Effectiveness of food irradiation with low energy x-rays

As the main purpose of food irradiation is to induce ionization and photochemical reactions to create radicals to kill toxicants, pathogens and insect pests, one should avoid nuclear reactions or transmutations. Consideration of photon intensity attenuation and energy absorption in water, a typical entity for medical and agriculture medium, shows that half value dose depths are nearly constant over a wide range of energies. Higher energy photons increase non-local effects of radiations spreading in the medium. Thus, more economical, compact and high efficiency food irradiators should be possible at low energies, which will allow for distributed, field deployed food irradiators. (author)