Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Radiation Poisoning

Okay, I have a few questions about radiation poisoning.

If a number of bodies were pulled out of Hobbs Bay, and they had all died of radiation poisoning...

1. Would the bodies potentially be radioactive?

2. Would the police be able to figure that out before an autopsy? If so, how? Would there by some sort of sign on the body?

3. Once the police figured out that the bodies were radioactive, what would they do to ensure that no one was exposed to the radiation as they waited for the experts to arrive?

4. What experts would they call?

5. At the autopsy, would the police be able to match it to a particular source of radiation? For example, kyrptonite poisoning v. poisoning from some sort of nuclear reactor.

6. And could someone receive a deadly dose of radiation by be injected with something?

Thanks,

ML

I wish I knew the answers to any of your questions but I am sure looking forward to the fic you create with the information.

I'm not too sure about the person being radioactive should they die from radiation poisoning. I've posted a link to Wikipedia which may help you. Also if you are able to find information about the impact of the atom bombs on Japan in 1945 they should help too.

Radiation Poisoning

For the autopsy situation follow this link to an incident of a Russian security agency officier dying from a supposed deliberate radioactive substance poisoning this occurred a little over a year ago.

Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

Hope this helps!

Not an expert in the field, but some rough guesses...

1. Depends on how it was done.

If it was an injected isotope, then traces of the isotope remaining in the system could well still be giving off radiation when the bodies were discovered. But that's not something you'd know until you used a Geiger counter.

Similarly, a radioactive gas or something could remain in the system to give off radiation.

Just plain exposing someone to radiation shouldn't cause them to be radioactive.

And if the bodies have been in the river for a while, some or all of the radioactive traces remaining could well have been washed away.

2. Radiation poisoning could leave radiation burns. An experienced, sharp-eyed officer might be able to spot the difference from regular burns. But it'd be hard. Not many people have experience with radiation burns. And the water of the river would have washed away dead skin cells, bloated the bodies, etc. And if the poisoning was from the inside out, I'm not sure what would show on the outside.

3. Depends on where they are when they figure out what's going on, what's available, etc. Really, if they have a Geiger counter handy, odds are there's already an expert around. Also, if the bodies were pulled out of the river, they'd probably be on a boat, no? Not much to do there. Try to keep your distance, I guess.

4. If the bodies are dangerously radioactive, I guess you'd need the guys in hazmat suits. In a big city... probably some special police unit related to the bomb squad. Not really sure.

5. If there are still radioactive traces in the body, then they should be identifiable by the exact nature of the radiation being given off.

Otherwise... the location and nature of the radiation burns would tell you how the exposure happened, if not the exact substance. Again, it'd be harder given the dunking, but external exposure vs injection should be relatively obvious.

6. Possibly. Depends on how radioactive the substance is, how long it was in the system, etc.

It's also possible that the injected substance would be poisonous in other ways, like a heavy metal.

It should be noted that kryptonite is, traditionally, only mildly poisonous to humans. In the comics, Lex Luthor wore a kryptonite ring all the time. He did eventually develop cancer in that hand, but only after years of continuous exposure. Certainly, none of the humans we saw on the show seemed to be affected by it. Though it's possible that injection could lead to more severe consequences.

For more info, you can check here:

Radioactive Contamination

Radiation sickness/poisoning

Hopefully someone else can really answer your questions, ML. I'll just give you my two cents.

I do think it ought to be possible to identify radiation deaths through autopsies. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tens of thousands of people died of radiation poisoning. I can't believe that there weren't autopsies made aiming at identifying the specific symptoms of radiation poisoning. People also died when there was a nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. Surely enough must be known about radiation deaths to make it possible to identify them.

My general impression as to whether or not a body could be radioactive enough to kill another person who came close to it or handled it... I don't know. I'm sure that if the entire area is known to be contaminated by radiation, any rescue workers going in would want to wear heavy protection suits. If they didn't wear protection, they themselves by get a high enough dose of radiation to die of it. But suppose the rescue workers wore protection, retrieved the bodies, and washed the bodies off, removing the radioactive "dust" from their skin. Would these corpses still give off enough radiation to kill others? It seems doubtful to me.

How about police lines to seal an area off?

Radiation deaths through lethal injections... yes, sure, why not? I know that when people are to have some kind of brain scan or intestinal scan, they have to swallow a mildly radioactive liquid, or maybe this liquid is injected into their blood stream, or something. Certainly it should be possible to make such an injected liquid highly radioactive instead of mildly radioactive?

