Birth defects caused by radiation
Radiation and Pregnancy: Information for Clinicians
This overview provides physicians with information about prenatal radiation exposure as an aid in counseling pregnant women.
How to use this document
This information is for clinicians. If you are a patient, we strongly advise that you consult with your physician to interpret the information provided, as it may not apply to you. Information on radiation exposure during pregnancy for members of the public can be found on the Health Information for Specific Groups webpage.
CDC recognizes that providing information and advice about radiation to expectant mothers falls into the broader context of preventive healthcare counseling during prenatal care. In this setting, the purpose of the communication is always to promote health and long-term quality of life for the mother and child.
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Radiation exposure to a fetus
Most of the ways a pregnant woman may be exposed to radiation, such as from a diagnostic medical exam or an occupational exposure within regulatory limits, are not likely to cause health effects for a fetus. However, accidental or intentional exposure above regulatory limits may be cause for concern.
Although radiation doses to a fetus tend to be lower than the dose to the mother, due to protection from the uterus and surrounding tissues, the human embryo and fetus are sensitive to ionizing radiation at doses greater than 0.1 gray (Gy). Depending on the stage of fetal development, the health consequences of exposure at doses greater than 0.5 Gy can be severe, even if such a dose is too low to cause an immediate effect for the mother. The health consequences can include growth restriction, malformations, impaired brain function, and cancer.
Estimating the Radiation Dose to the Embryo or Fetus
Health effects to a fetus from radiation exposure depend largely on the radiation dose. Estimating the radiation dose to the fetus requires consideration of all sources external and internal to the mother’s body, including the following:
- Dose from an external source of radiation to the mother’s abdomen.
- Dose from inhaling or ingesting a radioactive substance that enters the bloodstream and that may through the placenta.
- Dose from radioactive substances that may concentrate in maternal tissues surrounding the uterus, such as the bladder, and that could irradiate the fetus.
Most radioactive substances that reach the mother’s blood can be detected in the fetus’ blood. The concentration of the substance depends on its specific properties and the stage of fetal development. A few substances needed for fetal growth and development (such as iodine) can concentrate more in the fetus than in corresponding maternal tissue.
Consideration of the dose to specific fetal organs is important for substances that can localize in specific organs and tissues in the fetus, such as iodine-131 or iodine-123 in the thyroid, iron-59 in the liver, gallium-67 in the spleen, and strontium-90 and yttrium-90 in the skeleton.
Radiation experts can assist in estimating the radiation dose to the embryo or fetus
Hospital medical physicists and health physicists are good resources for expertise in estimating the radiation dose to the fetus.
In addition to the hospital or clinic’s specialized staff, physicians may access resources from or contact the following organizations for assistance in estimating fetal radiation dose.
- The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurementsexternal icon’ Report No. 174, “Preconception and Prenatal Radiation Exposure: Health Effects and Protective Guidance” [NCRP2013] provides detailed information for assessing fetal doses from internal uptakes.
- The International Commission on Radiological Protection’s “Publication 84: Pregnancy and Medical Radiation”external icon [ICRP2000] provides fetal dose estimations from medical exposures to pregnant women.
- The Conference of Radiation Control Program Directorsexternal icon maintains a list of state Radiation Control/Radiation Protection program contact information.
- The Health Physics Societyexternal icon maintains a list of active certified Health Physicists.
- The American Association of Physicists in Medicineexternal icon provides information resources.
Once the fetal radiation dose is estimated, potential health effects can be assessed.
Potential Health Effects of Prenatal Radiation Exposure (Other Than Cancer)
Table 1 summarizes the potential non-cancer health risks of concern. This table is intended to help physicians advise pregnant women who may have been exposed to radiation, not as a definitive recommendation. The indicated doses and times post-conception are approximations.
