World News for Students of English

13-08-2020 07:00

Seventy-five years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, survivors are still suffering from the effects.

The US dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima on the 6^th of August, 1945, and three days later, another US bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki. The US said that it used the weapons to end the war more quickly and to prevent the loss of American lives; however, the atomic bombs killed an estimated 120,000 in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.

A joint US and Japanese institute examines the effects of radiation on survivors. Traumatic memories bring health problems; however, cancer is the primary risk for people who were exposed to radiation. The survivors, who are now mostly in their 80s and 90s, are prone to breast and lung cancer. The study has led to safe radiation limits in hospitals around the world, and NASA uses it to determine radiation limits for space missions.

Difficult words: radiation (a type of wave energy that can be very dangerous to living organisms), prone (likely to suffer from effects of something), determine (to establish).

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