparent wellness is 'latent phase'. This term is not used in the Wikipedia article.

I have heard of the "walking ghost phase" this term was used to describe some of the radiation cases in japan which resulted from the bombing. The important thing to note is that while some of these people might had suffered a fatal dose of gamma/neutrons many of them had other mortal injurys so their pathology would have been different to examples of pure radiation cases such as the operators of irradation plants who gave themselves 10 Gy doses on entering the irradation room. Also the cases would not have been so well observed as the irradation plant operators.Cadmium

I have also heard reference to the "walking ghost phase", and "anastasis", although it was a few years back. Source wasn't exactly amazingly useful, but it was also notably not inspired by wikipedia. Anyone have references to cases of acute radiation poisoning? I remember reading about the "walking ghost phase" in reference to two major incidents of AMAZINGLY high levels of exposure in experimental plants.

Two terms in the article are bizarre...

"anastasis" is not the term usually used for the brief period of wellbeing. It is referred to as the "latent phase".

Similarly "walking ghost phase" seems unique to this article and others copied and pasted from it.

A friend of mine, and I, speculate that this is part of an experiment to trace the flow of (dis)information from Wikipedia and through sites which mindlessly copy-and-paste or otherwise steal information from it. Certainly, if I were going to conduct such an experiment, inserting incorrect but plausible terms in such a manner would be one method for doing so.

Perhaps these terms themselves should be sourced & properly cited.--aceslead 20:52, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I have a question ...

I am looking for information pertaining to "mild radiation poisoning". Maybe I am asking the wrong question. I believe the area we live in is "active" to at least some degree, due to the "half-life" involved in nuclear testing. There are cancers that exist here that thrive nowhere else. It's been said that there are studies about this phenomena. Eighty percent of the women who live here develop thyroid conditions. Eighty percent, seems a little high, when you take into consideration the various ethnic groups that live in the area - consuming vastly differing diets! My Vietnamese friend and her sister both developed thyroid conditions, and their diets are most definitely different than ours. What's up with the Las Vegas area of Nevada?

Stargazer20@earthlink.net

From what you write I would strongly advise you get in touch with medical health professionals rather than raise the question on wikipedia.

I agree, you should not ask the people who edit wiki for help. Go to the doctors. But this reminds me of this thing I heard on the radio about the government digging out Yukka Mountain and using it to store nuclear waste. Please do not quote me on this, for I am a 17 year old high school senior, but the two could possibly be related. --BenWhitey 02:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"Anastasis"

I checked by asking a radiopharmacologist with 25 years' research experience in nuclear medicine. He had not heard of the word 'anastasis'. Take that together with the points I raised above: 'anastasis' does not occur in any medical sources on the WWW except as the personal name of an author; Google searches on 'anastasis' show hits to its use as a personal name, hits to its use as a theological term (Greek for 'resurrection'), hits to its use as the name of a particular hospital ship, and mirrors and echoes of its use in Wikipedia. I am convinced that 'anastasis' is in fact not a medical term for the period of comparative well-being in the progress of acute radiation illness.

I have, therefore, edited this article to replace 'anastasis' withthe actual medical term, 'latent phase', though I have allowed a couple of references to 'anastasis' as an alternative to stand. I have also edited the article 'anastasis' to reflect the dubious status of its use as a medical term.

Agemegos 06:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Therac-25

The Therac-25 article states the same of that name caused radiation poisoning to some cases on the order of hundreds of gray. As I cannot verify this fact, I would say it is still noteworthy to be put in this article after verification. --Abdull 17:27, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The Therac-25 accidents are well documented (eg. IAEA report). Indeed doses as high as a few hundreds of gray were delivered but locally, not to the whole body. It provoked severe radiation burns but no acute radiation symptoms. They are therefore not eligible for this article. Lachaume 22:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Request for examples

The usefulness of the article would be increased with examples of the kind of industrial, medical, or military processes using radiation that produce the exposures levels and symptoms in the table of information.

I added the yearly federal limit for U.S. radiation workers. A radiation worker is generally someone whom the licensee (a person or organization licensed to work with radioactive materials [2]) has trained [3] to work around radiation. Simesa 21:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Radioactive sources : sterilisation, radiotherapy, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Nuclear accidents : criticality accident using fissile material (for nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, or some scientific research). Nuclear warfare : main effect of neutron bomb, side effects of fallout (American test Castle Bravo, atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Symptoms & Effects

The section of this article entitled 'Symptoms & Effects' does not actually detail the various symptoms of radiation exposure nor the effects of various levels of exposure. It devotes one sentence to talking about tumors, and then it goes into how radiation poisoning is a concern at Chernobyl and other sites.