| Acute Radiation Dose* to the Embryo/Fetus | Time Post Conception (up to 2 weeks) | Time Post Conception (3rd to 5th weeks) | Time Post Conception (6th to 13th weeks) | Time Post Conception (14th to 23rd weeks) | Time Post Conception (24th week to term) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
<0. 10 Gy (10 rads) | Noncancer health effects NOT detectable | ||||
| 0.10–0.50 Gy (10–50 rads) | Failure to implant may increase slightly, but surviving embryos will probably have no significant (non-cancer) health effects. | Growth restriction possible | Growth restriction possible | Noncancer health effects unlikely | |
| > 0.50 Gy (50 rads) The expectant mother may be experiencing acute radiation syndrome in this range, depending on her whole-body dose. | Failure to implant will likely be high, depending on dose, but surviving embryos will probably have no significant (non- cancer) health effects. | Probability of miscarriage may increase, depending on dose. Probability of major malformations, such as neurological and motor deficiencies, increases. Growth restriction is likely | Probability of miscarriage may increase, depending on dose. Growth restriction is likely. | Probability of miscarriage may increase, depending on dose. Growth restriction is possible, depending on dose. (Less likely than during the 6th to 13th weeks post conception) Probability of major malformations may increase | Miscarriage and neonatal death may occur, depending on dose. § |
| 8th to 25th Weeks Post Conception: The most vulnerable period for intellectual disability is 8th to 15th weeks post conception Severe intellectual disability is possible during this period at doses > 0.5 Gy Prevalence of intellectual disability (IQ<70) is 40% after an exposure of 1 Gy from 8th to 15th week Prevalence of intellectual disability (IQ<70) is 15% after an exposure of 1 Gy from 16th to 25th week Table adapted from Table 1.1. of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements’ Report No. | |||||
174, “Preconception and Prenatal Radiation Exposure: Health Effects and Protective Guidance” [NCRP2013].Gestational age and radiation dose are important determinants of potential non-cancer health effects. The following points are of particular note.
- During the first 2 weeks post-conception, the health effect of concern from an exposure of ≥ 0.1 Gy is the possibility of death of the embryo. Because the embryo is made up of only a few cells, damage to one cell, the progenitor of many other cells, may cause the death of the embryo, and the blastocyst may fail to implant in the uterus. Embryos that survive, however, are unlikely to exhibit congenital abnormalities or other non-cancer health effects, no matter what dose of radiation they received.
- In all stages post-conception, radiation-induced non-cancer health effects are not detectable for fetal doses below about 0.10 Gy.
Carcinogenic Effects of Prenatal Radiation Exposure
Radiation exposure to an embryo/fetus may increase the risk of cancer in the offspring, especially at radiation doses > 0.
1 Gy, which are well above typical doses received in diagnostic radiology. However, attempting to quantify cancer risks from prenatal radiation exposure presents many challenges. These challenges include the following:
- The primary data for the risk of developing cancer from prenatal exposure to radiation come from the lifespan study of the Japanese atomic bomb (A-bomb) survivors. [Preston et al. 2008]. The analysis of that cohort includes cancer incidence data only up to the age of 50 years. This precludes making lifespan risk estimates as a result of prenatal radiation exposure.
- From the Japanese lifespan study [Preston et al. 2008], it can be concluded that for those exposed
in early childhood (birth to age 5 years), the theoretical risk of an adult-onset cancer by age 50 is approximately ten-fold greater than the risk for those who received prenatal exposure. Therefore, the risk following prenatal exposure may be considerably lower than for radiation exposure in early childhood
[NCRP2013].
- No reliable epidemiological data are available from studies to determine which stage of pregnancy is the most sensitive for radiation-induced cancer in the offspring [NCRP2013].
The lifespan study of the Japanese A-bomb survivors is continuing as the cohort ages. Future analyses of the accumulating data should provide a better understanding of the lifetime risk of cancer from prenatal and early childhood radiation exposure.
References
ICRP2000] International Commission on Radiological Protection. 2000. Valentin, J. (2000). Pregnancy and medical radiation. Oxford: Published for the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
[NCRP2013] National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. 2013. Preconception and Prenatal Radiation Exposure Health Effects and Protective Guidance. (2013). Bethesda: National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements.
Preston DL, Cullings H, Suyama A, Funamoto S, Nishi N, Soda M, Mabuchi K, Kodama K, Kasagi F, Shore RE.
2008. Solid cancer incidence in atomic bomb survivors exposed in utero or as young children. J Natl Cancer Inst 100(6):428-436.
[UNSCEAR2013] United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. 2013. Sources, effects and risks of ionizing radiation. Vol. II, Scientific Annex B: Effects of radiation exposure of children.
For more information on medical management and other topics on radiation emergencies:
Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Siteexternal icon (REAC/TS) is a program uniquely qualified to teach medical personnel, health physicists, first responders and occupational health professionals about radiation emergency medical response.