As for kryptonite, there is something weird about that. If it is radioactive, so that you can measure its radioactivity, how can it fail to hurt humans?

Ann

ML - I'm not sure how intentional you want the poisoning to be but...

NCIS did an episode last year ( Dead Man Walking - based on the Alexander Litvinenko case apparently) where a guy was poisoned using his cigars. He basically inhaled it. They didn't go into post-death autopsy or anything like that because they knew about it ahead of time. As for being radioactive himself... well, people were around him without Hazmat suits or anything... Another recap is here [but it won't let me link to it b/c of the parentheses in it]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man_Walking_(NCIS) . Dunno if that helps or not but...

Have I mentioned I love NCIS?
Carol

I'm thinking about kryptonite radiation and other radiation again. The reason why radiation hurts is generally that the radiation in question is so energetic, i.e., its wavelengths are so short. Visible light has longer wavelengths. Blue and indigo, the visible light with the shortest wavelength, has a wavelength of about 400 nanometers. Red light, the visible light with the longest wavelength, has a wavelength of about 700 nanometers. The shorter the wavelength, the more energetic the light. The wavelengths that really hurt us are much shorter than the shortest visible wavelengths.

Green light has a wavelength of about 500-550 nanometers. The light of the Sun peaks in the green light, i.e., the Sun puts out more green light than red light, more green light than yellow light, more green light than blue light, etcetera. Actually, the Sun might be described as a green star! So why doesn't it look green to us, then? My answer is that it is more practical for us to see sunlight (and therefore daylight) as neutral-colored, or white.



The light curve of the Sun.

Anyway, it stands to reason that green light wouldn't hurt us humans. If it did, the Sun itself would surely kill every last human on the Earth! (Or else we would be forced to become nocturnal creatures.) Similarly, fireflies give off the kind of light that doesn't hurt us, because it is yellow or greenish-yellow.



The question is, why would the green light of kryptonite hurt Superman? Obviously the red sun of Krypton would emit less green light than the Sun. The Sun's light curve peaks in green light, but Krypton's sun would peak in red and infrared light. Still, even Krypton's sun would emit some green light. So why would green light hurt Superman so badly? Any theories?

Ann

Thanks for your responses.

By reading the above, I realize that there is no way I'm going to understand everything there is to know about radiation poisoning before this story is complete. But I think you guys have given me enough information that I can deal with it in such a way as to not sound like a complete idiot .

So thanks, guys. It's much appreciated.

It always amazes me how much the people on these boards know about so many subjects.

ML

According to Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel it's the radiation emitted by Kryptonite that is harmful to Superman. It has nothing to do with the colour of the light that it emits. Kyrptonite radiation seeping through from Krypton's core was responsible for the planet's demise.

My point is that only short-wave radiation - which is really very, very energetic - is harmful to humans. It is harmful to us because each photon of such short-wave radiation packs such a punch that it can tear apart DNA strands in the human body, and also wreak all other kinds of havoc. Green light, however, can't do that. I'm just wondering what kryptonite radiation is, then? It can't be short-wave radiation, because if it was it would definitely be deadly to humans, too. So what exactly is the dangerous stuff, then? All that we definitely know about kryptonite is that it emits a green light.

Oh, well. I guess that this is one of those "don't ask" questions. It's like asking how, precisely, Superman is able to fly.

Like this?



Or like this?



Or like this?



Eh. Don't ask.

Ann

In the Byrne retcon on '86, Kryptonite was dangerous to humans (but on the order of un-enriched, unprocessed uranium.) Kryptonite affects Superman so badly because the specific radiation of kryptonite shuts down or damages his bio-electric aura and forces his special solar-battery organelles to shut-down and/or discharge.

I guess that depends on the way they were exposed to radiation. The rays (gamma rays) however wouldn't be enough to contaminate someone. You need some kind of stuff that emits those rays.
There are three types of radioactive radiation. Mind me, I'm not quite sure if I use the correct English terms, but you should find the right ones, if I made a mistake.

alpha radiation - when the radioactive element decays it emits an Helium atom. IT's range is very small, within inches. This kind of radiation is highly destructive and very dangerous, but a piece of paper is enough to shield it.

beta radiation - when the radioactive element decays it emits either an electron (very small corpuscle with a negative charge) or a positron (same thing but positive charge). The range of beta radiation is within meters. You would need lead to shield this type of radiation. So Kryptonite would be likely to emmit beta radiation.

gamma radiation - the radioactive element emmits a photon (light) with a very high energy. The range is endless, so to speak and you can hardly shield this type of radiation.

