From Chernobyl To Mars: The Future Of Radiation Protection

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In the minutes after block 4 of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl exploded, no one knew that they are experiencing a disaster that had never happened anywhere before on planet Earth. The public health, environmental, and even the socio-political consequences were disastrous and we can still experience its negative impacts. That’s why we posed the question of what public health authorities, as well as individuals, can do to mitigate the consequences of radiation exposure, and what digital technologies are available for radiation detection. In this respect, after our investigations, it even turned out that it would be beneficial to get to Mars as soon as possible. Are you asking why? We can only tell you to read on.

Chernobyl brought nuclear energy issues back on the table

The HBO miniseries Chernobyl was a marvelous piece of television, but shocking for too many reasons: the political and sociological environment that greatly added to the catastrophe, the individual reactions to what happened and why, and the disastrous medical heritage that many still have been coping with for more than 30 years already. Moreover, the Chernobyl disaster still lingers over our head as we make decisions about public health issues and nuclear energy use – and on the brink of climate catastrophe, these questions are more topical now than ever.

Based in Eastern Europe and having some personal experience in the Eastern block in the Cold War, one of The Medical Futurist team’s favorite scenes in Chernobyl was when the team trying to conduct cleaning activities on the roof of the nuclear power plant tries the brand new unmanned robot sent from West Germany. The high-tech device operated only for a couple of seconds. It turned out later that the communist leadership didn’t want to inform the adversarial West German government about the actual radiation values as they wanted to cover up the extent of the catastrophe, so the robot was calibrated for much lower numbers and didn’t stand a chance on the roof near the reactor that exploded.

Nothing shows better the attitude that sacrifices people for the interest of the state than bringing a robot to the scene about which the Soviet leadership knows exactly that it won’t work and it won’t help the cleanup operations.

The disastrous consequences for the health of people, animals, and the environment

In another great scene, Valery Legasov, the lead scientist tells Boris Shcherbina, the Soviet apparatchik sent to Chernobyl to manage the aftermath of the disaster, why he has to decide for the evacuation of at least the nearby town, Pripyat. Legasov says that they both will likely be dead within the next five years – as a reaction, a visibly shaken Shcherbina answers a phone call. In another great tribute to the workings of the communist state, Legasov tells Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union what they would need to do as part of the cleanup operations and for how long will it take until the effects of the disaster wear off. He explained how an area of 2,600 square kilometers has to be evacuated, how all livestock and every wild animal living in that zone have to be killed, how forests have to be torn down and the upper part of the soil around Chernobyl has to be removed. They estimated the need for 750,000 people and three years for the entire operation.

The suspense of the scene was palpable: what if Gorbachev says no and doesn’t allow such complex and long-lasting activities to be done for the protection of people’s health. In the end, he agreed to carry out the works, but it’s actually a fact that after the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986, Soviet officials refused to cancel the May Day festivities in Kyiv, just 140 km from the location of the catastrophe, even as radiation continued to be released unabated. As Shcherbina remarked at some point in the series, in Frankfurt, people don’t let their kids play outside – while the audience sees the students of Pripyat casually chatting on the streets. So the question naturally arises, how dangerous was it to play outside. What have been the medical consequences in the short and long term that should have been considered?

The medical heritage of Chernobyl

According to the UNICEF, the explosion and ensuing fire spewed radiation over a territory the size of Germany and forced the abandonment of 400 communities in this formerly fertile agricultural region. But let’s slow down there a bit. Two people in the plant were killed by the explosion, and, as air fuelled a fire that was burning for 10 days, a cloud of radioactive smoke and dust was carried on the wind around Europe.

The first emergency workers rushed in as lethal smoke billowed out. Of 134 who were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS), 28 died within months. At least 19 have died since. The first symptoms of ARS include nausea, vomiting, headache, and diarrhea, which can occur within minutes to days after exposure. In more extreme cases, people can experience permanent hair loss, damaged oil- and sweat-producing glands, skin discoloration, scarring, and ulceration, or tissue death. In the final stages, bone-marrow decay, causing infections and internal bleeding, may lead to death coupled with unbearable pain.

In the months following the explosion, hundreds of thousands of people were relocated, and nearly 600,000 so-called ‘liquidators’, many working with no protection, sacrificed their health to contain and seal the fiery reactor, as well as clean the contaminated area. According to the EPA, exposure to radiation in moderate doses (like the nearby town of Pripyat would have had) can raise a person’s risk of getting cancer – in particular, thyroid cancer. Additionally, children and fetuses are at increased risk of radiation-related health problems. Exposure at moderate levels can cause cells to divide rapidly, which can result in developmental and birth defects in these sensitive groups.

According to the Chernobyl health records, people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterized as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had 8,498 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium (20 Bq/kg is considered safe) in their bodies. However, 30 years after the disaster, the estimates of cancer cases related to Chernobyl remain highly contentious. Some experts believe that it’s still unclear how iodine defection and cancer cases relate to Chernobyl, but it’s beyond doubt that the consequences last for decades and affect large communities.

Moreover, not only the physical but also the mental health of people was greatly burdened by Chernobyl. In its seminal 2006 report on the long-term consequences of the accident, the World Health Organization did conclude that many people’s mental health has been damaged – by fear of radiation and severe disruption to their lives.

The responsibility of governments and the options for average people

The negligence of the Soviet leadership was striking in every aspect of public health possible. First responders were sent to the area of the explosion without any protection. There were no iodine pills in huge doses in Chernobyl to mitigate the potential effects of thyroid cancer from the release of radioactive iodine-131. The evacuation of the town started way too late – only after 36 hours, and people had no idea what is happening to them. The effects of radiation were not communicated clearly – and the fact that radiation exposure rather follows weather patterns and not concentric circles around the nuclear power plant was never communicated or not understood fully even today.