Radiation Emergency Medical Management (REMM)external icon provides guidance to health care providers (primarily physicians) about clinical diagnosis and treatment of radiation injury during radiological and nuclear emergencies.
Conference of Radiation Control Program Directorsexternal icon
Health Physics Societyexternal icon
International Commission on Radiological Protectionexternal icon
National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurementsexternal icon
American Association of Physicists in Medicineexternal icon
Radiation exposure during pregnancy | Pregnancy Birth and Baby
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What is radiation?
If you’re pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant, you might be worried about x-rays and other forms of radiation.
It's important you discuss any concerns with your doctor and always tell a health professional that you are pregnant before you have any medical imaging.
Radiation is energy that travels through air, and some materials, as waves or tiny particles. We are exposed daily to radiation from different natural and artificial sources, such as the sun, microwaves and radio waves.
The type of radiation used in medical imaging is called ionising radiation. In Australia, people receive about 1,500 to 2,000 μSv of ionising radiation every year from natural sources. This level of radiation is not harmful.
A typical x-ray or CT scan of exposes you to 2,600 μSv of ionising radiation.
X-rays and some other forms of radiation can alter the molecules that make up the body. At high enough doses, radiation can kill cells and damage genes.
Medical procedures that give off radiation
If you are pregnant or think you might be pregnant, you should be cautious about medical procedures that use radiation, such as:
- x-rays
- CT scans
- mammography
- fluoroscopy
- nuclear medicine
- angiography
Tell your doctor and tell the radiology practice before you have any tests.
You can discuss whether they can be delayed or avoided, and whether there are alternative tests.
Tests that don’t use radiation, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or ultrasound, may be useful alternatives in some situations.
What are the effects of radiation on a mother and unborn baby?
Any harm to the developing baby will depend on:
- the radiation dose – smaller doses (amounts) are safer
- the age of the fetus – the further along you are in your pregnancy, the better
- where the radiation is administered – tests involving your abdomen or pelvis, or where the radiation is carried in your blood, pose a higher risk than other tests
Most radiation exposure during medical testing is unlikely to harm a developing baby. But sometimes, depending on the radiation dose and the developmental stage of the fetus, the effects can be serious and may result in:
- failure of the embryo to implant
- miscarriage
- abnormalities of the central nervous system
- congenital malformations
- slower than normal growth
- malformation
- cataracts
- childhood cancer
Accidental exposure to radiation
If you are accidently exposed to radiation from medical imaging while you are pregnant, you should talk to your doctor.
The risk to your baby can be worked out using a formula and should be calculated by an expert. Most normal doses or a single exposure to radiation are not likely to be harmful to the baby.
If you are exposed to radiation in an emergency, you should follow instructions from emergency officials and seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Usually, the fetus receives less radiation than the mother. The mother’s abdomen partially protects the baby. However, if you swallow or breathe in radiation, it can cross over into the baby. The baby is most sensitive to radiation from 2 to 18 weeks of pregnancy.
If you are exposed to radiation while you are breastfeeding, you should feed your baby with pre-pumped and stored breast milk or formula, if possible. If there is no other source of food available to feed your baby, then continue to breastfeed, but wipe the breast and nipple thoroughly with soap and water before feeding.
Speak to your doctor or health professional about when to start breastfeeding again.
Radiotherapy for cancer
Radiotherapy, or radiation therapy, is a treatment for some sorts of cancers. Sometimes a pregnant woman is advised to have radiotherapy as a treatment for cancer during pregnancy. If you’re in this situation, you and your doctor can weigh up the benefits of the radiotherapy against any potential harm to your developing baby.
If you suspect you may be pregnant at any stage of radiotherapy, you should discuss with your doctor whether to continue the treatment.
Radioactive material can be passed to babies through breast milk. Breastfeeding mothers undergoing radiotherapy should ask a health professional for advice.
Radiation, pregnancy and the workplace
If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, and your work exposes you to radiation, it is important to discuss alternative roles with your employer.
Speak to a healthcare professional if you are worried about radiotherapy exposure during pregnancy.
Sources:
Department of Health (Prenatal Radiation Exposure), Inside Radiology (Radiation Risk of Medical Imaging During Pregnancy), Cancer Council NSW (Common questions about radiation), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Radiation emergencies and pregnancy), ANSTO (What is radiation?)Learn more here about the development and quality assurance of healthdirect content.
