infected by radiation poisoning

[victor steinbok]

A promo for an upcoming cable drama episode used the phrase "infected
by radiation poisoning" which apparently is uttered in one of the
scenes. A quick check suggests that being "infected" by radiation or
one of its aspects is in fairly common use in texts promoting
radiation survival, although it appears in other venues as well (at
least one Trekkie site). Has this ship sailed? Does "infected" mean
having been exposed to any kind of (physically) harmful influence that
causes an illness?

VS-)

Three examples:

> Shower with soap and water, scrubbing hard to remove any possible radiation from the body. This helps with the remaining 10% of external contamination, and lowers the risk of you breathing, ingesting or being _infected_ by harmful radiation particles.


> Now that you've evacuated yourself from the _infected_ area and cleaned up a bit, it's time for the third step—increasing your distance to the infected zone. If you double the distance between you and the danger zone, the possible exposure of radiation is reduced by a factor of 4 (inverse-square law).


> I then pointed out to you the comparative numbers of people who died or were _infected_ by radiation sickness in the MONTH after Chernobyl and in the MONTH (that is all we have so far) after Fukushima, and you extrapolated from that the fact that I was under-estimating the number of people who died or became infected after Chernobyl (a complete non sequitur if ever there was one, albeit a self-serving one).

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