STRANGE GLOW
STRANGE GLOW
The Story of Radiation
TIMOTHY J. JORGENSEN
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2016 by Timothy J. Jorgensen
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press.princeton.edu
Cover art by Jessica Massabrook
All Rights Reserved
Third printing, and first paperback printing, 2017
Paper ISBN 978-0-691-17834-9
Cloth ISBN 978-0-691-16503-5
Library of Congress Control Number 2015959168
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Montserrat & Sabon LT Std.
Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
DEDICATED TO MY PARENTS,
Charles and Marion Jorgensen
A tribute of my respect,
admiration, and love
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ix
1. Nuclear Jaguars
1
PART ONE:
RADIATION 101: THE BASICS
2. Now You See It: Radiation Revealed
7
3. Seek and You Shall Find: Radioactivity Everywhere
38
4. Splitting Hairs: Atomic Particles and Nuclear Fission
51
PART TWO:
THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF RADIATION
5. Painted into a Corner: Radiation and Occupational Illness
81
6. The Hippocratic Paradox: Radiation Cures Cancer
116
7. Location, Location, Location: Radiation Sickness
141
8. Snow Warning: Radioactive Fallout
164
9. After the Dust Settles: Measuring the Cancer Risk of Radiation
187
10. Breeding Season: Genetic Effects
206
11. Crystal Clear: The Target for Radiation Damage
234
PART THREE:
WEIGHING THE RISKS AND BENEFITS OF RADIATION
12. Silent Spring: Radon in Homes
275
13. A Tale of Two Cities: Diagnostic Radiography
293
14. Sorry, Wrong Number: Cell Phones
310
15. Hot Tuna: Radioactivity in Food
326
16. Blue Moon: Nuclear Power Plant Accidents
346
17. The Things They Carried: Geopolitical Radiation Threats
374
Epilogue: N-Rays
397
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
407
NOTES AND CITATIONS
411
BIBLIOGRAPHY
453
INDEX
465
PREFACE
Classic—a book which people praise and don’t read.
—Mark Twain
Things that are complex are not useful. Things that are useful are simple.
—Michail Kalashnikov, inventor of the simple and reliable Automatic Kalashnikov-1947 (AK-47) assault rifle, which has only eight moving parts.
This book was not meant to be a classic; it was meant to be useful. I have, therefore, written it using straightforward language largely devoid of scientific jargon. In so doing, it is my wish that the book will be accessible to the widest possible audience of readers, regardless of whether they have any technical background. If I have done my job well, readers of this book will learn a tremendous amount about radiation and will find this information useful in many practical ways.
People like to get their learning in the form of stories.1 As actress Audrey Hepburn once said, “Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from the movies.” Although this is a book, and not a movie, the point is well taken. If you tell an engaging and compelling story, be it through movie or book, people will learn something from it. So that’s what I attempt to do here. This book is the story of people’s encounters with radiation, and of how mankind has been transformed by the experience. The story is, therefore, told with an emphasis on the human aspects, and it is told from a health-centric perspective. The goal is to integrate the technological aspects of radiation with the human experience and thereby remove some of the mystery and misunderstanding that surround radiation. Nevertheless, this is not a book about lessening your fear of radiation. Fear is a very subjective emotion, driven by many factors. The only thing that can be achieved here is to present the facts about radiation as objectively and evenhandedly as possible, leaving you to decide which aspects to fear.
Another purpose of this book is to dispel the myth that the subject of radiation risks is so complicated that it is beyond the capability of ordinary people to grasp, leaving reliance on radiation “experts” as their only recourse. This is simply not true. Intelligent people, even those lacking any technical background, should be able to understand the fundamental principles that drive radiation risk and then make their own decisions about how large a threat radiation poses to them personally and collectively. This book seeks both to convince people that they can be masters of their own radiation fate, and to empower them to make their own well-informed decisions about their personal radiation exposures.
Lastly, this book is an experiment in risk communication. The open question is whether radiation risks can be characterized accurately and effectively without reliance on a lot of mathematics, tables, and graphs. These highly quantitative approaches have proved to be largely ineffective in communicating the essence of risk to the public.2 This book is devoid of graphs and tables and keeps the mathematics to a minimum. Instead, it tries to instill a sense of the magnitude of the threat through a historical scientific narrative about the people who encountered radiation of various types and dose levels, and the health consequences of those exposures. In this way, we can get an accurate sense of the level of the radiation hazard even if we don’t have a detailed understanding of the underlying technology.
