These adjuncts of modern science and medicine are more common and widespread in technologically advanced countries than elsewhere, and nuclear bombs have most often been exploded in just those latitudes where the advanced countries are to be found. Attempts have been made to work out estimates of this exposure. One estimate, involving a number of technologically advanced countries (including the United States) showed that an average of somewhere between 0.02 and 0.18 rem per year was absorbed, as a result of radiations (usually X rays) used in medical diagnosis and therapy. Occupational exposure added, on the average, not more than 0.003 rem, though the individuals constantly exposed in the course of their work would naturally absorb considerably more than this overall average. [Illustration: _Man-made radioactivity in the atmosphere produced this nuclear-emulsion photograph. This radiation source is a fission product produced in a nuclear explosion. The enlargement is 1200 diameters. Compare this with the natural radioactivity depicted on page 28._] On the whole, the highest absorption was found, as was to be expected, in the United States. If these findings are expanded to cover a 30-year period, assuming the absorption will remain the same from year to year, it turns out that the average absorption of man-made radiation in the nations studied varies from 0.6 rem to 5.5 rems per 30 years per individual. Considering the higher figure to be applicable to the United States, it would seem that man-made radiation from all sources is now being absorbed at nearly twice the rate that natural radiation is. To put it another way, Americans are just about tripling their radiation dosage by reason of the human activities that are now adding man-made radiation to the natural supply. By far the major part of this additional dosage is the result of the use of X rays in searching for decayed teeth, broken bones, lung lesions, swallowed objects, and so on. DOSE AND CONSEQUENCE Radiation Sickness The danger to the individual as a result of overexposure to high-energy radiation was understood fairly soon but not before some tragic experiences were recorded. One of the early workers with radioactive materials, Pierre Curie, deliberately exposed a patch of his skin to the action of radioactive radiations and obtained a serious and slow-healing burn. His wife, Marie Curie, and their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, who spent their lives working with radioactive materials, both died of leukemia, very possibly as the result of cumulative exposure to radiation. Other research workers in the field died of cancer before the full necessity of extreme caution was understood.