Definition of the Term and Background
As defined by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, radiation is “energy given off by matter in the form of rays or high-speed particles” (“Radiation Basics”). Matter is composed of atoms, each of which contain a nucleus that houses positively charged protons. Negatively charged electrons surround the nucleus of each atom and balance out the positive charge; thus each atom should have a net charge of zero. However, in the process of maintaining the stable charge of zero, any “excess atomic energy” might be emitted, which is radiation (“Radiation Basics”). A composite glossary of radiological terms can be found here.
The two types of radiation are nonionizing radiation and ionizing radiation. These two classifications are based on how the energetic emissions affect matter. Nonionizing radiation is not harmful because, although it does transfer energy in to the matter that it passes through, the energy cannot cause a disruption in the molecular balance of the affected matter. This means that it cannot break molecular bonds or remove electrons. Some examples of nonionizing radiation are heat, visible light, radar, microwaves, and radio waves. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, passes through materials and has enough energy to disrupt the molecular balance of matter. It can break molecular bonds and remove or displace electrons; this “displacement creates two electrically charged particles (ions), which may cause changes in living cells of plants, animals, and people” (“Radiation Basics.”). Some examples of ionizing radiation are x-rays and cosmic rays. X-rays are obviously beneficial in medical settings, but additionally, ionizing radiation can be useful in smoke detectors and sterilization. However, as mentioned above, ionizing radiation can cause dramatic changes in the molecular balance of plants and animals and thus cause damage. Therefore, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) has imposed strict regulations on nuclear material (‘Radiation Basics”).
These strict regulations are in place to prevent drastic repercussions pertaining to health should an individual be exposed to harmful levels of ionization. Radiation directly targets an individuals DNA and can heavily damage genetic material. Radiation breaks the bonds holding individual nucleotides within DNA together, and emits excess atomic energy, as detailed above. Depending on the amount of exposure and the length of time exposed, one of three basic changes can happen in a cell:
Figure 1: The three different effects that radiation can have on cells (“Health Effects of Radiation”)
Once a cell has been hit with radiation, it can either repair itself, try to repair itself and cause a mutation, or die. If only a few cells die or are mutated, the body can normally recover; however, if many cells die or are mutated, there is a higher risk of cancer or organ failure (“Health Effects of Radiation”). The varying levels of damage are largely based on level and length of exposure (“Radiation Health Effects”)
Exposure can either be acute or chronic. Acute exposure normally entails a very high dosage over a large surface area in a short amount of time. Incidences of this sort really only include nuclear explosions or handling industrial radiation sources; this is because it takes a very high dosage of radiation to cause immediate health effects like Acute Radiation Syndrome. On the other hand, chronic exposure entails “continuous or intermittent exposure to radiation over a long period of time”
(“Radiation Health Effects”). It normally takes longer for symptoms of this type of exposure to manifest themselves because it takes a buildup of radiation to catalyze cell mutation and death. Eventually, continuous exposure can lead to cancer, benign tumors, and other forms of genetic mutation. (“Radiation Health Effects”).
Furthermore, it is important to note that people are subjected to multiple encounters with radiation daily. This is called background radiation and its present in both natural and manmade sources. Radioactive minerals are present in our atmosphere, soil, and water; additionally cosmic radiation can enters the earth’s atmosphere and make it to the ground. Manmade sources can include industrial products and leftovers from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear disasters, such as the Chernobyl disasterin Ukraine (“Radiation Sources and Doses”). There are many other sources of radiation that individuals are exposed to everyday that are objectively harmless on a long term scale:
Figure 2: A chart comparing levels of radiation from common background sources (“Radiation Sources and Doses”).
Historical Context:
The late nineteenth century was the first time that radiation became actively studied and postulated as a powerful force of nature. After Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovered x-rays in 1895, Henri Becquerel started studying radioactivity and soon discovered the radioactive properties of uranium. After that, he gave a presentation to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1896. By 1898, Marie Curie had discovered the elements polonium and radium and their radioactive properties. Due to this rapid succession of discoveries, radiation was become more and more widely studied by the early twentieth century. It was at that point become more understood how radiation was emitted (United States).
Sadly, some of the pioneers of radiation studies would end up dying as a result of their work, as the detrimental effects of radiation were not yet know. This led two demands: one, to understand why radiation was deleterious and two, to have guidelines enforcing radiation protection. By the 1920s and 1930s, the United States was adopting precedents regarding radiation protection set by the British in 1915 to regulate radiation exposure. Moreover, more international bodies were forming who would try and regulate radiation protection; successful or not at actually enforcing regulations, these institutions became more influential as countries began dabbling in the field of nuclear power (United States).
Two very important events regarding nuclear power have profound effects on radiation studies and intensified the public’s jitters surrounding nuclear power. These two events would be the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the Fukushima disaster of 2011. Although years apart, both of these incidents initiated widespread radiation and highlighted the lack of responsiveness that the world had, and still has, in response to radiation mishandling (United States). The Chernobyl disaster occurred when a nuclear reactor blew up in the Ukraine and spread ionizing radiation in to all of its surrounding countries as well, as evidenced in Figure 3 (Brunader). The Fukushima disaster was a result of an earthquake that destroyed the Fukushima plants and damaged nuclear equipment, causing massive ionizing radiation release (Emilie). Both of these events caused serious disruption of lives; however, especially Fukushima, both have initiated a wave of emphasis on how to better regulate radiation use and how to deal with its consequences.
Figure 3: A map of the spread of C-137 radiation after the Chernobyl disaster (Brunader).