Thus, the question arises: more than 30 years after the disaster, are we better prepared for the public health consequences of a potential nuclear disaster? How could digital health help or what could space programs say about future options for radiation protection? As we said before, these issues are more topical than ever. Currently, some policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. On the other hand, Yuval Noah Harari, historian, and writer of the book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, said in one of his lectures that nuclear power, climate change, and disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are the three existential threats to humanity that we must solve if we want to survive. Thus, before we enter a new nuclear age, we should see how prepared we actually are.

Fear and panic in Fukushima

As the example of the Fukushima nuclear disaster shows, we cannot be sure that humanity entirely learned its lesson on how to handle nuclear emergencies. When a tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi power station in Japan in March 2011, and put its reactors into meltdown, some 150,000 people were evacuated in the days after the accident. However, people were panicking: the government gave out no information about radiation levels and people had no idea if they were going to die. Even doctors were in the dark for 10 days. It emerged only later that radiation received by the public was rather low. By then, the scare and the psycho-social effects were so high that there are many people who would not return to Fukushima even if it were declared to be safe.

The WHO says that the evacuation measures resulted in a sharp increase in mortality among elderly people who were put in temporary housings, along with an increased risk of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and mental health problems. The lack of access to healthcare further contributed to the deterioration of health. While there were no acute radiation injuries or death among the workers of the power plant, it is still early to evaluate the cancer risks connected to the disaster.

How could digital technologies help in radiation detection or protection?

While it is visible that authorities have a difficult and complex task to carry out when it comes to nuclear emergencies, so far, their performance has not been the most convincing in the area of protecting people. However, in the age of digital societies and information technologies, individuals can take action on their own, too, right?

First and foremost, it would make sense to gather the appropriate amount of information about radiation exposure and radiation in general, and then monitor radioactivity on a regular basis. For that, we have to know that we live on a radioactive planet: natural radioactivity is all around us coming from the rays of the Sun, the food we eat, the Earth we walk on. Dosimeters, plastic phone-sized gadgets that could tell whether the experienced amount of radiation is appropriate or not, could prove to be useful. The readings are in units called microsieverts (mSv), and we are exposed to 2.00 mSv natural radiation on a yearly basis.

Nevertheless, with the advancement of digital technologies, dosimeters not only exist as bulky devices, but as built-in smartphone apps or wearables, and we expect the trend to continue in the future. For example, researchers in the U.S have developed an app that turns an ordinary smartphone into a radiation detector by using the built-in camera to detect gamma rays. Such an app could be indispensable for first responders of nuclear emergency services, for travelers who want to measure their radiation dose as they fly, or for people who live in regions that have naturally high levels of background radiation such as those produced by granite.

When looking at the market of handheld dosimeters, or Geiger Counters, one of the most widely used civilian-available radiation detector near the Fukushima Daiichi plant was RADEX RD1503, as it is reliable and has an easy-to-use interface. Another one to consider is the GQ GMC-300E-Plus Digital Geiger Counter or the GCA-07W Professional Geiger Counter. Smart dosimeters also appeared: Mirion Technologies, a company based in California launched Dosime, a user-friendly, smart electronic personal dosimeter that is able to calculate and determine the amount of ionizing radiation a person is exposed to on a daily basis.

And if you are also curious about the levels of radiation on other places due to your travels, for example, you can check out the interactive uRADmonitor. The map shows global radiation data in real time stemming from IoT devices equipped with sensors for monitoring cities, offices, and homes in more than 40 countries.

What could the future bring?

While it seems to be obvious that both public health authorities and individuals should be well-equipped when it comes to radiation emergencies, there are trends which show that we are going in that direction. Especially, when we look at the developments in astronautics. As we already mentioned, radiation also comes from the rays of the Sun, and when moving towards space, with less and less shielding from the Earth’s atmosphere, the dosage becomes higher – that’s why radiation levels are higher on a plane at 10,000 meters. Thus, radiation protection is one of the most significant medical concerns of astronautics, especially as some are considering a future manned mission to Mars. That’s the reason why NASA has been carefully studying the effects of radiation in space on astronauts for decades already. The ISS crew constantly monitors radiation exposure, including tracking of the short-term and lifetime radiation doses for each astronaut to assess the risk for radiation-related diseases.

The organization also says that, for example, radiation shielding will be a crucial technology for a voyage to Mars. From better shielding to advanced biomedical countermeasures, NASA is currently studying how to protect astronauts and electronics from radiation – efforts that will have to be incorporated into every aspect of Mars mission planning, from spacecraft and habitat design to spacewalk protocols.

When The Medical Futurist interviewed aspiring astronaut Abigail Harrison alias Astronaut Abby, she also mentioned that regarding a Mars mission, one of the biggest medical issues will be radiation, but she also mentioned how it could be beneficial to our health back on Earth. “Being in space, you get exposed to great amounts and unpredictable types of radiation that needs to be studied carefully. Trying to keep astronauts as safe as possible, to repair some of the damage that’s been done, and to create better shielding mechanisms will be important. That will have a huge impact on Earth as improved treatment of radiation as well.”

What Abby is saying basically means that a successful voyage to Mars would not only be an incredible step to all of humanity, but it would also bring us closer to more effective radiation protection here on Earth. We hope that with every passing day, we’ll get closer to Mars and further away from the ghost of Chernobyl.

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