Submitted by 0zMosiss t3_1176lab in askscience
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Submitted by 0zMosiss t3_1176lab in askscience
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The water might be safer if the xrays damage or kill bacteria present in the water or on the bottle. Water is unaffected by Xray radiation.
With respect to the materials, xrays don't modify metals. Xrays over time will change plastic polymers, but the amount, duration of exposure, and intensity are more than a medical xray. Multiple forms of radiation including UV light will modify or break polymer bonds plastic over time. This is why plastic tends to "bleach" in the sun and turn white and powdery as they degrade. Bury plastic underground and it will last a very very long time.
I can't see how an xray would do anything to a water bottle that would affect its safety.
It's important to know that radiation isn't one thing.
The three main types that people mean when they use that term are alpha, beta, and gamma.
Alpha particles are little helium nuclei. They can mess up DNA (maybe causing cancer), but they don't travel far and are usually only harmful if the source is inside you.
Beta particles are electrons moving at incredible speed. Not as likely to cause damage as alpha particles, but they travel much further and can cause damage if you are near the emitting material.
Gamma radiation is just very energetic photons (light). Gamma rays are the least likely to do damage because they will likely pass straight through you without interacting. They travel incredible distances though and are difficult to shield against.
X-rays are the same kind of thing as gamma rays, but they have less energy. They are more likely to interact with your body and are more easily blocked. They can do some damage, but the probability is relatively low. Prolonged exposure is bad, but they are low risk for occasional medical imaging.
It is important to note that all of these are harmful because they are ionizing radiation. They can damage complex molecules needed by the body (mostly DNA but also cell structure if in sufficient quantity).
Water is a very stable molecule and x-rays aren't powerful enough to change it. You can actually sterilize water by irradiating it with UV light or stronger (UV is like x-rays but even lower energy), because the molecules that make up bacteria and viruses are more fragile than water molecules.
Afaik there's swimming pools nowadays where they disinfect the water with UV light instead of putting chlorine in it.
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The answer would be likely - "it depends".
Water isn't likely to be affected even by high doses of powerful x-ray radiation from an industrial CT machine (orders of magnitude more powerful than a medical x-ray/CT). It could get a bit warm from the absorbed energy, though.
However with the bottle it would depend a lot on what that bottle has been made from. Glass and metal are very unlikely to be affected to any significant degree even by a strong x-ray source. Plastic - would depend on the dose (time & energy) and what kind of plastic are we talking about. Some could start decomposing/breaking down under the intense x-ray radiation and possibly leach some nasty stuff into the water.
That is very unlikely to happen with a low energy medical x-ray and one-shot exposure, though. However, if you leave a plastic bottle inside of an industrial CT-machine during a multiple hour scan using a high energy beam (e.g. because you are scanning an engine piece made out of metal), there I would be quite careful because who knows how the plastic could react.
And finally, as mentioned by others - it is not enough to be "in the vicinity" for the bottle to be affected by the rays. It would need to be directly in the path of the beam from the x-ray source (or some reflection). X-rays are very directional, the same (or even more so, given it is a shorter wavelength) as light.
Given how well the x-ray machines are shielded and enclosed to avoid accidentally exposing the operators, if your bottle outside of the machine got damaged by x-rays then you would have much much worse problems to care about than some stuff possibly leaching into water ...
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DrHugh t1_j9aqc18 wrote
Yes. X-ray machines are directional and fairly low power; they don't want to irradiate anything unnecessarily. Plus, x-rays don't make things radioactive. They may cause a miniscule amount of heating, but they don't induce radioactivity.