system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Will sterilisation with gamma rays not make the product radioactive or destroy the product?

I was told yesterday that sometimes drugs are sterilised using gamma rays because some drugs can't handle being heated. Then he added that it's also used for food!?

Is there not a risk of the drug, food or packaging becoming radioactive? Or will the rays not alter the drug or the food?

I am also wondering if this done in very controlled facilities? But he said it was very common, but I thought it would be too expensive!?
gpt
Gamma rays will not make the material radioactive, unless they are of just the right frequency to excite nuclei in the material. But even then, that will just cause a small fraction of the nuclei in the material to gamma decay back to the ground state, and that usually happens very quickly.

If the gamma rays don't have exactly the right frequency to excite any nucleus in the material being irradiated, then it won't activate the material at all.

Activation is mostly just a worry with neutron radiation rather than gamma rays.