Last reviewed: June 2021
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Chernobyl: the consequences of the disaster
At the request of the Rules of Life, Alexander Berezin figured out a difficult topic and told how radiation affects a person, how many lives Chernobyl actually claimed, and why one of the most terrible consequences of the nuclear disaster in Pripyat is a slowdown in the development of nuclear energy.
Alexander Berezin
Tags:
accident
catastrophe
Chernobyl
Let's start with the main thing - the discrepancy between public opinion about the effects of radiation and the facts obtained as a result of research (and this discrepancy is so large that it surprised even the scientists themselves - there is confirmation of this in most of the reports).
So, after the nuclear disaster near Pripyat, radiation killed about 4,000 people. There were no congenital malformations of children or a decrease in their mental abilities after the disaster, just as there were none after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are no mutant animals in the Chernobyl exclusion zone either. On the other hand, there are a considerable number of people who created and supported the Chernobyl myths and are thus indirectly guilty of the premature end of thousands of human lives. The most fatal result is that most of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster died from banal fear, despite the fact that they did not suffer from the radiation associated with the accident.
Radiation in the text below refers to ionizing radiation. It can affect a person in different ways: at high doses, it can cause radiation sickness, the first signs of which are nausea, vomiting, and then damage to a number of internal organs follows. By itself, ionizing radiation acts on us constantly, but usually its values are small (less than 0.
003 Sv per year). Apparently, such doses do not have a noticeable effect on people. For example, there are some places where the radiation background is much higher than usual: in the Iranian Ramsar it is 80 times higher than the average for the planet, but the mortality from diseases usually associated with radiation is even lower than in other parts of Iran and most regions of the world.
At the same time, high doses of radiation - especially those received in a short time - can cause great harm to health. After the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many thousands died from radiation sickness. Moreover, among the survivors, cancer occurred 42% more often than among their peers from other cities in Japan that were not bombed. Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due to more frequent cancer, had an average life expectancy one year lower than the Japanese population of other cities of the same era. For comparison: in Russia since 1986 to 1994, life expectancy declined six times more than for Japanese survivors of Hiroshima.
How many victims of Chernobyl were there: a million or more?
In 2007, a group of Russian scientists published the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment by the New York Academy of Sciences. In it, they compared mortality in the "Chernobyl" zones of the former USSR before and after 1986. It turned out that in two decades the Chernobyl disaster led to premature death 985 thousand people. Since a certain number of victims could have been outside the Chernobyl zones (after all, there were migrations to other areas), the figure, according to the authors of the book, could go beyond a million.
Questions arise: why did the authors of the book, well-known scientists, members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, not write and publish it in Russia? And why are there no reviews of other scientists in the publication - after all, the issue of a million victims of Chernobyl is extremely important for society?
The answer to this question was given by many reviews of the book that appeared in the English-language scientific literature.
The vast majority of these reviews are devastating. Their authors repeat a simple idea: to compare mortality in the USSR to 1986 years and after it is incorrect. The reason for this is that after the collapse of the USSR, life expectancy collapsed in all its former territories. In 1986, the average life expectancy in the RSFSR was 70.13 years, and already in 1994 it fell to 63.98 years. Now, even in Papua New Guinea, life expectancy is two years longer than it was in Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s.
The drop was very sharp - in the countries affected by Chernobyl, they began to live 6.15 years less in just eight years. The level of life expectancy of the time of the catastrophe near Pripyat, Russia managed to achieve again only in 2013 - 27 years later. All this time, mortality was above the Soviet level. Absolutely the same picture was in Ukraine.
But the reason there was not at all in Chernobyl: the fall happened outside the pollution zone, and even outside the European part of Russia.
And this is understandable: the USSR collapsed everywhere, and not just where the radionuclides fell from the fourth power unit. That is, the book of Russian scientists with about a million "died" from the consequences of an atomic catastrophe simply took the sharp effect of excess mortality that arose from the decline and collapse of the USSR, and pretended that these were the consequences of radiation. Of course, it would make no sense to publish such a tendentious work in Russian: it would simply be ridiculed.
How many people actually suffered
Today, as in 1986, a really dangerous dose of radiation that can lead to radiation sickness or other acute forms of damage is considered to be 0.5 Sv per year (such, in particular, NASA standards). After this mark, an increase in the number of cancer cases and other unpleasant consequences of radiation damage begins. A dose of 5 Sv received per hour is usually lethal.
In Chernobyl, a maximum of hundreds of people received a dose higher than half a sievert.
