Health
Beta particles are able to penetrate living matter to a certain extent and can change the structure of struck molecules. In most cases such change can be considered as damage with results possibly as severe as cancer and death. If the struck molecule is DNA it can show a spontaneous mutation.
Beta sources can be used in radiation therapy to kill cancer cells.
Read more about this topic: Beta Particle
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“[The health plan was] constructed to be deconstructed. [Instead,] it was described as an ultimatum by our opponents and therefore used to undermine the process of reaching agreement.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
“The years when we are parenting teenagers are the high point, the crest when everything seems to be in bright colors and in ten-foot letters.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)
“You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)