Dear anonymous,

Tumors are not part of the acute radiation sickness. They are a stochastic effect of radiation occuring even for small doses, in other words an increased probability of having cancer (the higher the dose, the higher the probability). On the contrary the symptoms described in the article are deterministic effects : they will take place at a certain dose (~ 2 Gy) and won't ever appear below a given threshold (~ 0.5 Gy).

Radiation sickness was a concern at Chernobyl with ~ 200 liquidators suffering from it. Effects on the population are stochastic long-term ones (e.g. leukemia, cancers) due to radioactive contamination (i.e. ingestion of isotopes) and/or chronic irradiation. They are not the topic of the article.

I request this section actually detail the various symptoms and effects of radiation exposure.

The article deals with acute radiation sickness, not with radiation exposure as a whole. The old name radiation poisoning for the acute radiation syndrome is confusing maybe... Lachaume 23:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The article states that "Immediate disorientation and coma in seconds or minutes. Death occurs after a few hours by total collapse of nervous system." Then for the next amount of radiation it says that there are two people who received 100 Sv and 120 Sv of radiation and did not die for 49 and 36 hours respectively. I think that maybe the first statement is wrong, after all it needs a citation. I think it should be fixed, but I do not know what it should be replaced with. --BenWhitey 02:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a similar problem with the 10–50 Sv (1,000–5,000 REM) section which states 100% fatality after 7 days but cites someone having survived for 9 days. JWHPryor 10:38PM, April 10th 2008 (EST)

Metroid Prime Video Game

Hey, i noticed the Metroid Prime Video Game was not listed in the fictional effects part.

The fictional radioactive substance Phazon causes physical and mental changes in an organism's body.

I thought it could be included in the fictional effects part.

--Zouavman Le Zouave 10:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Phazon causes mutations and death, not radiation poisoning. It emits a type of radiation that does not exist in real life. No. atomicthumbs 16:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Prevention - Time Section Strange Example?

The subsection on "Time" under "Prevention" includes a very strange example to illuminate that the less time you're exposed to radiation, the better:

The longer that the humans are subjected to radiation the larger the dose will be. The advice in the nuclear war manual published in the USA was that if one needed to leave the shelter to dispose of human waste then this should be done as fast as possible. The suggested method is to collect it in a plastic bag, tie it with a small hole to allow gas to escape, then to quickly step out of the shelter, throw it and step back inside.

Is this a legitimate example, or is it really just someone trying to slip a bathroom joke into wikipedia? I suspect the latter. -- RxVUx6EB 12:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Even if it's not someone's idea of scatological humor, it's a lousy example. I would be in favor of removing this and replacing it. I'm sure

something more appropriate than fallout shelter instructions can be found. -- Rydra Wong 14:41, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Confused by units

Can someone please take a look at the Lake Karachay article. The source says that the radiation level is 600 roentgen/hour. I am totally confused by many, many different ways this can be convert. Can someone please give me the equivalent in grays, rads, sieverts, rems, and whatever other units are applicable? Raul654 04:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Name

"Strictly speaking the correct name for "radiation sickness" is acute radiation syndrome"

Why? Because a recognised authority has said so? If that's the case, can we cite them. Njál 20:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Treatment

As far as I know, despite the connotation of 'poisoning', there is no treatment for radiation poisoning (or the portions of a body radiated), am I correct? However, the link to Neumune is confusing, and doesn't explain what it does, or if it really is a treatment. PolarisSLBM 20:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Gy gamma?

The explanation for the picture of the gentleman with severe radiation poisoning describes his dosage in "Gy gamma." Er... what does that mean? The article itself describes dosages in rem/sV, perhaps someone with more knowledge than I should rewrite the caption for the image into a unit actually used at some point in the article? 69.113.219.44 08:10, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Abbreviation for Gray, surely? Grays are SI-derived and rems are described as discouraged, so we should probably convert all the units to something consistent. There's far too many radiation units really, I agree it's confusing :-) Stonejag 10:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

also, "Acute radiation poisoning, 100% fatality after 7 days (LD 100/7). " is rather in~contradiction with the photo next to it of a man who took 30 days to die from a 10-2o Gy dose. 194.151.165.92 13:54, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Acute Poisoning

The article mentions orderly symptoms of acute poisoning, but doesn't say what these are. I don't know enough to add anything myself, excpet that it has to do with the frying of DNA; that's was causes death in a week or 2. But what causes the immediate fatality from radiation poisoning? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.126.206.189 (talk) 08:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

radioactive thallium?