Can all this be achieved? I don’t see why not. It’s been done before—in the case of electricity. Electricity was a technological innovation introduced to society shortly before radiation. Initially, it was greatly feared as a deadly and invisible threat to health. With time, however, people began to understand that a flashlight battery didn’t pose the same danger as a downed power line. Even people who couldn’t explain the difference between an amp and a volt began to understand that, although there were risks of death, those risks could be managed so that the benefits of electricity could be maximized and the risks minimized. Now no one speaks of being pro- or anti-electricity. They understand that electricity is here to stay. There is no going back. All we can do is manage electricity to minimize its dangers relative to its benefits.
But we haven’t yet reached a similar place with radiation. People today often react to radiation in the same way that people reacted to electricity over a hundred years ago. Our understanding of radiation needs to advance to the point that we develop the same good sense about radiation risks that we have for electricity. Radiation, like electricity, is a technology that is here to stay. So the more that people learn about radiation, the better off we’ll all be. This book seeks to increase public understanding of radiation, in much the same way that people gradually came to understand electricity.
You will get the most from this boo
k if you appreciate how it is organized. After a brief opening chapter that sets the stage for the topic (chapter 1), the book is divided into three parts.
Part One (chapters 2–4) tells the story of how radiation was discovered, and how society immediately put that discovery to practical use. You’ll learn how a chance observation of a glowing fluorescent screen in a laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany, saved a man’s leg from amputation in Montreal, Canada, just a few weeks later. You’ll learn about Thomas Edison’s initial enthusiasm for x-ray tubes, why he soon became afraid of them, and the heavy price his assistant paid for acting carelessly. You’ll also learn how a cloudy day in Paris resulted in the discovery of radioactivity. Along the way, you will be introduced to a few physics concepts that are important to understanding how radiation affects health. Ideas about radiation and its relevant physics are introduced progressively and systematically, while the health aspects of radiation make cameo appearances in the form of anecdotes about problems suffered by the early scientific pioneers of radiation research. A comparison is made to electricity, as an example of an earlier technology that was originally regarded by the public with even greater suspicion.
Part Two (chapters 5–11) introduces the effects of radiation on human health. It begins with the story of miners in Germany who unknowingly suffered from a radiation-related illness before radiation had even been discovered. You’ll find out what their illness had to do with the mysterious deaths of women who painted watch dials in the United States. And you’ll learn how it was discovered that radiation can cure cancer. You’ll also learn about radiation sickness and why most medical doctors have never seen a case of it. And you’ll find out why you shouldn’t be drinking milk after a nuclear power plant accident. Evolving notions about how human cells and tissues react to radiation are introduced, with a focus on how radiation’s health effects are measured, culminating in what we now know about their underlying causes. The radiation biology related to health issues, rather than the radiation physics, is dealt with systematically, and the concept of equating “safety” with “low risk” is introduced anecdotally. This is done as a prelude to Part Three, where the role of risk/benefit analysis in making decisions regarding radiation use is explored.
Part Three (chapters 12–17) is a collection of chapters narrowly focused on radiation topics of popular interest. To mention just a few, you’ll learn how dangerous the radon in your basement is, how hazardous it is to eat food contaminated with radioactivity, and how risky it is to live next to a nuclear power plant. Although you may be tempted to cherry-pick these chapters, and read only those of particular interest, you should resist that temptation. Embedded within each chapter is an illustration of a specific risk assessment concept, and the chapters are ordered so that they progressively reveal the value of considering both risks and benefits when making health decisions, as well as the importance of weighing alternative risks. Also included is systematic discussion of how uncertainty affects the validity of our radiation decisions. It is possible to read the chapters in this part out of numerical order without any loss of narrative continuity, but the developing story of risk assessment and its relationship to safety will be garbled, so a nonsequential approach is not recommended.
The epilogue contains some final thoughts regarding all that we’ve learned about radiation and how best to apply that information to everyday life. It also includes one final story about radiation that has a very important take-home message.
With this overview, you are now ready to begin your exploration of the world of radiation. You will likely find it both interesting and enjoyable, but also a little scary. Nevertheless, in the end, you’ll be much better equipped to deal with any radiation issues that you encounter during your travels through life in a modern technological society, where radiation presents itself at every turn. Good luck on your journey.
TIMOTHY J. JORGENSEN
WASHINGTON, DC
STRANGE GLOW
CHAPTER 1
NUCLEAR JAGUARS
In the dark, all cats are jaguars.
