Biological effects of Ionising Radiation Flashcards
What two forms can be ionising radiation be divided into?
- By-products of radioactive decay
- Artificially produced electromagnetic radiation
What categories can By-products of radioactive decay by further separated into?
- Alpha particle (2protons/ 2neutrons) Large particle and 20um in water
- Beta particle (electron), v small and less than 1cm in water
- Gamma ray (form of EM radiation), high energy, travels long distances, 10s of cm in water
What is ionising radiation?
- Atoms have equal number of protons and electrons
- Ions are charged
- Ionising radiation has enough energy to turn atoms into ions
- Does this by removing electron orbiting the nucleus of atom and leaves ion with +ve charge
What is an ion pair?
- +vely charged ion and negative electron
What occurs during interaction of radiation?
- When radiation passes through matter it will ionise atoms along its path
- After each ionisation process, each ion pair, will deposit certain amount of energy locally
- Approx 35eV for air and tissue
- This energy greater than energy involved in atomic bonds e.g. ionic and covalent bonds in molecules have approx 4eV
How ionising are gamma and electrons?
- Sparsely ionising
How ionising are alpha particles, protons and neutron?
- Densely ionising
What is the most significant effect of ionising radiation?
- Damage to DNA most significant
What does evidence of DNA damage show us?
- Can be see in faulty repair of chromosome breaks in DNA
- Leads to development of abnormal cell populations and development of cancer
- Faulty repair of breaks seen in individuals exposed to large radiation doses
- Majority of damage is easily repaired, depending on category of damage
How can DNA damage by radiation occur?
- Directly
- Indirectly
What is the Direct effect of radiation to DNA?
- Radiation interacts with atoms of DNA molecule or another important part of cell
What is the Indirect effect of radiation to DNA?
- Radiation interacts with water in cell (75% water)
- When water molecule becomes ionised it forms a highly reactive free radical
- Two free radicals can combine to form hydroxyl radical
- Hydroxyl radical can diffuse short distances and cause DNA damage
What are free radicals?
- Unstable, highly reactive molecules
What factors does the biological effect of DNA damage depend on?
- Type of radiation
- Amount of radiation (dose)
- Time over which dose is received (dose rate)
- Tissue or cell type irradiated
What is the correlation between radiation doses and damage?
- Low doses of radiation produce less damage
- Linear relationship for alpha particles and kills more cells than similar dose of x-rays would