How much harm does nuclear radiation cause to the human body

The effect of nuclear radiation on the human body is an extremely complex process. The human body undergoes many different types of changes from absorbing radiation energy to producing biological effects, and even to causing damage and death to the body.

Under the action of radiation, biomolecules in the human body, such as nucleic acids and proteins, are ionized or excited. The properties of these biomolecules will change as a result, and the functions and metabolism of cells will also be disrupted. Experiments have shown that radiation can cause DNA breakage or hinder molecular replication. In addition, biomolecules in the human body are present in a large number of water molecules. When radiation acts on water molecules, they are also ionized or excited, producing harmful free radicals (such as OH-1, H+radicals, etc.), which in turn cause damage to biomolecules in the water molecule environment.

Although radiation may cause damage to the human body, if the dose is not high, the body repairs damaged cells or local tissues through its own metabolic processes. The degree of this repair effect is related to the degree of initial damage and may vary among individuals.

Understanding the harm of radiation to different organs of the human body can help develop various radiation protection measures to safeguard people's health.

Radiation hazard level is a quantitative measure of the harm of radiation to health, which is necessary data for evaluating radiation hazards and establishing various dose limits. The following table lists the incidence of fatal cancer caused by radiation on different organs of the human body. The danger level in the table below is only a rough estimate. So far, there is still a lack of information on the relationship between radiation effects and dose, especially for populations at low doses and low dose rates. Therefore, hazard analysis is speculative, and the data and information it relies on mainly come from the results of single exposures of more than one mole, with a certain degree of uncertainty. Therefore, when applying it, attention should be paid to its limitations and it cannot be regarded as fixed or unchanging data.