radiation illness

I can understand that if you get 100 000 head X-Rays, you’d get brain cancer, but supposed you shielded an extremely radiactive source in all directions but one and then shoved your hand into the resulting path of radiation. I imagine you’d get some sort of bone or skin cancer.

Now, what if you cut off that hand in a day or so? :eek:

Do the changes that take place due to radiation rapidly spread throughout the body or are they very localized and only spread if they affect the lymph nodes or other systems that carry disease throughout the body?

I was just thinking about accidental exposures and wondered if one massive exposure to any part of the body would be death or if there was a chance of living if a non-vital part of the body was exposed.

A very high dose of radiation kills cells. The most sensitive cells are those that are dividing. That’s why a person exposed to a very high dose of whole body radiation (e.g., firemen at Chernobyl) gets sick or dies: the hematopoietic cells (cells in the bone marrow) stop making new red and white blood cells and platelets. (Also, hair falls out and instestinal lining sloughs.) However, if the high dose is localized the effect will be localized and harm should be limited to exposed tissue.

However, lower doses of radiation, whether whole body or local, can cause cancer (although it takes a long time) and cancer can spread and kill you.