Radiation burn

A radiation burn is damage to the skinor other biological tissuecaused by exposure to ionizing radiation. The most common type of radiation burn is a sun burncaused by UV light. High exposure to x raysduring diagnostic medical imagingor radiotherapyhave also resulted in radiation burns. As the ionizing radiationinteracts with cellswithin the body, damaging them, the body responds to this damage, typically resulting in erythema, redness around the damaged area. Radiation burns are often associated with cancerdue to the ability of ionizing radiationto interact and damage DNA, occasionally inducing a cell to become cancerous.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation+burn Wikipedia article Radiation burn.