Controversy:
Because radiation is fundamentally invisible and its “risks are associated with long lag periods between exposures and consequences,” it has taken decades for policy regarding health and radiation to come to fruition (Ruff 240). Even now, policy is still being molded everyday, but not at a rate fast enough to keep pace with the ever-changing nuclear facet of global relationships today. There are many institutions and key players that are enmeshed within the dynamics of policy regarding health and radiation. To these actors, radiation is the key to limitless power and economic gain, which many citizens, especially victims, do not agree with. There are three key institutions in the field of radiation and regulating its health effects that are controversial because of there practices; these are the World Health Organization, The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) (Ruff 243-247). While these institutions are supposed to be representatives for the common people and protect their health and safety, they are often intertwined with big governments and nuclear corporations that have no interest in disbanding nuclear power; thus, these global players do not always act in a way to try prevent the buildup of nuclear power and therefore prevent the spread of radiation.
The World Health organization has a duty to establish rules and recommendations that garner respect by all international players; however, in the field of radiation, they are linked to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has immense influence as “both global regulator of nuclear industry standards and safeguards” and as a promoter of nuclear technology (Ruff 243). This has led to the promotion of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, even though the World Health Assembly said in 1983 that “nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of [hu]mankind.” Because of budget deficits, the WHO relies on funding from the IAEA and thus cannot actively combat the IAEA’s nuclear promotion. This leads to a lot of policy discussion but never any action regarding the growing global nuclear weapon buildup (Ruff 244-245).
Another key actor is UNSCEAR. Established by the United Nation’s General Assembly in 1955, UNSCEAR was a committee supposedly dedicated to “[collecting] and [evaluating] information on the levels and effects of ionizing radiation” (Ruff 246). However, the original 15 states added, including the United States and the United Kingdom, tended to actually downplay the effects of ionizing radiation so that they could continue to promote nuclear power. Currently, there are 27 member states and, with the exception of Sudan, “all the member states currently have nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants, and/or nuclear research reactors. Their UNSCEAR representatives and experts are government- appointed, and are generally staff of their nuclear power or nuclear regulatory agencies” (Ruff 247). These means that these people are not completely unbiased and often do not work with the pure intention of protecting people from radiation; yet this is one of the most influential global players in protecting people from radiation. (Ruff 247).
The last institution with questionable practices regarding global health interest is the ICRP. This group of 237 individuals is supposed to be independent experts who work together to recommend “radiation protection standards;” however, yet again, there is a clear entwining of government and commercial interests (Ruff 244). Many of these “independent experts” are actually employees of governments or employees of companies who turn a profit from the proliferation of nuclear power. Moreover, the ICRP receives funding from nuclear corporations, which is also a breach of impartiality (Ruff 245). Just like the WHO and the UNSCEAR, ICRP seems to choose to forgo the routes that are in the best interest of global health in order to engage in a narrative that supports governments and corporations and their push for profit and power. Government and commercial interests overwhelm these institutions that are supposed to be vested in protecting global health.
Relation to Politics of Health:
Radiation is related to the politics of health because it is a key element in forming the definition of “biological citizenship” as it relates to the Chernobyl disaster. Adriana Petryna crafted the term as a means to express how there was “a massive demand for… selective access to a form of social welfare based on medical, scientific, and legal criteria that both acknowledge biological injury and compensate for it” (Petryna, Life Exposed6). Petryna remarks on how categorizing a suffering population based on an ambiguous and arbitrary system of guidelines ultimately led to a disordered state based on a discriminating form of welfare. While the idea of biological citizenship had noble intentions, many people were discarded and left to find other means of access to compensation or support (Petryna Life Exposed 7). In her essay “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations,” Petryna emphasizes how the “Chernobyl aftermath exemplifies a process wherein scientific knowability collapses and new forms of entitlement emerge” because of “ambiguities related to categorizing suffering“ and “contested attempts to quantify radiation risk” (Petryna “Biological Citizenship” 251). Obviously, it is hard to see many of the effects of radiation, as they are long-term and slow to reveal themselves without invasive and expensive procedures; biological citizenship subjectively quantifies people’s suffering based on radiation, which is an unfair process because of how radiation reveals itself in different ways in different people. Moreover, it has been shown that institutions setting guidelines regarding radiation do not always have the public’s narrative of suffering at the forefront. Without less government and corporation intervention, radiation continues to permeate people’s lives in toxic ways. Biological citizenship explicitly evidences how the government is very implicated in radiation regulation but chooses regulations that align with their immediate interest.
Works Cited
Brunader, Anita. “The Chernobyl Disaster.” United Nation’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, United Nations, 16 July 2012, www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Health.
Emilie, Maria, and Mayr Lichem. “Fukushima.” United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, United Nations, 15 Nov. 2016, www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html.
“Health Effects of Radiation.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services, 7 Dec. 2015, www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/dose.html#how.
Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl. Princeton University Press, 2013.
Petryna, Adriana. “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations.” Osiris, vol. 19, 2004, pp. 250–265. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3655243.
“Radiation Basics.” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Government, 2 Oct. 2017, www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/radiation-basics.html.
“Radiation Health Effects.” Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Government, 1 Feb. 2018, www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-health-effects.
“Radiation Sources and Doses.” Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Government, 2 Nov. 2017, www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses.
Ruff, Tilman A., et al. “Health Implications of Ionising Radiation.” Learning from Fukushima: Nuclear Power in East Asia, edited by PETER VAN NESS and MEL GURTOV, ANU Press, Australia, 2017, pp. 221–260. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ws7wjm.16
United States, Congress, “History of Radiation Protection.” History of Radiation Protection, U.S. EPA, pp. 10–14.
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