Was the thallium used to kill Yuri Shchekochikhin really radioactive? I don't know about the case, but since a) radioactive thallium can only be produced in nuclear reactors, and b) stable thallium is relatively abundant and extraordinarily toxic, it seems unusual to bother using the radioactive type. KarlM 09:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

That looks wrong to me too. I don't recall any news reports suggesting that radioactive thallium – I'm pretty sure that the hypotheses were reported as either thallium or some radioactive substance. If they had meant radioactive thallium, they would have said so. Also, I seem to remember that the symptoms of thallium poisoning are said to resemble certain types of radiation poisoning, which might explain the confusion. -- Steve Schonberger 10:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Tag 26

I'm crossposting this to both the Radiation poisoning and Tag 26 talk. The former page says the situation involves radiation, the latter some sort of biological agent. Which is correct? Edward Wakelin 04:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Authorship

Who actually wrote it? It seems well researched but there are no references at all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.48.250.93 (talk) 08:00, 10 May 2007 (UTC).

Symbol

Should some reference to the new radiation symbol be included? Makes sense to me, if only to highlight how seriously radiation poisoning is taken (and the problems of symbols not looking dangerous enough, though that's not really in the scope of this article...). I'm new and don't really understand the image markup, so if someone else could do it that'd be great :) Stonejag 10:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC) [edited this to remove the inline image!]

please clarify progression/stages of syndrome

I removed this statement from the prodrome article because it wasn't relevant there: "The prodromal stage of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) is the first of four stages."

And as I skim over this article, I see that the prodromal stage is not mentioned. Is it related to the walking ghost phase? Also, this article says there is a "characteristic set of symptoms that appear in an orderly fashion" -- can someone list the sequence of events? Or is this statement incorrect, since there are different symptoms varying by exposure level? Spazquest 05:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I was looking up this article to find out what the physical symptoms of radiation poisioning are, besides possible burns and eventual cancer. I was hoping that after the phrase "set of symptoms that appear in an orderly fashion" the article would list those symptoms . . . in an orderly fashion . . . but they're nowhere to be found. Then I went online and found this:

http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/noNetscape/radiation_effects_body.html

Can someone with a qualified opinion please clarify as to whether or not this information is true. And also add something to the article about it?

Xiare (talk) 15:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)Xiare

Treatment

Under treatment, it says there is no possible treatments. I read some where that vitamin B6 and B12 were treatments, but I can't source it.

24.124.49.158 19:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Is the massive fiction section necessary?

This article has a rather long list of occurrences of radiation poisoning in fiction. Does it really improve the article? To me it seems a bit excessive. Thoughts? GhostPirate 06:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I spun it off. GhostPirate 02:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

History

This article could use a short section on history of research into radiation poisoning.

Death of Eben Byers in 1932 was probably a turning point. First recorded fatality from radiation exposure (as opposed to ingestion of radioactive substances) occurred in 1945. At the time, U.S. nukes were assembled by hand without much protection. I can only assume that scientists were unaware of dangers of radiation exposure.

Anyone up to the task? --Itinerant1 (talk) 22:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Reference 17

I noticed Ref. 17 was linked to a page that no longer existed. I was unable to find the original document on the LANL website, but found an equivalent document from the LANL journal. The page now links to this document.

24.150.122.49 (talk) 02:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)tjw - 9 Sept 2008

Acute Radiation Poisoning Symptoms

I believe I read that one of the initial symptoms of radiation poisoning by gamma rays is the sense of a metallic taste in the mouth of humans. Is this verifiable? The "Acute (short-term) vs chronic (long-term) effects" section desperately needs attention. Arrowhead2006 (talk) 06:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Alcohol

In some old books (and newer fiction) there is mention of alcohol supposedly alleviating the effects of radiation poisoning. Are there any newer medical sources regarding this and if so, should it be mentioned in the article (myth/fact)? --79.217.216.81 (talk) 12:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Radium mine story unbelievable

I can't believe this story. Radium has a half-life of 1600 years. How on earth could VEINS OF RADIUM form in a cave? The symptoms aren't like radiation poisoning too, I've never heard of paralysis as a result of radiation exposure. This crap needs to be removed ASAP. "What may be the earliest confirmed cases of acute radiation poisoning occurred in 1879 in Barry County, Missouri, USA, where three men were fatally poisoned and a fourth permanently injured under mysterious circumstances. After chasing an animal they were hunting to the mouth of a cave, they discovered what the cave appeared to be several large veins of silver. They returned the next day to begin prospecting, but fled when they began to fall ill; by the time they had left, one of them was so ill that he was paralyzed and had to be carried to aid. In 1912, after the discovery of radium was announced, a local entrepreneur who had recalled the story investigated the cave to find that the metal was in fact radium, the first isolated veins of the metal ever found (previously, radium was only known from samples extracted from uranium-bearing pitchblende ore). The mine would be the first in the world to be excavated specifically for radium.[1][2]"