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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (9111)	3/19/2001 2:04:06 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 82486

I'll tell you my major problem with irradiation: the creation of free radicals and DNA fragments in a thermal regime that is not very well known. Certain reactions tend to occur when heating or pyrolizing proteins as occurs when boiling and frying or baking. Pyrolysis is not a particularly good thing and many unhealthy components are known to be generated by the overheating of plant and animal materials There are enzymes that break proteins along certain boundaries at pretty narrow temperature ranges. Cooking is less controlled than digestion, but still there tends to be fragmentation at particular sites (much like the perforations cause a known tearing on postage stamps). When an ionizing particle or other highly energetic ray goes through a material, it leaves ions in its trail. These free radicals can recombine in unexpected and highly unnatural ways producing harmful or potentially bioactive reaction products that wouldn't normally form in a low energy environment like that of cooking. I'd feel a lot better if irradiation had a longer track record.