adiation can harm cells even if they don't take a direct hit, according to a new study. Injured cells apparently pass on damage to neighboring cells through gap junctions. The report has raised a ruckus because it suggests that current safety standards may underestimate the hazards from low-level radiation exposure Although some scientists suspected that radiation damage might spread from cell ...

Exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation is associated with damage to the heart and coronary arteries. However, only recently have studies with high-quality individual dosimetry data allowed this risk to be estimated while adjusting for concomitant chemotherapy. An association between lower dose exposures and late-occurring circulatory disease has only recently been suspected in the Japanes...

background: the exposure of human being to ionize radiation from natural sources is a continuing, inescapable feature of life on earth. direct measurement of absorbed dose rates in air has been carried out in many countries of the world during the last few decades. such investigations can be useful for assessment of public dose rates, the performance of epidemiological studies, and keeping refe...

We investigated the motility and morphology of live sperm from barn swallows Hirundo rustica breeding in radioactively contaminated areas around Chernobyl and control areas in Ukraine in order to test the hypothesis that swimming behaviour and morphology of sperm was impaired by radioactive contamination. We obtained sperm samples from 98% of sampled birds, thus avoiding sampling bias due to th...

Cytogenetic investigation of stable-type aberrations (translocations) was carried out with our improved methods on 28 elderly individuals in a high-background radiation area (HBRA) in China, and on 24 elderly individuals in a control area (CA). The level of radiation in HBRA is 3 to 5 times higher than in CA. The mean frequencies of translocations per 1,000 cells in HBRA and CA were 12.4 +/- 5....