The Effects Of Ionizing Radiation On The Navajo Miners

     About 12 - 14 days after the explosion, Father Kleinsorge, Mrs. Nakamura and Mr. Tanimoto fell ill with general malaise, weakness, tiredness, and fever. They did not know it but they were coming down with a disease that was later to be called radiation sickness. Miss Sasaki lay in

Beginning with the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, a widespread belief has proliferated that all levels of ionizing radiation are dangerous. Since 1980, radiation hormesis studies have shown there is actually a threshold of danger with high level exposures, but below that threshold low dose radiation is essentially safe and quite possibly beneficial to life. Yet, this relatively new, seemingly contradictory understanding of radiation's health effects has gone essentially unknown to the general public. In order to grasp the reasons why, we must again return to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Radiation sickness can have huge impacts on an individual’s immune system and the production of blood cell. The gastrointestinal system and bone marrow, where each of these essential systems of the human body are housed, are highly susceptible to radiation sickness. “...the gastrointestinal system and bone marrow are highly sensitive to radiation”(Mayo Clinic Staff 1). Radiation sickness has two main phases. The first phase mostly includes puking and feeling sick, but diarrhea, headache and fever isn’t uncommon. “The initial signs and symptoms of treatable

Mind, body and spirit are the foundation of the Navajo community. The Navajo culture is known to be very primitive and reserved. This could cause some complications in the health care field. Their basic lifestyle may lead to several health complications, belief in prayer and evil spirits is prominent, they believe that the role of a physician is to be a partner in their healing, there are several nursing practices that need to be considered when caring for a Navajo patient, and as a nurse it is important to treat these people with respect even if their ways may seems unorthodox.

that followed, a large number of deaths were added to that amount due to radiation sickness, a

Imagine living in a house called Hogan. It’s a house that the Navajo tribe lived in its quite fascinating. The Hogan houses were not that difficult to make all that was needed to make it were a few poles put together then on the surface it would be covered with branches, leaves, and mud. On the other hand, not everyone back then lived in Hogans like the Spanish colonies lived in actual houses from what we see today, but much smaller it had its own style. Back then or long ago not everything or everyone was similar it was quite different. There’s many differences between tribes and colonies like the example above the Spanish Colonies are very different then the Navajo tribe. The Spanish colonies are different than the Navajo tribe because the

It is now known that radium, shown in figure 4, is a potent carcinogen (a substance the cause’s cancer (Wilbraham, Staley, Marta, & Waterman, 2005)). It emits a form of ionizing radiation which “includes electromagnetic radiation (e.g., gamma rays and X-rays) as well as particles (e.g., alpha particles, beta particles, high-speed neutrons, high-speed electrons, high-speed protons, etc.)” (National Library of Medicine, n.d.). Acute studies have been done on the effects of radium exposure on the human body by organizations like the Geneva World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Man. As a result of their findings, The National Library of Medicine states that sufficient evidence has been provided showing that prolonged exposure to Raduim-224, Radium-226,

The subsistence of the Marshallese Islanders health plummeted. The U.S.’s Department of Energy (DOE) defined the people as two different categories “exposed” and “unexposed.” The exposed victims were those present during the 1954 Bravo blast. A U.S. agency named The Compact ran through the DOE determined who is exposed and needs assistance. The Compact did not find that the thousands of islanders who were relocated to the contaminated islands in 1958 by the U.S. to be considered “exposed.” These people would develop radiation illnesses of thyroid tumors, leukemia, cancer, reproductive problems, and genetic effects but weren’t entitled to any benefits. Instead the unexposed

Uranium mining on the Navajo Nation has had a negative impact on the land, the

“In the days following the American nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Dr. Michihiko Hachiya noticed strange symptoms among his patients. Some of the survivors who had made their way to the Hiroshima Communications Hospital complained of vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and general malaise in addition to their more visible wounds” (A Very Pleasant Way to Die': Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan). Then in the next eleven days new symptoms had started to appear. The patients had hemorrhages under their skin which appeared as a pattern of dots. Then in the following days the death rate had begun to go down since the initial impact of the bomb had started to go down had started to start going back up again. Some of the people who had only gotten minor injuries from the impact seemed to be on their way to recovery then out of nowhere died after getting these new symptoms. These symptoms are caused due to nuclear radiation. We even had information about it to “Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, information gathered by the Health Division during the war might have allowed Japanese physicians to better cope with the mysterious “atomic bomb disease” that continued to kill long after the surrender”(A Very Pleasant Way to Die': Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan).

There is cancer rooted in my family history. Did the nuclear radiation from these tests cause cancer? These are all important ideas needed to be discussed. My overall reason for writing this paper, though, is to discover the truth about nuclear tests and radiation.

With this stability and mass production, x-rays machines became very common everywhere. From large factories, to doctors offices, all the way to the corner store of small towns, where children and adults alike could insert a coin into a machine and view the bones in their feet. (3.) Because of their relative adolescences in the world, not much was known about x-rays or their effects on the human body. The first theories about the rays’ effects on the human body were that they had beneficial applications. With this being the only theory about their effect, widespread use went on, unmonitored, and unregulated. This unregulated use led to injuries but because of their slow onset the injuries were never attributed to x-rays. While some scientists tied certain skin burns to over exposure of x-rays it wasn’t until popular minds of the world like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and William J. Morton expressed that they experienced eye pain when dealing with the rays for extended periods of time that people began to connect the dots and understand the negative

In the first two weeks, trauma and mainly burns from the explosions rays and flames were to follow. In the third week or so people began to see symptoms of radiation damage such as loss of hair, anemia, loss of white cells, bleeding and diarrhea. 10% of these cases were fatal. (Destructive Effects). Throughout the third and fourth month of there seemed to be some improvement in

In an effort to address the issue of radio frequency radiation exposure in this community, we will provide a background on the sources of radio frequency radiation as well as the known and suspected health effects. We will also proposed two epidemiological studies and discuss risk management and

radiation (the kind used in X-rays) is known to cause cancer at high doses, the risks of