Biologist Mary Olson's life’s mission is to bring to light to the disproportionate impact of radiation on girls and women. Through her work as a staff biologist and policy analyst at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Olson has spent decades working for greater health and greater protection for people in communities impacted by nuclear activities. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, Olson decided to pursue questions about greater harm to girls and women from ionizing exposures. Mary is now the founder of Gender + Radiation Impact Project, their mission is to catalyze better choices for preventing unintended exposure to low level ionizing radiation and an overall reduction in harm – for everyone, but especially little girls who are most impacted by radiation exposure.
Ionizing radiation as “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.” Ionizing radiation can be found in many places in our modern world, including residue and waste from the nuclear industry, both electric power and weapon production, medical procedures like x-rays and CT scans, and even air travel. For every two men who develop cancer through exposure to ionizing radiation, three women will get the disease.
With Mary we talk about how radiation impacts girls and women, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima Nagasaki which led her to this work, impacts of her research, and what she hopes to see for girls and women concerning radiation for the future.
Contact and connect with Mary: gender.radiation@gmail.com
Mary’s work: https://www.nirs.org/mary-olson-nirs-medical-consequences-using-nuclear-weapons-radiation-risks-women-girls/
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS): https://www.nirs.org/
Gender + Radiation Impact Project: https://www.genderandradiation.org/
UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Hiroshima Nagasaki 75: https://www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/
Reference Man: https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2010125
Background Music Credits:
https://www.youtube.com/c/mbbmusic
