Informative Essay On Radium

If someone were to ask you what is radium or who discovered radium, would you be able to answer correctly? You may say that radium is not vital in today's society or that you could care less about radium, but what if you were informed that fifteen percent of the world's electricity is produced with the help of radium and nuclear power plants. Would you change your mind about the importance of radium? Not many people know but, radium is also frequently used in the medical field specially to run tests or procedures like x-rays and radiotherapy. Marie Curie, an impressive female scientist, has benefitted the world of medicine and science by discovering a way to treat cancer with radiation, developing nuclear plants to produce electricity, and aiding in the advancements of technology used in the medical field.
Radiation therapy is capable of not just killing cancer cells, but also killing off perfectly healthy body tissues. Anything exposed to radiation is likely to be damaged. Radiation therapy helps with eliminating cancer cells, but it also comes with the negative side effect of damaging normal body tissues. Young patients with brain tumors that are treated with radiation therapy also have a chance of developing long- term side effects. Consequently, long term side effects such as severe learning disabilities are a possible outcome from radiation therapy. On the bright side, at least patients get to live a longer healthy cancer- free life due to the positive effects of radiation therapy. As a final point, high dosages of radiation therapy could be very harmful (“Radiation Therapy”). When given too much of radiation therapy, it could become toxic and fatal. This is a negative outcome of radium, but when it is administered correctly, it saves lives. Unfortunately there are negative effects that come from Curie’s work, but the benefits overcome the negative