I was waiting for forty minutes for my X-ray examination which I make each 6 months.

As we know that the results will be good, my mother asked me do I need that radiation when I heard from her yesterday. Well, I like to be sure that everything is fine with my neck spine since I don't take any medications for my condition. I heard that many people talks about bad effect of radiation when the X-ray radiography comes to the question. But honestly, I've never heard that someone got sick or had bad radiation experience because of X-ray examination.

So I had these 40 minutes this morning to make my own little research.

Did you know that 40% of the whole world's exposure to ionizing radiation is for medical purposes?

I say "ionizing radiation" because X-rays are emitted by electrons while other types of radiation, such as gamma rays are emitted by atomic nucleus. So X-rays don't include any gamma rays, but there are also uses of gamma rays in medicine as radio therapy and they use "X-ray" term also for that. But in the most cases, X-rays are used in projectional radiography. Bones contain a lot of calcium and they absorb X-ray effectively so you can see those bones clearly on the radiography images. It is useful in detecting problems in skeletal system and in some soft tissue organs, such as lungs, heart and kidneys.

Wilhelm Röntgen is credited for discovery of X-rays in 19th century, but other scientists and doctors developed the technology.

But they didn't know the bad side of it, so many scientists and doctors who played around with X-rays ended up with burns, hair loss and many of them with cancer. Almost all patients that were examined with X-rays suffered side effects as pain, blistering and swelling. But scientist claimed that X-rays don't cause such effects at all! And they didn't take that seriously until the lady called Elizabeth Fleischman, an American radiographer didn't die because of X-ray radiation in 1905. And X-rays caused dermatitis to Major John Hall-Edwards, so he had to amputate his left arm in 1908.

But enthusiasm about X-rays was too big and many doctors and scientist ignored the fact that X-rays are not harmless.

So they made a lot of machines that were more harmful than useful to patients, like Crookes X-ray tube that was in use before 1920. That tube was replaced with Coolidge X-ray tube, the similar machine to those that are used today.

Through 20th century, scientist did all to reduce the harmful radiation of X-rays, so today, those examinations are considered as harmless.

But still, there is some 0.01% chance of increasing risk of cancer and bigger percentage for some other nasty deceases. If pregnant ladies are not allowed to do this kind of examinations, are we really sure that we are risk-free in those chambers? The radiographers who work there will close themselves in special cabin while they are taking images of your bones and you are exposed. And you can hear these days a lot of theories about pharmacy conspiracies that include harmful effects X-rays.

However, X-rays changed diagnostic medicine and helped much to understand skeletal system of a patient.

So, back to the waiting room!

After 40 minutes of Googling about X-rays, they called my name!

As I mentioned, I don't know anyone that suffered bad consequences because of X-ray examinations. So radiation, here I come!

Thank you!