134 of them had radiation sickness, of which 28 died. Two more people died after the accident from mechanical damage and one from thrombosis (associated with stress, not radiation). In total, 31 people died immediately after the accident - less than after the explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station in 2009year (75 people).
The radionuclides released during the accident had a noticeable carcinogenic effect - and it was he who was the most massive damaging factor in the accident. It would seem that it would be quite simple to calculate how many people died of cancer where the “Chernobyl” fallout fell before 1986 and compare the data with cancer deaths after that year. The problem is that the incidence of cancer after 1986 has grown and is growing outside the Chernobyl zone, and it does this even in Australia or New Zealand - areas not affected by the radionuclides of the fourth power unit. Scientists have long stated that something in the modern lifestyle causes cancer more often, but there is still no complete understanding of the reasons for this.
It is only clear that this process is also taking place in those parts of the world where there are no nuclear power plants at all.
Fortunately, there are other counting methods that are more honest. The most dangerous radionuclide of the Chernobyl accident was iodine-131, a very short-lived isotope that quickly decays and therefore gives the maximum level of nuclear fission per unit of time. It accumulates in the thyroid gland. That is, the bulk of cancers, including the most severe ones, should be thyroid cancer. By 2004, there were 4,000 cases of such cancer, mostly among children. However, this type of cancer is the easiest to treat - after removal of the gland, it practically does not relapse. Only 15 out of 4,000 patients died.
The World Health Organization has been accumulating data and building models for almost 20 years to understand how many people could die from other types of cancer. On the one hand, the probability of any cancer in Chernobyl victims is much lower than thyroid cancer, but on the other hand, other types of cancer are treated worse.
As a result, the organization came to the conclusion that the total number of victims of Chernobyl from cancer and leukemia during their entire lives would be less than 4,000 people.
Let us emphasize that any human life is valuable, and four thousand is a very large number. But, for example, in 2016, 303 people died in plane crashes all over the Earth. That is, Chernobyl is equal to all the plane crashes in the world in a few years. The events at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant look threatening only against the background of nuclear energy in general: all the accidents at all other nuclear power plants on the planet killed only a few people. Chernobyl thus accounts for 99.9% of all victims of nuclear energy in its entire long history.
How fear of radiation, not radiation itself, claimed several hundred thousand lives
Unfortunately, these 4000 are most likely only a minority of the victims of the Chernobyl accident.
In 2015, an article was published in the scientific journal Lancet, noting that the main consequences of nuclear accidents are psychological. People often do not fully understand how radiation works, and they do not know that the number of its victims in the media is often exaggerated. Therefore, often the sources of knowledge about the atomic threat are Hollywood science fiction films about the post-nuclear apocalypse, where you can see mutants even a hundred years after a nuclear catastrophe.
Therefore, in 1986, many pregnant women in Europe feared that Chernobyl's emissions would deform their unborn children. So they went to hospitals and demanded an abortion. According to scientific papers on this topic, there were about 400 "Chernobyl" abortions in Denmark, and 2,500 in Greece. Similar phenomena were noted in Italy and other Western European countries. The authors of the study on Greece note that these figures are high for a rather small country, therefore, in principle, they are compatible with the IAEA's tentative estimates, according to which Chernobyl caused about 100-200 thousand additional abortions, prompted by the fear of congenital deformities.
In practice, no such deformities were registered anywhere after Chernobyl. All scientific works on this topic are unanimous: they simply did not exist. From the experience of radiotherapy for cancer, it is known that a large dose of radiation received by a pregnant woman can cause deformities in her unborn child - but only really large, tenths of a sievert. To get it, a pregnant woman would have to visit the territory of the nuclear power plant immediately after the accident. Since there were no pregnant women among the liquidators, none of the most thorough searches for an increase in the number of deformities led to any results at all - not only in Europe, but also among women from the evacuation zone.
We sincerely hope that the IAEA's estimates of 100,000–200,000 "Chernobyl" abortions are inaccurate and that fewer actually occurred. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say for sure, because in the USSR in 1986, those wishing to have an abortion were not asked about the reasons for their decision.
And yet, judging by the figures in relatively small Greece and Denmark, the number of abortions caused by an irrational fear of an accident is much greater than the number of victims of the accident itself.
At the same time, these consequences can hardly be attributed only to the reactor accident. Rather, we are talking about the victims of the educational system, the victims of cinema and the media, who willingly replicated well-selling films and articles about the horrors of radiation and the deformities of newborns that it should cause.
