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The rad is a unit of absorbed radiation dose, defined as 1 rad = 0.01 Gy = 0.01 J/kg. [1] It was originally defined in CGS units in 1953 as the dose causing 100 ergs of energy to be absorbed by one gram of matter. The material absorbing the radiation can be human tissue, air, water, or any other substance.
Radiation is often categorized as either ionizing or non-ionizing depending on the energy of the radiated particles. Ionizing radiation carries more than 10 electron volts (eV), which is enough to ionize atoms and molecules and break chemical bonds. This is an important distinction due to the large difference in harmfulness to living organisms.
Early on it was found that X-rays, gamma rays, and beta radiation were essentially equivalent for all cell types. Therefore, the standard radiation type X is generally an X-ray beam with 250 keV photons or cobalt-60 gamma rays. As a result, the relative biological effectiveness of beta and photon radiation is essentially 1.
Absorbed dose is a dose quantity which is the measure of the energy deposited in matter by ionizing radiation per unit mass.Absorbed dose is used in the calculation of dose uptake in living tissue in both radiation protection (reduction of harmful effects), and radiology (potential beneficial effects, for example in cancer treatment).
The absorbed dose, measured in rad, is a better indicator of ARS. [3]: 592–593 A rem is a large dose of radiation, so the millirem (mrem), which is one thousandth of a rem, is often used for the dosages commonly encountered, such as the amount of radiation received from medical x-rays and background sources.
Radiobiology (also known as radiation biology, and uncommonly as actinobiology) is a field of clinical and basic medical sciences that involves the study of the effects of ionizing radiation on living things, in particular health effects of radiation.
Kerma, when applied to air, is equivalent to the legacy roentgen unit of radiation exposure, but there is a difference in the definition of these two units. The gray is defined independently of any target material, however, the roentgen was defined specifically by the ionisation effect in dry air, which did not necessarily represent the effect ...
Radiation chemistry is a subdivision of nuclear chemistry which studies the chemical effects of ionizing radiation on matter. This is quite different from radiochemistry , as no radioactivity needs to be present in the material which is being chemically changed by the radiation.