Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Astronauts are exposed to approximately 50-2,000 millisieverts (mSv) while on six-month-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon and beyond. The risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 50 mSv and above. Related radiological effect studies have shown that survivors of the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear reactor workers and patients who have undergone therapeutic radiation treatments have received low-linear energy transfer (LET) radiation (x-rays and gamma rays) doses in the same 50-2000 mSv range. While in space, astronauts are exposed to radiation which
Petkau effect original 1972 experiment apparently revealed the potential effects of ionizing radiation on cells without natural radioprotective mechanisms in place. Petkau effect The Petkau effect is an early counterexample to linear-effect assumptions usually made about radiation exposure. It was found by Dr. Abram Petkau at the Atomic Energy of Canada Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, Manitoba and published in Health Physics March 1972. The Petkau effect was coined by Swiss nuclear hazards commentator Ralph Graeub in 1985 in this book "Der Petkau-Effekt und unsere strahlende Zukunft" (The Petkau effect and our Radiating Future). Petkau had been measuring, in the usual way, the