Genetic defects and infertility from radiation
It is often believed that radiation can increase the chance of infertility in those who have been exposed to it, or bring genetic defects to their children. Of course, this is quite possible, and cases of intuitive radiotherapy of pregnant cancer patients show this. However, this requires rather high doses of radiation: the fetus is protected from ionizing radiation by the mother's body, and the placenta reduces the amount of radionuclides that can enter the fetus from the mother's body.
A radiation dose of 3.4-4.5 sieverts can cause serious damage to the fetus - that is, after which it is not easy for a person, especially a woman (they are considered less resistant to radiation), to survive on their own.
Even after the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a survey of 3,000 pregnant women exposed to the maximum level of radiation damage did not show any increase in the number of birth defects among their children. If in Hiroshima in the first years after the atomic bombing 0.91% of newborns had birth defects, then, for example, in Tokyo (where there were no atomic explosions) - 0.92%. This, of course, does not mean that the probability of birth defects decreases after nuclear bombings, just that the gap of 0.01% is too low and can be generated by chance.
Scientists speculate that radiation defects could theoretically occur: some models show that for pregnant women who were close to a nuclear strike, the increase in the number of defects could be 25 cases per 1 million births.
The problem is that neither after the atomic bombings, nor after Chernobyl, a million pregnant women were observed in the zone of serious radiation damage. In the thousands of pregnancies available, it is almost impossible to statistically reliably detect an effect in 25 millionths.
In the case of Chernobyl, not a single woman is known who would receive not only 3.4-4.5 sieverts, but also ten times less. Therefore, the probability of birth defects in children was even lower here than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where there were pregnant women who received more than half a sievert.
The popular notion that a woman can become infertile due to radiation is also not supported by research. Separate cases of infertility from radiation are known - after radiotherapy for cancer, when a huge, but strictly localized dose of ionizing radiation is applied to the ovaries. The problem is that during a radiation accident, radiation enters the entire body of a woman.
The dose required to achieve infertility is so high that a person will surely die before he can receive it outside of radiotherapy, in which only strictly directed radiation is used.
A natural question arises: if all scientific works on the topic point to the absence of observable abnormalities in newborns and zero chances of sterilization by radiation, then where did the idea come from in society that radiation massively leads to infertility in adults and deformities in children?
Ironically, the reasons for this lie in popular culture. In the first half of the last century, radiation (it was also called x-rays) was attributed magical properties. The science of that time did not have accurate data on the effects of radiation on humans - Hiroshima had not happened yet. Therefore, the point of view has spread that even a small dose of it can make a child a mutant or turn a potential mother into an infertile woman. At 19Between 24 and 1957, within the framework of eugenic programs to "cleanse" genetically "wrong" expectant mothers (mentally ill and others) in the United States, they even tried to sterilize such women with radiation against their will.
However, such experiments had a ridiculous result: more than 40% of the "sterilized" successfully gave birth to healthy children. There would have been even more children if it were not for the fact that among those forcibly sterilized there were many women who were kept in lunatic asylums and therefore had limited access to men. As we can see, the scope of the myth about "sterilizing" and "disfiguring" radiation was huge even before the fall of the first atomic bomb.
Can nuclear energy be considered relatively safe?
It's not that hard to do. According to generally accepted American estimates of the death of US citizens from TPP emissions, 52 thousand people die prematurely from them annually in the States. This is a little more than 4,000 per month, or more than one Chernobyl per month. These people die, as a rule, without having the slightest idea why this is happening. Unlike nuclear energy with its radiation, the impact of thermal energy on the human body is little known to the masses.
The main mechanism of action of TES on health is microparticles with a diameter of less than 10 micrometers. A person drives through the lungs 15 kilograms of air per day, and all particles less than 10 micrometers can enter his blood directly through the lungs - our respiratory system simply does not know how to filter such small objects. Foreign microparticles cause cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and much more in humans. The circulatory system is not designed to pump foreign microparticles, and they become the centers of blood clots and can seriously affect the heart.
Unfortunately, in our country, there are no studies on the number of people who die annually from thermal energy. However, in the same USA, the “norms” of deaths from the operation of thermal power plants have long been calculated. The purest type of them are gas thermal power plants, they kill only 4,000 people per trillion kilowatt-hours, coal - at least 10 thousand for the same output.