That would depend on the duration of exposure. There is a critical amount of radiation a person can tolerate. About 7 Sv (describes an amount of energy) would be instantally lethal for any human. I guess it would cause some kind of burns on the skin. If your 7 people were exposed to radioation for a couple of days or weeks even they would suffer of radiation sickness, meaning that they would loose their hair, suffer from diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and so on.

The best way? Staying away from them. The amount of radiation you're exposed to decreases with the distance.

Oh, good question. I guess physicians who deal with radiation regularly, physicists. I'm not sure.

Since there has to be some sort of radioactive stuff either on or inside those poor victims, I guess the police would be able to locate it. Kryptonite would make it pretty obvious. And I guess that a specialist could find out where the stuff came from by looking for the isotopes of the element. The number of protones is always the same in the same element, the number of neutrones isn't. I guess that different nuclear reactors would work with different mixtures of isotopes from the same element.

I guess so, but please don't ask me what that's supposed to be

I'm always amazed by the replies to these types of questions - interesting to read.

c.

Concerning the injection:
I am not a med tech, but I do read a lot.

Any material radioactive enough to kill quickly would burn the veins while being injected - this will definitely leave evidence an ME could find. It would also be excruciatingly painful for the victim.

Radiation kills by damaging the cells' ability to work - once the radioactive material was in the blood stream, the cells would start dying, leading to standard radiation poisoning, but maybe not as much radiation burn evidence on the skin.

One thing - the decomposition pattern of the body may not be normal - the normal gut bacteria would also be dead so although the body would break down, an astute ME might find differences from the 'norm'.

I have nothing to add regarding the question, but I have to say this:

Carol, I love that ep. I think I even cried a little over the fact that Ziva finally found someone who would be perfect for her - only to know that there can never be real relationship.

It was very nicely done and really moving.

Eva

Oops. Connection glitch. Double post. Sorry.

Gamma radiation may go forever, but intensity decreases exponentially as you get away from the source. And I'm pretty sure it can be distorted, blocked, etc.

Not necessarily. Exposure from the outside could kill you without the stuff ever actually touching you. (Think of Clark and kryptonite.)

And even if it's something injected... Radioactivity comes from unstable atoms. They're too big. All those protons stuck together in the nucleus repelling each other. The atom breaks apart, or shoots out pieces of itself. And each atom that sends out a piece of itself changes, becomes a different, smaller atom. Becoming more stable. And reducing the amount of the original substance.

Of course, the less of that substance you have, the less radioactive it is, and the slower it decays. So you don't say that it ever fully goes away. Instead, you have what's called a "half-life." It's the amount of time it takes for half of a given sample to decay into something else.

Let's say it's 12:00 and you have one pound of substance X, which has a half-life of one hour. At 1:00, you'd have half a pound of X and roughly half a pound of whatever X decays into (slightly less, since the radiation itself carries away some mass). At 2:00, you'd have half of that, or 1/4 of a pound. At 3:00, you'd only have 1/8 of a pound of X. And so on.

Now, something that highly radioactive would probably decay into some other (slightly less) radioactive substance, which would have its own, longer half life. That would, in turn, decay into something slightly less radioactive, and so on until, eventually, you ended up with something stable. Generally lead.

But... if you had something with a really short radioactive half-life, it would not only be highly radioactive (and thus quickly lethal), there might be only a tiny amount of it left by the time they found the bodies. Maybe not even enough to be detectable against normal background radiation.

Good point. That could really hamper the IV. Perhaps even damage the vein enough to cause internal bleeding.

But... There are ways around that. A slower drip. Splitting into multiple doses. Injection by syringe rather than intravenously (though you'd still get burns at the injection site). Surgical implantation.

Or other time release methods. For example... this could be tricky, but it might be possible to inject microbeads. Tiny samples of whatever you want to inject encased inside a protective coating, which gradually dissolves (or perhaps, in this case, burns away). Not sure what you'd use in this case, since heavy metals like lead are toxic in and of themselves. But it might be possible to find something that would work. Particularly given the advanced technology available in the L&C universe.

