is radioactive element harmful to human body?
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Ignore the abusive idiot above. He has no idea what he is talking about.\n\n\nThere are lots of different radioactive elements. Some are dangerous but the vast majority are harmless. \n\nYour body and everybody else's is already full of radiocative elements. You are loaded with isotopes like 13Carbon., tritium, 44Calcium and so on. Every living thing that has ever existed on Earth has been losded with those radicoative elements. We've evolved with them from the beginning and as a result they are quite harmles to us in normal doses.\n\nA few unnatural radioactive isotopes are harmful in small doses, and some natural isotopes are dangerous if they are concentrated in the body. But the general answer is that radiocative elements are quite harmless.
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I GOT THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA\n\nPlutonium is a radioactive, metallic, chemical element. It has the symbol Pu and the atomic number 94. It is the element used in most modern nuclear weapons. The most important isotope of plutonium is 239Pu, with a half-life of 24,110 years. It can be made from natural uranium and is fissile. The most stable isotope is 244Pu, with a half-life of about 80 million years, long enough to be found in extremely small quantities in nature. Nuclear materials workers sometimes call it "plute".\n\nThe isotope 239Pu is a key fissile component in modern nuclear weapons, due to its ease of fissioning and availability. The critical mass for an unreflected sphere of plutonium is 16 kg, but through the use of a neutron reflecting tamper the pit of plutonium in a fission bomb is reduced to 10 kg, which is a sphere with a diameter of 10 cm. Complete detonation of plutonium will produce an explosion of 20 kilotons of trinitrotoluene (TNT) per kilogram. (See also nuclear weapon design.)\n\nPlutonium could also be used to manufacture radiological weapons or as a (not particularly deadly) poison.\n\nAll isotopes and compounds of plutonium are toxic and radioactive. While plutonium is sometimes described in media reports as "the most toxic substance known to man", there is general agreement among experts in the field that this is incorrect. As of 2006, there has yet to be a single human death officially attributed to exposure to plutonium itself (with the exception of plutonium-related criticality accidents). Naturally-occurring radium is about 200 times more radiotoxic than plutonium, and some organic toxins like Botulin toxin are still more toxic. Botulin toxin, in particular, has a lethal dose of 300pg/kg, far less than the quantity of plutonium that poses a significant cancer risk. In addition, beta and gamma emitters (including the C-14 and K-40 in nearly all food) can cause cancer on casual contact, which alpha emitters cannot.\n\nWhen taken in by mouth, plutonium is less poisonous (except for risk of causing cancer) than several common substances including caffeine, acetaminophen, some vitamins, pseudoephedrine, and any number of plants and fungi. It is perhaps somewhat more poisonous than pure ethanol, but less so than tobacco; and many illegal drugs (some such as marijuana are negligibly poisonous). From a purely chemical standpoint, it is about as poisonous as lead and other heavy metals. Not surprisingly, it has a metalic taste. [3]\n\nThat said, there is no doubt that plutonium may be extremely dangerous when handled incorrectly. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk are the skeleton, whose surface it is likely to be absorbed on, and the liver, where it will collect and become concentrated. Approximately 0.008 microcuries absorbed in bone marrow is the maximum withstandable dose. Anything more is considered toxic. Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled.\n\nOther substances including ricin, botulinum toxin, and tetanus toxin are fatal in doses of (sometimes far) under one milligram, and others (the nerve agents, the amanita toxin, the fugu toxin) are in the range of a few milligrams. As such, plutonium is not unusual in terms of toxicity, even by inhalation. In addition, those substances are fatal in hours to days, whereas plutonium (and other cancer-causing radioactives) give an increased chance of illness decades in the future. Considerably larger amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death if ingested or inhaled; however, so far, no human is known to have immediately died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies.\n\nIt must be noted, however, that in contrast to naturally occurring radioisotopes such as radium or C-14, plutonium was man
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Yes, the radiation from cancer treatments is very dangerous, but the radiation is directed in such a way that is that it will be more damaging to the cancer cells than to healthy cells.
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Check out this website it will tell you all you would ever want to know about radon and any other element.\n\nhttp://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-elements/Rn-en.htm
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These are sensors that can detect radioactivity and have uses in security devices and other security devices.\nAll elements are stable under normal conditions , but some elements like uranium and plutonium are less stable than the others . When the atoms of these substances are disturbed (its called excited state) they emit energy in the form of radioactivity . This radio activuty can be detected by these sensors .
