Features

Superheroes — how would their exposure to materials actually affect the human body?

by
David Agnew
Nov 12, 2018

We certainly aren’t short of superhero movies and TV shows, with so many beloved characters of both the Marvel and DC universes given their time in the spotlight on the big and small screens over the past decade or so.

Many of the superheroes that we cheer for gain their incredible powers due to being exposed to certain materials. While these encounters transform the characters into superhumans, what would the actual impact of such exposure be on the human body? Join Kromek, creator of the pocket-sized D3S wearable RIID device that can subtly detect various radiological threats, as they find out…

Captain America (aka Steve Rogers)

Steve Rogers became the pinnacle of human physical perfection and effectively Captain America after agreeing to undergo tests at a secret laboratory. The conclusion of these tests saw Rogers administered with the Super-Soldier serum before being subjected to a series of vita-rays — a unique combination of wavelengths of radiation designed to both accelerate and stabilise the effects of the serum on the body.

We do not know the ingredients of the Super-Soldier serum, but we can certainly speculate on what would happen if your body was subjected to wavelengths of radiation.

The unit sievert measures radiation, with this quantifying the amount of radiation that is absorbed by human tissues. One sievert equals 1,000 millisieverts (mSv), while one mSv equals 1,000 microsieverts. We are exposed to between two and three mSv of natural radiation per year. Have a CT scan and the organ studied typically receives a radiation dose of 15 mSv if you’re an adult and 30 mSv if the individual is a newborn baby, while a standard chest X-ray often involves exposure to around 0.02 mSv and a dental X-ray usually 0.01 mSv.

However, being exposed to 100 mSv per year is the lowest level in which any increase in the risk of cancer is clearly evident. Meanwhile, cumulative exposure to one sievert is said to cause a fatal cancer many years later in five out of every 100 individuals exposed to the radiation. Become exposed to large doses of radiation or acute radiation though and your central nervous system, as well as your red and white blood cells, will be destroyed and your immune system compromised.

Steve Rogers may well have become as strong as a human can be, with help from exposure to radiation then, but in reality, the result could be that your body will be unable to fight off infections — if it does indeed survive the ordeal!

The Hulk (aka Bruce Banner)

Bruce Banner was certainly a hero when he ran into a Gamma radiation test facility in an attempt to save a man trapped inside the site. However, his efforts saw him take a direct blast from an experimental gamma bomb — a turning point in Banner’s life as it turned him into The Hulk and saw him grow huge and green whenever he became angry.

Get caught in the path of a gamma bomb in real life though and you’d either quickly die from radiation sickness or be instantly incinerated. There would be little time for you to get angry — or feel any other emotion, for that matter!

This is because gamma rays represent the highest energy form of light — they lie beyond violet on the electromagnetic spectrum with shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet rays and X-rays. One gamma ray offers at least 10,000 times more energy than a visible light ray. Gamma rays also knock electrons about in rapid fashion, with the charge particles then disrupting any chemical bond that they come into contact with.

It must be mentioned that gamma rays are used in medical applications. Take the gamma knife for example, which is a medical device which aims gamma rays at a patient’s brain in order to kill tumors.

Spiderman (aka Peter Parker)

A tour of a high-tech science facility took a rather interesting turn for Peter Parker when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Before long, the nerdy teenager was swinging across New York City and saving civilians from evil villains under the guise of Spiderman.

Would a bite from a spider filled oozing with radioactivity really transform you into a webbed hero though? Technology publication Gizmodo has shed light on this by imagining a scenario where a person is bitten by a spider whose phosphates in its DNA backbone had been replaced with a radioactive isotope of phosphorous, Phosphorous-32.

As a quick side note, be aware that while fans have never been told exactly what the spider that bit Peter Parker was irradiated with, recent origin stories of Spiderman have at least mentioned DNA hybridisation.

Back to the spider irradiated with Phosphorous-32. Due to the half life of this radioactive isotope of phosphorous being around 14 days, Phosphorous-32 would only stay in the human body for a short amount of time and actually likely be excreted eventually through the urine. Gizmodo also points out that Phosphorous-32 is a beta emitter, and so would be blocked by a thin sheet plastic to prevent too much harm being caused to those who stood nearby the person who had been bitten by the radioactive spider.

Therefore, being bitten by a radioactive spider would more likely cause you irritation such as itching, redness and soreness for a few days, opposed to suddenly giving you the ability to shoot webs from your fingers and climb up walls with ease!

Superman (aka Clark Kent)

An alien hailing from Krypton — a planet that orbits a red star — Clark Kent gets the abilities to become Superman when on Earth by absorbing the radiation that comes from the sun.

In the real world though, ultraviolet rays in sunlight can be harmful to the skin when the body is exposed to too much of it. Subject the skin to a large amount of sunlight and you may witness mild reddening in the short turn and suffer from sunburn, whereby the skin will be blistered and eventually will peel.

In the long-term, however, catching too much of the sun can speed up the ageing of the skin — you’ll notice this if the skin becomes mottled, wrinkled or leathery. On a much more serious note, the risk that you’ll develop skin cancer will increase too.

Superman may have some amazing abilities then, but you’d be much smarter applying sunscreen onto exposed skin instead of letting the sun’s rays do their damage on your body!

No doubt, it would be great to have superhero powers. However, our human bodies seem incapable of going through the transformation that many of our comic book heroes did when they came into possession of their abilities.