Artificial radiation

You should know some of the sources of artificial background radiation.

Sources

There is little we can do about natural background radiation. After all, we cannot stop eating, drinking or breathing to avoid it! However, human activity has added to background radiation by creating and using artificial sources of radiation. These include radioactive waste from nuclear power stations, radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing and medical X-rays. Move your mouse over the diagram to check your understanding of this.

Study the pie charts from the previous page again.

Artificial sources account for about 15 per cent of the average background radiation dose. Nearly all artificial background radiation comes from medical procedures such as receiving X-rays for X-ray photographs.

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