Tiny worms living in the radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) surprisingly show no signs of radiation damage in their genes. Researchers compared the worms’ genomes to those from non- irradiated areas and found no mutations caused by radiation.
This doesn’t mean the zone is safe, but suggests these worms have remarkable resilience to radiation. Studying these worms might provide insights into DNA repair mechanisms that could benefit human health research, such as understanding why some people are more susceptible to cancers caused by DNA damage.
Natural selection at work! (Because the ones that were vulnerable to radiation are already dead.)
…so sacrifice one generation to “Evolution” and the threat of nuclear war is cancelled? Yee haw, I guess?
(/s, if that wasn’t abundantly clear)
First we hear about Chernobyl wolves being resistant to cancer, and now the worms. If they combined forces, we would probably need to go to the vet.
Back in 2006 BBC Horizon made a documentary about our fear of radiation, it explained three different types of models for calculating radiation danger.
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The Linear-No-Threshold model: All radiation is dangerous, even small ammounts, easy to calculate, and will absolutely keep us safe from radiation, but will limit what we can do with radiation.
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A linear model with a threshold: Untill a certain level, radiation is a non-issue. If this is the case, we could allow for more uses of nuclear technology with less need for heavy shielding, this is however very hard to implement as radiation exposure is a factor of both time and intensity which would vary for everyone.
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A linear model with a negative bend at the start, small ammounts of radiation is beneficial. The data from animals caught in the exclusion zone does seem to indicate that this is the case over generations, genes that reduce the risk of cancer have been found to be active in animals caught in the exclusion zone.
Here is a link to the documentary: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pqwo8
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The first step toward Fallout ghouls
What’s up, smooth skin.
Mathew Broderick knew all along!! And then he found Godzilla
Ah, worms! Of course this is how it begins!
Unethical experiment, but it would be really interesting to see the effects of mildly higher background radiation like this on humans.
As far as I know, we barely have any data on radiation exposure, and the data we have, is about ingesting caesium or high exposure over a short time.
This experiment was indirectly made by unscrupulous construction companies in Taiwan in the 80s, who recycled contaminated steel for habitation buildings. When this was brought to light, scientists made a follow up on the population who had been exposed and got some interesting results.
diseases within the minimal latent periods and were not attributable to the exposure from RCBs. On the basis of the remaining 95 patients, we found that staying in RCBs was associated with increased risks of thyroid cancers (7 patients, SIR = 2.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1 – 5.4) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (5 patients, SIR = 5.4, 95% CI 1.8 – 12.6) and a trend of developing leukemia except chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) (7 patients, SIR = 2.2, 95% CI 0.9 – 4.6), for both genders combined. (Table
- On the other hand, the exposed population had lower risks for all cancers combined excluding leukemia (SIR = 0.8, 95%, CI 0.6 – 0.9) and all solid cancers combined (SIR = 0.7, 95% CI 0.6 – 0.9)
TD;DR : Some cancer rates increase, most significantly leukemia, others decrease. If you exclude leukemia, exposed people have slightly lower cancer rates. Except, you can’t, because leukemia is pretty significant and serious.
