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“Topics in Radiation Toxicology” Offered as New Master’s Course

Published July 14, 2025

Radiation is everywhere. In a new Online Master’s program course, offered in the Fall semester, Dr. David Juckett and Dr. Carolina de Aguiar Ferreira plan to demonstrate why this fact should be studied and embraced, rather than feared.

“We tend to fear what we don’t know,” Dr. Ferreira said of the one-credit course, “Topics in Radiation Toxicology.” “But this is a pretty cool course. It’s an overview of what radiation is, what radiation biology is, and how it affects living things. We’ll look at the toxic effects it can have, and that while radiation can cause cancer, it can also treat cancer.”

Dr. Juckett has a long history of teaching in the Online Master’s program and saw this topic as a natural direction in the program's continuing evolution.

“We are constantly – from birth – exposed to background radiation,” he said. “Our species and the life on Earth have been exposed to radiation for the 4 ½ billion years we’ve been here, and we’ve actually developed ways of dealing with the toxicological damage of radiation. Our goal is to give students a background to tell them this is what radiation is, and this is where it comes from. It comes out of the ground, it comes from the sky, and we eat it every day. It’s everywhere.”

"Topics in Radiation Toxicology" is available for Fall 2025 under the course number PHM 980: Section 735. Email phmtox@msu.edu for enrollment assistance.