Which of the following radiation-induced diseases can be differentiated from non-radiation induced versions of the same disease?

• A. Lifespan shortening
• B. Cataracts
• C. Breast cancer
• D. Lung cancer

Answer: (B)

Radiation exposure to the lens causes a distinctive type of cataract: posterior subcapsular cataracts that tend to develop earlier than age-related ones. Because age-related cataracts are usually nuclear or cortical and occur later in life, finding a posterior subcapsular opacity in someone with a history of radiation exposure strongly suggests a radiation-induced cataract. The latency can be months to years and the location within the lens is a pattern radiobiologists associate with radiation effects.

Lifespan shortening isn’t a discrete, diagnosable eye disease you differentiate from a non-radiation version of something else, so it isn’t the same type of differentiable outcome. For cancers like breast or lung cancer, while radiation exposure raises risk, you can’t reliably tell from the tumor itself whether it arose due to radiation versus other factors; there’s no single morphologic feature that distinguishes a radiogenic cancer in an individual patient.