Radiation Symptoms Awareness

Radiation Symptoms: Acute Radiation Syndrome
Radiation sickness, known as acute radiation sickness (ARS), is a serious illness that occurs when the
entire body (or most of it) receives a high dose of radiation, usually over a short period of time. Many
survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs in the 1940s and many of the firefighters who first
responded after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986 became ill with ARS.
People exposed to radiation will get ARS only if:

• The radiation dose was high (doses from medical procedures such as chest X-rays are too low to
  cause ARS; however, doses from radiation therapy to treat cancer may be high enough to cause
  some ARS symptoms),
• The radiation was penetrating (that is, able to reach internal organs),
• The person’s entire body, or most of it, received the dose, and
• The radiation was received in a short time, usually within minutes.

The first symptoms of ARS typically are nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. These symptoms will start within
minutes to days after the exposure, will last for minutes up to several days, and may come and go. Then
the person usually looks and feels healthy for a short time, after which he or she will become sick again
with loss of appetite, fatigue, fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and possibly even seizures and coma.
This seriously ill stage may last from a few hours up to several months.

People with ARS typically also have some skin damage. This damage can start to show within a few hours
after exposure and can include swelling, itching, and redness of the skin (like a bad sunburn). There also
can be hair loss. As with the other symptoms, the skin may heal for a short time, followed by the return of
swelling, itching, and redness days or weeks later. Complete healing of the skin may take from several
weeks up to a few years depending on the radiation dose the person’s skin received.
The chance of survival for people with ARS decreases with increasing radiation dose. Most people who do
not recover from ARS will die within several months of exposure. The cause of death in most cases is the
destruction of the person’s bone marrow, which results in infections and internal bleeding. For the
survivors, the recovery process may last from several weeks up to 2 years.
If a radiation emergency occurs that exposes people to high doses of radiation in a short period of time,
they should immediately seek medical care from their doctor or local hospital.

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