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Understanding radiation sickness symptoms is essential to ensure that practitioners and patients within your facility are safe during certain procedures. By knowing what symptoms to look out for, you can quickly identify potential cases, ensure that the right care is administered, and make adjustments to your radiation protocol right away.
It’s important to note that radiation sickness is a sign of exercise exposure, and this can either occur from wearing low-quality protective accessories – or bypassing them completely. Because of this, it’s essential to get the best lead aprons, thyroid shields, and similar protective gear that will help prevent health issues down the line.
So, what are the symptoms of radiation sickness? Let’s take a closer look.
Symptoms of Radiation Sickness
So, what are the symptoms of radiation sickness? What kind of symptoms can radiation sickness cause?
Before delving into the signs and symptoms of radiation sickness, it’s important to note that excessive exposure to ionizing energy produces severe long-term complications such as organ damage and cancerous tumors.
These issues can occur long after radiation sickness symptoms have disappeared, so wearing protective accessories is essential to prevent long-term health as well.
Now, here are some common symptoms of radiation sickness you and your team should look out for.
Weakness, Extreme Fatigue, and Confusion
Extreme weakness, fatigue, and confusion are the first and most common signs of radiation sickness. This occurs because radiation can negatively impact bone marrow and reduce red blood cell production, causing anemia along with symptoms like low energy levels.
It’s also important to note that radiation affects the brain, so excessive exposure can cause confusion and cognitive impairment.
Bleeding from the Nose, Mouth, and Other Areas
Radiation-suppressed bone marrow may also result in low platelet production, affecting blood clotting. This causes hypersensitivity in mucous membranes and blood vessel lining in the nose, mouth, and similar areas, which makes it easy for them to start bleeding.
This bleeding tends to be lasting and uncontrolled as there are not enough platelets in the blood to clot and start the leading process.
Dehydration and Diarrhea
As with the mouth and nose, the intestines are mucous membranes that are more susceptible to radiation. This is not good news, as radiation exposure can damage intestinal walls and hinder nutrient absorption, causing diarrhea at the same time.
In addition to persistent diarrhea causing nutrients and fluids to abandon the body, the body’s natural response to radiation may involve fluid loss as well as a disruption in bodily processes.
Loss of Hair
Hair follicles are among the fastest-growing and most delicate cells in the human body. When exposed to radiation, they stop dividing and actually die off, which is the reason why hair loss is among the most common symptoms of radiation sickness.
Keep in mind that the severity of the loss of hair depends heavily on the exposure levels, but these are also cumulative. In other words, if your team starts experiencing hair loss even after wearing the accessories you provided, an upgrade may be due.
Bruising at the Exposure Site
When patients get radiation treatment in a specific part of the body, they may experience bruising, swelling, and redness in the treatment area. This happens because radiation weakens blood vessels, which makes them more prone to bursting and prone to leaking, hence leaving a mark.
During this treatment, the radiation can actually damage the skin. For practitioners and facility managers, ensuring that patients have adequate resources is essential to be more practical and prevent legal issues down the line.
Nausea, Vomiting, and Motion Sensitivity
Last, but certainly not least, the last group radiation sickness symptoms we’d like to discuss are nausea, vomiting, and motion sickness. This can be a little tricky to detect, especially in people who may already have motion sickness. That said, when presented with other symptoms on this list, it cannot be taken as a coincidence and should be taken as a real possibility.
How long can a person who has radiation sickness expect to have symptoms? This depends heavily on one person to the next. This is because current physical condition, diet, sleeping habits, stress levels, and many other factors influence how long it takes to recover from radiation exposure.
With the above in mind, some people may take a few days, while others can struggle with radiation sickness symptoms for months.
How to Protect Against Radiation
Here are a few tips to help you keep practitioners and patients safe when working closely with radiation sources.
Wear Protective Shielding
The first and most important rule of protecting your team and patients against radiation is wearing protective clothing such as lead aprons, shields, thyroid shields, and much more. These can help halve the amount of radiation you’re exposed to, so they’re essential to create a safe environment for specialists.
Get as Far as Possible from the Radiation Source
Next, it’s important for your practitioners to get as far away from the radiation source as possible. Your team should distance themselves or use a radiation shield if moving to the other side of the room is not an option.
Being close to the source of exposure is not a big deal if you’re getting a one-time test like an X-ray, but also remember that practitioners are exposed constantly and this requires ongoing protection.
Reduce Exposure Time
Where possible, you should reduce the exposure time and keep track of how much cumulative radiation is in your team’s body to rotate your crew and keep everyone safe.
Finding the Best Radiation Protection Accessories
Radiation sickness can lead to long-term health complications, depending on the level of exposure. The symptoms of this dangerous condition include weakness and confusion, bleeding from the gums and other areas, extreme dehydration, diarrhea, loss of hair, and nausea, among other effects.
Reducing your personnel’s exposure to ionizing energy is the best way to prevent radiation sickness, especially in professionals who work in X-ray rooms and similar environments. At Barrier Technologies, we’ve manufactured high-quality lead radiation aprons and other safety accessories since 2005.
Contact us today to get assistance choosing the best protective equipment for your facility, our team will be glad to help.
