“Health Effects of Ionizing
Radiation on Children”
Rîsitsa Kusheva, Radostina Georgieva, Jana Djunova
National Center of Radiobiology and Radiation Protection, 2004
The
sources of ionizing radiation have wide application nowadays. If their
use is in accordance with the principles of radiation protection, the
absorbed doses are relatively low. Health effects as a result of irradiation
depend on two components – type, energy and prolongation of irradiation
and on the nature of the human being.
Various biomarkers are used in defineding
these effects. With the integration of new knowledge and methods of molecular
mechanisms of radiation damage and the already existing classical epidemiological
methods we shall have the possibility to clarified the risk especially
in the low dose range.
The authors discuss mainly the late
effects of radiation. The essential part of the present work is dedicated
to medical irradiation. When analyzing the available data the authors
came to the conclusion that there is no need to limit the procedure but
only to precise it. They consider the adaptation of physical parameters
of the device to the child’s size very important in reducing the dose.
Another important source of
radiation is the environmental pollution due to atomic bombs, nuclear
weapon tests, nuclear accidents, uranium mining pollution, radioactive
waste pollution. The late effects are usually leukemia and some solid
tumors with different localization as that of thyroid gland, intoxication
with heavy metals and others. They shortened the child’s lifespan and
worsened its quality.
It is important to mention that
when certain effect are characterized as radiogenic we shall always have
in mind that the child is exposed to a combined effect of different factors.
The radiation interacts with chemical substances and biological agents
from the environment, which are important modifiers in many biological
processes and influence the final results. The effect of every one of
them had to be weighed carefully.