• Question: What do you believe about the links between radiation and cancer?

    Asked by charlo123 to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 15 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jill Magee

      Jill Magee answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      It is well known that too much radiation can give you cancer. But it would need to be a huge amount for that to happen. The only treatment where that sort of level of radiation happens is in radiotherapy. But funnily enough, radiotherapy is the process we use to cure people of cancer. However we give the radiation in small doses, so some of the healthy tissue has time to recover before we give them the next dose.

    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      Definitely, the thing that radiation at high doses does is that it damages the blueprint of your cell (the DNA). This is then repaired, but because it’s been damaged so much, it usually doesn’t manage to repair it to the way it was. If this happens enough, it can lead to cells that can grow forever and want to do everything to make sure that they do.

      It’s the same way that too much sunburn (or sunbeds!) damages your blueprint and causes skin cancer, except that radiation can get deeper into your body.

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