Females Exposed to Nuclear Radiation Are Far Likelier Than Males to Suffer Harm

Nuclear missile testing in the Marshall Islands: the white lines, captured by extended photo exposure, represent the missiles’ re-entry paths. DAVID JAMES PAQUIN/CREATIVE COMMONS

The new nuclear weapons ban treaty, to be most likely adopted by the United Nations General Assembly this week, arises from hope for our future. The negotiations for the treaty have elevated new information about the damage from ionizing radiation to the world stage. That is exactly where it needs to be heard.

More cancers are derived from radiation than national regulators now report. They may not be aware that both age-at-exposure and one’s sex determine how much harm we suffer from radiation.

Women exposed to ionizing radiation during childhood suffer from cancer at a rate 10 times higher than predicted by traditional models used by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The models assume that “Reference Man” represents us all. Invented to simplify calculations, Reference Man is 25 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is 5 feet 6 inches tall, “Caucasian and has a Western European or North American” lifestyle.



My first paper on radiation, published in 2011, “Atomic Radiation Is More Harmful to Women,” answers a simple question from a woman who raised her hand at one of my public lectures in North Carolina a year earlier, asking, “Does radiation exposure harm me more than a man?” She did not mean in pregnancy; she meant her own body.


Only one large data set includes all ages and both genders exposed together to a single flash of gamma and neutron radiation: the survivors of the US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. They survived in shelters or other shielding amid the first horrific years. Sixty years of data on cancer incidences and fatality among the survivors — called the Hibakusha — was published by the US National Academy of Science in 2006.



The difference between male and female, with males more resistant to radiation harm, is measurable in all the age-of-exposure cohorts, even into old age — the difference between genders is smaller when adults are exposed rather than when they are children.

For every two men exposed in adulthood who died of cancer, three women died of cancer. A 50 percent difference in the rate of cancer death from radiation exposure in adulthood is not insignificant to most female readers! Indeed, this finding is changing my own behavior in fieldwork.


We are all getting these smaller radiation exposures.





It is a sturdy seedling of hope.



Mary Olson

Mary Olson

Mary Olson is a staff biologist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a nonprofit educational organization based in Takoma Park, Md., focused on nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues since 1978. She is also acting director of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project, which is based in Asheville, N.C., where Olson lives. Olson has a B.A. from Reed College, with a double major in biology and history of science and later studied chemistry and biochemistry at Purdue University.

2 thoughts on “Females Exposed to Nuclear Radiation Are Far Likelier Than Males to Suffer Harm”

  1. As the daughter of a Hibakusha, I find this article very interesting and very personal to me. My mother was only 12-years-old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It is so important that Ms. Olson’s information is being presented and is recognized in the United Nations Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty. We need to report the accurate information about the effects from radiation, just as much as we need to remember the atomic bomb victim’s stories- not for blame but so it NEVER happens again.

  2. Hello,

    I am interested in knowing if anyone thinks people with gender fluidity might also be a sign of our bodies evolving as our DNA has no doubt been altered in minuscule but significant ways and maybe continues to be altered by the tiny atomic waves that were created while our parents and grandparents were exposed and maybe it affected their sperm and eggs and so we end up with people who identify as a male gender mentally while their body is female and vice versa? I know people are whoever they want to be, we are what we are, but I wonder if nuclear radiation exposure long before we were born could have anything to do with it as well.

    I am also curious, as someone who has had PCOS all her life and now struggles with infertility very recently, if the infertility and PCOS rates we are seeing is a result of nuclear radiation and atomic bomb tests. Infertility has been around forever apparently according to science. But what about PCOS, it causes more male hormones to be produced in the female body hence the women sometimes have more facial hair, and erratic menstral patterns or no periods at all. Could PCOS and infertility be brought on by nuclear radiation exposure.

    If you know of any studies being done or articles you think I should read please share them with me! Very interested to know what other people think about this.

    Thank you, peace!


Leave a Comment


Don't Miss a Story:

Subscribe to PassBlue


We respect your privacy and take protecting it seriously​