Nursing class – assignment 15

Hi. I have a few assignments for you. Can you please complete this asap since the last day of class i on friday May 8th. There was a video I couldn’t include. But I have attached the transcript of the video. Questions are at the end after the —————. Please keep it between 100 – 250 words. I have also attached my classmates responses. Please respond to one classmate with 100-200 words. You can count it as double assignment if you can get it to me by the next day. Same as with these other assignments I am going to send you this week. Can you please have them done by the next day? I will send a few more assignments in about 8 hours.

Hospital Environmental Health Assessment Tool

If you work in a hospital setting, try to use this assessment tool to determine potential occupational and environmental health risks.

Hospital Environmental Health Assessment Tool DOC

Actions
Health Care Without Harm is a national organization that has been leading the country’s hospitals towards greater sustainability. I would heartily recommend that you take a moment to look at their website. (Links to an external site.)

For those of you who have not identified your DNP project there are so many opportunities to take your learning from this course and apply it to a change project in your health care setting that will help to reduce potentially harmful exposures and/or increase patients’ awareness about harmful exposures, including guidance on how to decrease these exposures. If you do have any interest in exploring this possibility, I would be delighted to work with you. Just let me know!
Radiation
As nurses it’s important to understand how radiation can affect our health. This module is only a very basic primer.

Definitions:

The following is from the World Health Organization.

Ionizing Radiation

(Found: http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/about/what_is_ir/en/ (Links to an external site.) )

Ionizing radiation is radiation with enough energy so that during an interaction with an atom, it can remove tightly bound electrons from the orbit of an atom, causing the atom to become charged or ionized.

Here we are concerned with only one type of radiation, ionizing radiation, which occurs in two forms – waves or particles. More information on Non-Ionizing radiation. (Links to an external site.)

Forms of electromagnetic radiation. These differ only in frequency and wave length.

Heat waves
Radiowaves
Infrared light
Visible light
Ultraviolet light
X rays
Gamma rays
Longer wave length, lower frequency waves (heat and radio) have less energy than shorter wave length, higher frequency waves (X and gamma rays). Not all electromagnetic (EM) radiation is ionizing. Only the high frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes X rays and gamma rays is ionizing.

Waves

Most of the more familiar types of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light, radio waves) exhibit “wave-like” behavior in their interaction with matter (e.g. diffraction patterns, transmission and detection of radio signals). The best way to think of electromagnetic radiation is a wave packet called a photon. Photons are chargeless bundles of energy that travel in a vacuum at the velocity of light, which is 300 000 km/sec.

Specific forms of ionizing radiation:

Particulate radiation, consisting of atomic or subatomic particles (electrons, protons, etc.) which carry energy in the form of kinetic energy or mass in motion.
Electromagnetic radiation, in which energy is carried by oscillating electrical and magnetic fields traveling through space at the speed of light.
Alpha particles and beta particles are considered directly ionizing because they carry a charge and can, therefore, interact directly with atomic electrons through coulombic forces (i.e. like charges repel each other; opposite charges attract each other).
The neutron is an indirectly ionizing particle. It is indirectly ionizing because it does not carry an electrical charge. Ionization is caused by charged particles, which are produced during collisions with atomic nuclei.
The third type of ionizing radiation includes gamma and X rays, which are electromagnetic, indirectly ionizing radiation. These are indirectly ionizing because they are electrically neutral (as are all electromagnetic radiations) and do not interact with atomic electrons through coulombic forces.
Non-Ionizing Radiation

(NOTE: you will see discrepancies in some of the information delivered below. For instance, the WHO website says no health risks, but you will also see that their citations are from over 10 years ago. In the ensuing years there have been several studies that indicate a risk may exist. The science is evolving.)

Non-ionizing radiation is the term given to radiation in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum where there is insufficient energy to cause ionization. It includes electric and magnetic fields, radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, and visible radiation.

(WHO, http://www.who.int/topics/radiation_non_ionizing/en/ (Links to an external site.) )

What is the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation?

Non-ionizing radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an atom or molecule.

Unlike x-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation, non-ionizing radiation does not have enough energy to remove electrons from atoms and molecules. Non-ionizing radiation can heat substances. For example, the microwave radiation inside a microwave oven heats water and food rapidly.

UV radiation (National Cancer Institute, https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/ultraviolet-radiation (Links to an external site.) )
Invisible rays that are part of the energy that comes from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface is made up of two types of rays, called UVA and UVB. Ultraviolet radiation also comes from sun lamps and tanning beds. It can cause skin damage, premature aging, melanoma, and other types of skin cancer. It can also cause problems with the eyes and the immune system. Skin specialists recommend that people use sunscreens that protect the skin from both kinds of ultraviolet radiation. In medicine, ultraviolet radiation also comes from special lamps or a laser and is used to treat certain skin conditions such as psoriasis, vitiligo, and skin tumors of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Also called UV radiation.

Sources of Radiation
Since the beginning of time, all living creatures have been, and are still being, exposed to radiation. Nonetheless, most people are not aware of all the natural and man-made sources of radiation in our environment.

A chart of the public’s exposure to ionizing radiation (Links to an external site.) (displayed below) shows that people generally receive a total annual dose of about 620 millirem (Links to an external site.). Of this total, natural sources of radiation account for about 50 percent, while man-made sources account for the remaining 50 percent.