—Anonymous Proverb
As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.
—Julius Caesar
The common denominator of most radiation exposure scenarios is fear. Just mention the word radiation, and you instill fear—a perfectly understandable response given the images of mushroom clouds and cancerous tumors that immediately come to mind. Those images would justifiably cause anyone to be anxious. Nevertheless, some people have also become highly afraid of diagnostic x-rays, luggage scanners, cell phones, and microwave ovens. This extreme level of anxiety is unwarranted, and potentially dangerous.
When people are fearful, they tend to exaggerate risk. Research has shown that people’s perception of risk is tightly linked to their fear level.1 They tend to overestimate the risk of hazards that they fear, while underestimating the risk of hazards they identify as being less scary. Often their risk perception has little to do with the facts, and the facts might not even be of interest to them. For example, many Americans are terrified of black widow spiders, which are found throughout the United States. They are uninterested in the reality that fewer than two people die from black widow bites each year, while over 1,000 people suffer serious illness and death annually from mosquito bites. Mosquitoes are just too commonplace to worry about. Likewise, the risk of commercial airplane crashes is tiny compared to motorcycle crashes, but many a biker is afraid to fly.
The point is that risk perception drives our decision making, and these perceptions often do not correspond to the real risk levels, because irrational fear is taking our brains hostage. When irrational fear enters the picture, it is difficult to objectively weigh risks. Ironically, health decisions driven by fear may actually cause us to make choices that increase, rather than decrease, our risks.
Fear of radiation is particularly problematic considering the trend in radiation exposures. Since 1980, the background radiation exposure level for Americans has doubled, and is likely to continue to climb.2 Similar patterns are occurring in all of the developed and developing countries. This increase in background radiation is almost entirely due to the expanding use of radiation procedures in medicine. The benefits of diagnostic radiology in identifying disease and monitoring treatment progress have been significant; however, radiation has also been overused in many circumstances, conveying little or no benefits to patients while still subjecting them to increased risks. Furthermore, medical radiation is not distributed evenly across the population. While some people are getting no medical radiation exposure at all, others are receiving substantial doses. Under such circumstances, the “average” background radiation level means little to the individual. People need to be aware of their personal radiation exposures and weigh the risks and benefits before agreeing to subject themselves to medical radiation procedures.
In addition to the medical exposures, people receive radiation doses from a variety of consumer products, commercial radiation activities, and natural radioactivity sources in our environment. Some of these exposures are low level and low risk, while others can be at a high level and potentially hazardous. People need to be aware of these different radiation exposure hazards, and protect themselves when necessary.
In the pages that follow, we will explore the story of radiation with a specific focus on health. We will investigate what we know about radiation, and how we know it. We will weigh the risks and the benefits and characterize the uncertainties. We will identify the information needed to make rational health decisions about radiation, and we will uncover the limits of that information.
Since we typically cannot see radiation, we tend to be both intrigued by and afraid of it. We have endowed radiation with magical transformative powers that produce the superheroes of our comic books, such as the Incredible Hulk (exposed to gamma rays), Spider-Man (bitten by a radioactive spider), and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (overexposure to radiation). Yet, even superheroes
are ambivalent about radiation. Superman is thankful for his x-ray vision, but scared to death of kryptonite (a fictional radioactive element).
In the end, we don’t know what to think. Nevertheless, we have practical decisions facing us at the individual, community, state, national, and international levels. Questions range from whether one should agree to have a dental x-ray today, to whether more nuclear power plants should be built for energy needs 20 years from now. Such questions must be answered both individually and collectively, and answered now. We cannot postpone our decisions until more data are accumulated or more research is done, and we cannot relegate the responsibility to scientists or politicians. These decisions must be made by the electorate and the stakeholders; that is, by every person in our society.
The problem is that there are different types of radiation, and they are not all equally dangerous. Regrettably, most types are invisible, and we tend to fear things that we cannot see. Furthermore, we’ve lumped the invisible ones all together as equally hazardous. They are not, and we need to be able to tell the difference. All cats are not jaguars.
Which types of radiation should be feared? People must decide that for themselves. But that decision needs to be based on the facts. Although some things remain unknown, obscure, or uncertain, we cannot pretend that we know nothing about radiation and its health effects. The scientific and medical communities know a great deal about the effects of exposure after more than a century of experience with radiation. In fact, we know more about radiation than any other environmental hazard.
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