Abstract
More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami, and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no one has died—and is unlikely to. Nuclear radiation at very high levels is dangerous, but the scale of concern that it evokes is misplaced. Nuclear technology cures countless cancer patients everyday—and a radiation dose given for radiotherapy in hospital is no different in principle to a similar dose received in the environment. What of Three Mile Island? There were no known deaths there. And Chernobyl? The most recent UN report (http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/Advance_copy_Annex_D_Chernobyl_Report.pdf.28.February.2011) confirms the known death toll—28 fatalities among emergency workers plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer—which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). And in each case, the numbers are minute compared with the 3,800 people at Bhopal in 1984 who died as a result of a leak of chemicals from the Union Carbide pesticide plant.
References
Allison, W. (2006). Fundamental physics for probing and imaging. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199203888.
Allison, W. (2009). Radiation and reason: the impact of science on a culture of fear. York: Wade Allison Publishing. ISBN 9780956275615.
Allison, W. (2011). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12860842. Accessed 26 Mar 2011.
Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 24 April 2002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Allison, W. We Should Stop Running Away from Radiation. Philos. Technol. 24, 193–195 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-011-0023-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-011-0023-x