L

et’s stop panicking about radiation. This message is aimed at my friend A. F. who told me to shut the windows despite the warmth of the morning. “I calculate that the radioactive death cloud from the Fukushima nuclear plant will arrive here by noon,” he explained.

I doubted that shutting the windows would provide enough protection, but I’m no expert, so I did as he told me. Around 11:50 p.m., he leapt to his feet and pointed through the glass. “There it is, right on schedule,” he said. I followed the line of his finger, and said: “That’s not a radioactive emission from Japan. That’s just a cloud.”

None of this surprised me. The main thing that happens after a disaster is that panic arises among people who enjoy that sort of thing. An hour later, A. F. claimed he could smell radiation. I pointed out that 1.) Radiation doesn’t have a smell, and, 2.) He lives above a hairdresser’s, a category of shop which always smell disgusting, because they use so many chemicals that the fumes combine into a lethal cloud way worse than Fukushima and closer to Bhopal.

Discussing this later at the bar, I was curious to learn from a self-described scientist that some boffins now think radiation is good for you. I retorted: “The residents of Hiroshima might disagree.” But then I remembered that I myself owned a historical document showing radiation having a positive effect: an April 1963 edition of The Amazing Spiderman.

The scientist clarified himself: Low level radiation is good for you. With his iPhone, he Googled several surveys which showed that radiologists, nuclear plant staff and airport security staff get fewer cancers than people in jobs with no exposure to radiation.

Most surprising was a recent study in Florida in which mice suffering from Alzheimer’s disease were given two hours of “talk time” on mobile phones (which emit low levels of radiation) every day for seven months. “Memory problems of the older Alzheimer’s mice disappeared,” researchers at the University of South Florida said.

Irritatingly, the report failed to answer the obvious questions. 1) How did they locate mice with Alzheimer’s disease in the first place? Did they hang out at mice apartments to see which ones remembered their door entry codes? 2) What did the mice talk about for two hours a day? 3) How did they know which mice had memory problems? Did they eavesdrop on their conversations? Mouse one: “My brain works perfectly again.” Mouse two: “Is that right?” Mouse one: “Is what right?”

The next day was so hot that A. F. reluctantly opened the windows, even though the Fukushima radioactive death cloud was running late. I told him not to worry. “There are lots of documents which indicate that low-level radiation has positive effects,” I said, handing him a reading list: Godzilla, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, the Incredible Hulk, the Daleks, etc. You can’t deny evidence like that.

I could have added that radioactivity has been scientifically proven to benefit mouse-sized brains, but I stopped myself. For several of my dear friends, that would have been a little too close to the truth.



The writer is a columnist and journalist.