Still painful and all. Still leave burns. I mean, you are talking about injecting enough radioactive particles to kill someone from the inside out. But it might be less obvious from the outside, and it could get you around the problems of damaging the vein you're trying to inject into before you're done with the injection.

This is the first time I've heard that the rate of decay depends on the mass of the isotope in question - rate of decay is a random internal atomic process. A single radioactive atom will breakdown at random (all by itself). It's the combination of all that random breakdown that brings about the phenomenon of half-life. The smaller the sample, the more random (faster OR slower) the breakdown becomes. And as for size being a problem - proteins are fairly large molecules. The problem will be not the size of the individual atom but whether or not the villain has the capacity to get the isotope 1)into an injectable solution, and 2) broken down finer than a protein or even a blood cell.

And the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the isotope is. I recall reading that iron has a half life in the billions of years.

You could always wear lead coated lipstick to protect yourself from radioactive lipstick you put on afterwards then go around kissing everyone...
Carol

If you look at the amount remaining, you get a logarithmic curve. It slowly tapers off towards zero, but never quite gets there. (Which never made sense to me, because there are a finite number of atoms, and eventually the last one has to either go or not.)

The half-life remains the same the entire time, so in that sense, the decay rate (percent mass/time) is the same. But if you consider how much mass is being converted at a time...

In the example above, half a pound went during the first hour. A quarter of a pound went during the second hour. And so on.

So in that sense, the decay rate (total mass/time) goes down. The fact that you have half the sample size means that half the number of atoms are going.

Make sense?

As for the time-release coating... You'd have to get the radioisotope broken down to tiny pieces. And then you'd have to find a coating that can temporarily block the radiation. And then you'd have to get that coating around. And then put it all into solution. And still have that be small enough to fit through the needle. Doable, I think, but not easy. Time-consuming, at the least. Unless you have nanites or something to do the work. (Hey, at LexLabs, maybe they do...)

And yes, the more radioactive something is, the shorter the half-life. Isn't that what I said?

I thought it was even longer than that. Anyway, since astronomers agree that the universe is between thirteen and fourteen billion years old, and since they also agree that iron is not primordial, but is formed inside generation after generation of short-lived massive stars, that should mean that most of the iron that has ever existed in our universe is still around. (Although I do know that there are different isotopes of iron, containing different numbers of neutrons, and some of those isotopes may certainly be more radioactive than others.)

It can be blocked, but it is very hard to do so. You need something extremely massive and thick between yourself and the gamma rays to block them. In the universe, there exists something called gamma ray bursts. They are believed to be narrow jets of concentrated gamma radiation emitted either when a particularly massive star goes supernova, or when two neutron stars collide. Those jets of gamma rays contain a tremendous amount of energy. I once read what would happen to the Earth if there was a gamma ray burst taking place in our own galaxy (but thousands of light-years away) and one of the jets hitting the Earth. According to what I read, the side of the Earth that took the direct hit would be scorched and sterilized. However, the rays wouldn't be able to penetrate the Earth itself - after all, the Earth is made mostly of iron and nickel, so it is quite dense - and therefore the opposite side of the Earth would be spared the immediate effects of the gamma rays. (Of course, the devastation on one side of the Earth would eventually affect the opposite side, too.)

By comparison, an "ordinary" supernova that went off in our galaxy a few thousand light-years away wouldn't affect us in the slightest.

But I personally have never heard of human beings that give off so much gamma radiation that their bodies can kill others from a considerable distance. If they give off gamma rays, my guess is that the gamma radiation would quickly become diluted as you moved away from the radioactive bodies.

Ann

Talking about the case of Alexander Litvinenko... If I remember correctly, he was poisoned with a substance emitting alpha particles. The truly ingenious part of it is that you could carry said substance - it was polonium-210 - in a little tupper box with you, and nobody would be contaminated. And since the substance was ingested (and the human body obviously doesn't have any way to get rid of it again), it could harm the body from within - without emitting any radiation out of the body. (Remember, alpha particles can't get through any solid matter - not even a sheet of paper.) The problem is that the substance used took its time to actually kill Mr. Litvinenko. The most obvious change in his body was the loss of his hair, I think.

You might also want to look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Internal

That was the indicator in the NCIS ep. The guy who had been poisoned came into the NCIS office and said he wanted to report his own murder and pulled out a handful of hair.

/me has no real life experience and so relies on TV shows
Carol