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's mandate to protect public health and safety and the environment includes regulation of the medical use of radioactive (byproduct) material in the fields of nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, and research.\n\nMedical use of radioactive materials falls broadly into two categories: diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Diagnostic procedures using radioactive materials, such as those used in nuclear medicine, involve the use of relatively small amounts of radioactive materials to facilitate imaging of certain organs. Two examples of nuclear medicine procedures are the use of technetium-99m in the diagnosis of bone, heart or other organs and radioactive iodine in the imaging of the thyroid gland. The radioactive materials typically are injected into the patient and allow physicians to locate and identify tumors, size anomalies, or other physiological or functional organ problems.
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Radioactive light and it kills the cells it comes in contact with...
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ignoring radioactivity(which deals with unstable isotopes) the elements are indestructible and will last forever.\nthe law of conservation of matter says matter can never be created nor destroyed.( we can destroy matter in nuclear bombs but otherwise...).\nAs long as atoms exist, which is forever, the periodic table will tell you what to expect.
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If you are talking medically, there are a few occasions where a patient is treated with radioactive materials.  The thyroid and prostate are two things that come to mind.  \n\nRadioactive iodine is used for treatment of hyperthyroidism.  For a few days after treatment, the patient should not have prolonged contact with others (sleeping next to someone, long car trips etc).  They should not share eating utensils with others.  You can read more about this treatment at the link below:\n\nhttp://www.endocrinologist.com/Radioactive.html\n\nFor the prostate:  "a urologist and radiation oncologist permanently implant 100 to 120 radioactive seeds in the prostate. These seeds gradually give off radiation until they are no longer active. The radioactivity lasts from 2-6 months."\n\nhttp://www.westernbaptist.com/svcs/040401.cfm\n\n\nYou are not radioactive after recieving an x-ray or having a contrast injection such as those in MRI and CT scans.
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The Daily Mail in the UK says:\n\nPolonium 210 is one of the most toxic substances known to man, with a particle the size of a speck of dust enough to cause the sort of slow, agonising death suffered by Alexander Litvinenko. \n\nWeight for weight, the rare radioactive isotope is 250billion times more toxic than cyanide, and more than a billion times more radioactive than uranium
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If it were not for concerns about the health effects of\nradiation, nuclear energy would have developed quite\ndifferently.\nRadiation is not new. Although it was discovered and\nnamed as recently as 1896, we and our ancestors have\nlived with it since the beginning of time. The earth is\nnaturally radioactive, so is the air we breathe, the\nfood we eat and the ground we stand on. It is only\nwhen we are subjected to relatively large doses of\nradiation that it becomes a danger to life or health.\nModern science has allowed us to develop safe ways\nof using radiation, and of exploiting its properties for\nthe benefit of mankind. Many valuable applications\nhave been developed:\n􀁺 nuclear medicine, especially the use of X-rays\n􀁺 use of radiation to develop drugs for people with\ndiabetes, arthritis or high blood pressure\ntreatment of car tyres with radioactive materials to\nmake them more durable and puncture-resistant\nradioactive sources in photocopiers to stop the\npaper sticking together.\nThese are just a few examples. We benefit from a\nlarge range of products and services made possible by\nradioactive materials, often without even realising it.\nEverything in the world, from the air we breathe to\nthe cars we drive, is made up of atoms\nSome atoms are ‘stable’ – an ordinary carbon atom,\nwith six protons and six neutrons, will stay that way\nuntil the end of the universe unless something\ndramatic happens to it, such as being absorbed by the\nsun. Others are unstable – for example, their nuclei\nmay be too big to hold together – so they shake off\nparticles and surplus energy from their nucleus until\nthey become stable. The process of shaking off these\nparticles and energy is called ‘radioactivity’, and the\nparticles and energy which are released are known as\n‘nuclear radiation’. The process is often called\n‘radioactive decay’, since over time the radioactive\nmaterial breaks up and changes into other more stable\natoms, sometimes through several radioactive\nintermediate stages. The process can take fractions of\na second or billions of years depending on the\nradioactive material involved, but in each case the\nradioactivity of the material falls steadily.