Here are some videos on Radiation BASICS:

Radiation from the Sun and Earth (Links to an external site.)
Radiation from the Sun and Earth

Is radiation dangerous? – Matt Anticole (Links to an external site.)
Is radiation dangerous? – Matt Anticole

Cellular and Wifi technologies

There are reasons why people are concerned that cell phones (also known as “mobile” or “wireless” telephones) might have the potential to cause certain types of cancer or other health problems: Cell phones emit radiofrequency energy (radio waves), a form of non-ionizing radiation, from their antennas.

The following presentations are from the Health in Buildings Roundtable Conference held at the US National Institutes of Health, summer 2018. All talks are less than 10 minutes for easy sharing; a Q&A section is also included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScUTQdluhTw&list=PLMAz9ZRXjYmp8vCf4HKxmLhdqEgbqYS65 (Links to an external site.)

The experts on the panel addressing wireless radiation were:

Martin Pall to present scientific reviews of the EMF/EMR biological harm and the urgency to stop 5G
Retired Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg to indicate the industry can do better
Environmental Health Trust Executive Director Theodora Scarato to discuss the need to protect especially children
Clear Light Ventures CEO Peter Sullivan to explore safe technology solutions
Each talk is short, less than 10 minutes, but together detail the very serious risks of today’s wireless technology, what other countries are already doing to protect their citizens, and what we all need to know to protect our loved ones and our communities here and now.

You’ll find the talks as well as Q&A clips below, please watch the initial youtube and the 4 that follow. In addition to hearing very brief scientific presentations, you will hear about how solutions are being applied. The last YouTube is a recording of the Q&A session that followed the talks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScUTQdluhTw&list=PLMAz9ZRXjYmp8vCf4HKxmLhdqEgbqYS65 (Links to an external site.)

All wireless technology uses radiofrequency radiation to carry our data packets back and forth and it was never safety tested before being brought to market.

Even the IEEE, which helped form the untested thermal-based FCC public radiation exposure limits in the 1990s, is conceding wireless technology is hazardous at the non-thermal level. See their cancer article in the September/October 2018 issue of IEEE Microwave Magazine (Links to an external site.).

As Dr. Pall indicates, the effects of wireless radiation exposures are cumulative. Serious harm may be happening now with current exposures, some of which is already becoming irreversible. The industry’s push for more wireless infrastructure to enable without real public health assurances is problematic.

The industry is lobbying right now to get legislation in place at the federal and state levels to take away our local jurisdictions’ rights to say if or where we want 5G telecom infrastructure in our communities.

We are bio-electrical beings and this constant exposure to microwave radiation pulses is hampering our cell to cell electrical signaling and causing a cascade of detrimental health effects. Quite simply, we may not be built to stand this kind of man-made radiation assault.

Health and safety risks that may be associated with 5G antenna (Links to an external site.) inside our neighborhoods, every 2 to 12 houses outside our bedrooms, must be evaluated. They’ve already quietly begun these small cell installations.

As a Harvard report indicates that very few know wireless technology is hazardous as the credible science showing harm has been suppressed from the public in big tobacco fashion. We’re not yet getting this information from mainstream media, which has conflicts of interest with industry advertising revenue.

The industry keeps pushing the convenience and economic opportunity of wireless with no information on the serious risks so we, and our legislators, keep buying into “smart” technology.

Here’s the good news. (There appear to be safer alternatives. We don’t always have this for toxic chemicals.)

Future harm can be avoided with safe hard-wired devices indoors, and infrastructure that brings cable/copper/fiber-optics to the premises instead of wireless radiation antennas mounted outside or in sky-based satellites. When we’re on the go, we can learn to use mobile devices sparingly, away from our bodies in active mode, and in airplane mode when not in use.

As nurses we may have additional occupational exposures. See the resource section for more about occupational exposures.

And importantly, we must become versed on the emerging evidence about potential harm caused by new technologies. It is important to understand these exposures just as it is to understand and address our chemical and biological exposures.

THE FOLLOWING IS OPTIONAL

Here you will find a set of educational videos that are in an interview format, starting with the basics: https://www.wirelesseducation.org/watch-5-part-video-series-effects-wi-fi-radiation/ (Links to an external site.)

Optional: This is a good scientific talk by Dr. Devra Davis reviewing many of the studies of the cell phone-related exposures on children’s brains, women’s breasts, and men’s reproductive organs.

Cell phones and Wifi / Electric and Magnetic and Radio Waves

START with NASA explanation

http://www.parentsforsafetechnology.org/radiation-basics-.html (Links to an external site.)

NEXT

Peter Sullivan – quick overview autism / human health / general

https://www.wirelesseducation.org/ (Links to an external site.)

THEN

Human health studies and policies

Devra Davis (This is a long video and quite good but I have curated it – so you can start and stop it at the following minute/second segments for some of the most important points: start at 13:42 to 19:00 24:23 – 26:00 44:32 – 47:09 52:35 – 55:17 56:50 – 57:26)

"The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation" — Dr Devra Davis (Links to an external site.)
"The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation" — Dr Devra Davis

3Think

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Discussion Prompt
Were there ways in which to “green” your healthcare setting that you had not previously considered? Is there a green team or the equivalent in your work setting? Who makes purchasing decisions?
The Practice Work Group of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments hosts a monthly meeting to discuss ways in which to green health care. You can find more information about joining this free phone conference by going to www.enviRN.org
Have you ever looked at the warnings that are on your cell phone. If you have an iPhone, follow these directions to find them on your phone: Go to settings –> General –> About –> Legal What do you think about what you found, in light of this module’s content
Should nurses be more active in staying abreast of information regarding radiation associated with tech devices and their associated potential risks?
If we wanted to develop a position statement for nurses on technology and health, how would we go about doing that?