In our country, thermal power plants produce 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, some of which are still coal-fired. Judging by the American "standards", Russia's thermal power industry should kill as many people every year as nuclear power has killed in its entire history.
Nuclear energy, taking into account the victims of Chernobyl and Fukushima, gives a death rate of 90 deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours of generation. This is dozens of times less than gas-fired thermal power plants (recall: 4,000 per trillion kilowatt-hours), more than a hundred times less than coal-fired thermal power plants, and 15 times less than hydroelectric power plants (1,400 deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours, mostly from the destruction of the flesh and subsequent floods). In 2010, windmills produced 150 deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours - during their installation and maintenance, people regularly fall down and die. Solar panels installed on the roofs of houses are also not without breaks, so they are five times less safe than nuclear power plants - they give 440 deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours of output.
It’s very bad with biofuel thermal power plants: it produces more solid impurities and microparticles than gas and coal, killing 24,000 people per trillion kilowatt-hours of output.
Only large solar power plants are truly safe: their solar panels are installed at low altitude and there are vanishingly few deaths during their construction.
According to NASA researchers, the total number of deaths that nuclear power plants prevented by replacing thermal power generation was 1.8 million until 2009 alone. Nevertheless, no one knows any of this outside the scientific community, because scientific journals are written in a language that is rather unpleasant to read, saturated with terms and therefore not the easiest to read. But the popular media talk a lot about the Chernobyl disaster and willingly: unlike scientific articles, these are well-read texts.
Therefore, Chernobyl severely slowed down the construction of nuclear power plants both in the USSR and abroad.
Moreover, he did it irrevocably: one can confidently say that neither the majority of the media nor the cinema will ever cover the nuclear power plant differently than today. Screenwriters just don't read scientific papers. Therefore, the share of nuclear energy in global generation is steadily stagnating and will continue to stagnate. At the same time, the global energy industry is growing, so that nuclear power plants are being replaced by gas energy and, so far, to a lesser extent, wind and solar. If windmills and solar panels (except for those on roofs) are relatively safe, then gas thermal power plants kill people dozens of times more efficiently than nuclear ones.
Thus, Chernobyl kills not only with fear, as in the case of the 1986 abortions, but also with the fact that it slowed down the development of relatively safe nuclear energy. The results of this deceleration are difficult to express in exact numbers, but we are talking about hundreds of thousands of lives.
Human exposure to radiation
10. Human exposure to radiation The effects of human exposure to radiation are generally divided into two categories (Fig. 10):
Fig. Distinguish between threshold (deterministic) and stochastic effects. The former occur when the number of cells that die as a result of irradiation who have lost the ability to reproduce or function normally, reaches a critical value, at which the functions are noticeably impaired affected organs. The dependence of the severity of the violation on the magnitude of the radiation dose shown in table 30. Table 30.
Chronic exposure has a weaker effect on a living organism compared with a single irradiation at the same dose, which is associated with permanent ongoing processes of restoration of radiation damage. It's believed that approximately 90% of radiation damage is repaired. Table 31.
* The total population includes not only the generally healthy working staff, but also critical groups (children, the elderly, etc.) Radionuclides accumulate unevenly in organs. AT in the process of metabolism in the human body, they replace the atoms of stable elements in various cell structures, biologically active compounds, which results in high local doses. The decay of a radionuclide produces isotopes chemical elements belonging to neighboring groups of the periodic system, which can lead to the breaking of chemical bonds and rearrangement of molecules. thyroid > liver > skeleton > muscles. Thus, up to 30% of absorbed fission products, mainly radioisotopes of iodine. Table 32.
* Percentage of total dose received by all human body. Among man-made radionuclides of special attention deserve isotopes of iodine . They have a high chemical activity, are able to be intensively included in the biological cycle and migrate along biological chains, one of the links of which can be a person (Fig.
Common cancers due to radiation are breast cancer and thyroid cancer.     Welcome
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10. Radiation effects of human exposure. 
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Effect radiation exposure may manifest itself in a completely different place than was subjected to irradiation. Exceeding the dose of radiation can lead to depression body's immune system and make it susceptible to various diseases. Irradiation also increases the likelihood of malignant tumors. 
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Both of these types of cancer curable and UN estimates show that in the case of thyroid cancer, the lethal the outcome is observed in one person out of a thousand exposed to individual absorbed dose of one Gray. 