\nThere are different types of radiation, and not all\ninvolve radioactive decay. The type of radiation we\nare looking at in this booklet is ‘ionising radiation’,\nand includes artificially made X-rays (which do not\narise from radioactive decay). When this type of\nradiation bumps into other matter, it produces\nelectrically charged particles, known as ‘ions’.\nIonisation causes chemical changes in materials, and\ncan affect our bodies as well as the things around us.\nIn high quantities, ionising radiation can damage\nliving tissue and even destroy human cells. This can\nbe beneficial in some circumstances – for example,\nradiotherapy is used in the treatment of cancer, the\nradiation being used to kill cancerous cells, leaving\nother cells nearby relatively unharmed. In this sense,\nradiation is rather like a surgeon’s scalpel. Usedcarefully it can provide many benefits and can enable\nus to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives,\nalthough it can be dangerous if misused.\nWhen we refer elsewhere in this booklet to ‘radiation’\nwe mean ionising radiation. However, there are nonionising\nradiations, such as low energy\nelectromagnetic radiation (which includes light, infrared,\nradio waves and electrical and magnetic fields\nfrom power pylons), which are not normally\ndangerous.\nThere are several types of ionising radiation, of which\nthe most important are:\n􀁺 α (alpha): streams of atomic particles (helium\nnuclei) made up of two protons and two neutrons\nwith a positive charge (+2). By atomic standards\nthese are quite big chunks of matter, so they are\nvery easily stopped. They cannot pass through\npaper, for example, or through the dead outer layer\nof our skin. However, if materials emitting alpha
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It kills whatever it comes in contact with. Slowly, like Depleted Uranium or quickly, like 3 deployments with Depleted Uranium. So, it causes the cancer, then a heavy dose kills the cancer along with the flesh around the cancer.
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Change into a different element altogether.\n\nNatural decay of heavy elements occurs sending off alpha- or beta-particles, i.e. helium4-cores or electrons.\n\nIn the case of alpha radiation, the element will move two positions down in the periodic system, in case of beta radiation it will move one position up.\n\nUranium 238 emits alpha-radiation, forming Thorium 234. See the link below for consecutive decay reactions.
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radioactivity is caused by a instability in the forces holding the nucleus of an atom. A atom emits radiation to allow it to change into a more stable element or isotope.
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As everyone knows by now, lead is poisonous. That is why we don't make lead pipes any more for plumbing (one of the potential reasons the Roman empire fell), or use tetraethyl lead to increase octane number in gasoline, or use lead-based paints. \n\nHowever, it is less well-known that lead is often radioactive. Natural lead is a mixture of four stable isotopes: 204Pb (1.48%), 206Pb (23.6%), 207Pb (22.6%), and 208Pb (52.3%). These lead isotopes are the result of the decay of uranium (Pb206), actinium (Pb207) and thorium (Pb208). There are also another 27 other radioactive isotopes of lead that are possible, but if they are present naturally, they are present only in tiny amounts. \n \n\n\nPb204 is only very slightly radioactive, with a half-life of 1.4e17 years (longer than the present age of the universe). Pb205 does not occur naturally, and has a half life of 1.53e7 years. Pb206, Pb207 and Pb208 are not at all radioactive. Pb210 is only present in trace amounts in the natural environment, and has a half life of 22.3 years. The decay products are alpha particles and beta particles, both of which are easily blocked (in contrast to gamma radiation).\n\nRecently, the State of Illinois determined that some products made with lead were contaminated with radioactive lead (see attached reference). However, on studying the problem, both the state of Illinois and the EPA decided that the hazards due to radiation were very limited.\n\nRemember, one increases substantially ones exposure to radiation by taking a plane flight, or by moving to Denver. The increase in radiation exposure has to be balanced against what is present in the natural environment. \n\nAlso, it is not clear how dangerous low levels of radiation are. There is a concept called radiation hormesis that has been around for a long time, but is now being reexamined carefully again. It is possible that small doses of radiation might be helpful in some cases (see reference).
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Yes it can be dangerous.\n\nIt is a very reactive element and can explode/combust when it comes into contact with water, air, flames, acid etc.\n\nIt is generally stored in oil where it is relatively safe, because it is protected from the things mentioned above.
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When transuranic elements decay, the produce lots of energy. Some of this energy is in the form of photons. These photons are basicly particles of light, exept they are to high frequency to see. As such, they are very dangerous, because they can damage DNA which can lead to cancer.