Interactions of hazardous materials Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

Interactions of hazardous materials - Essay Example Total dose of rem determines how much the radiation can harm a person. A 25 rem dosage of radiation causes changes that can be detected in the blood while doses around 100 rems normally don’t have immediate effects. Radiation of 50 rems causes nausea, 55 rem fatigue, 70 rem vomiting, 75 hair loss, 90 diarrheas, 100 hemorrhage and 400 can possibly cause death within a period of 2 months. 1,000 rems cause destruction of intestinal lining and death within two weeks while rem of 2,000 damages the central nerve system and causes death within minutes (Walker, 2006). In Three Mile Island incident, the radiation that was released was minimal, far below the levels associated with health effects resulting from radiation exposure. In the incident, 2.4 million curies of radioactive noble gases and 16 curies of radioiodines were released (Mac Kinney & Schoch, 2003). The resulted average radiation dose to people living in that area was 1.4 mrem. In chest X-ray, a patient receives 3.2 mrem this is twice more than the radiation released during the incident. In the Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union, the radiation level in some areas was about 20,000 roentgens per hour and this cause death to some workers. Average radiation dose for the people who was affected most was 120 mSv; this was mainly those who were assisting in the recovery operation and a dosage of 30 mSv for the evacuated