Strange Glow

by Timothy J Jorgensen

  3. Sir William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907), more commonly known as Lord Kelvin, was a prominent mathematical physicist and engineer.

  4. Wood R. W. “The N-rays.”

  5. We now know that waves have some characteristics in common with particles, but “corpuscles” were thought to be actual microscopic bits of matter that were flying through space.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  AAPM Task Group 217. Radiation Dose from Airport Scanners. College Park, MD: American Association of Physicists in Medicine, June 2013.

  Abelson, P. H. “Radon Today: The Role of Flimflam in Public Policy.” Regulation: The Cato Review of Business and Government. Fall 1991:95–100, 1991.

  Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. The Human Experiments: Final Report of the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

  Allison, G. Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. New York: Holt, 2004.

  American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts and Figures 2014. Atlanta, GA: American Cancer Society, 2014.

  Aronowitz, J. N., and R. F. Robison. “Howard Kelly Establishes Gynecologic Brachytherapy in the United States.” Brachytherapy, 9:178, 2010.

  Baan, R., Y. Grosse, B. Lauby-Secretan, F. El Ghissassi, V. Bouvard, L. Benbrahim-Tallaa, N. Guha et al. “Carcinogenicity of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields.” Lancet, 12:624–625, 2011.

  Badash, L. Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.

  Bardi, J. “Chernobyl Cleanup Workers Had Significantly Increased Risk of Leukemia.” Univ. of California at San Francisco News, November 8, 2012, http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/11/13087/chernobyl-cleanup-workers-had-significantly-increased-risk-leukemia.

  Barker, H. M. Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, 2nd ed. Case Studies in Contemporary Social Issues. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

  Baumann, E. “Ueber das normale Vorkommen von Jod im Thierkörper.” Hoppe-Seylers Zeitschrift für physiologische Chemie, 21:319–330, 1895.

  Beil, L. “To Screen or Not To Screen: After 40 Years, Mammography’s Limits Becoming Clearer.” Science News, June 28, 2014, 23–26.

  Bernstein, P. L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

  Berger, H. The Mystery of a New Kind of Rays: The Story of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen and His Discovery of X-rays. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012.

  Birmingham, L., and D. McNeill. Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. New York: Palgrave, 2012.

  Black, E. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Expanded ed. Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2012.

  Boice, J. D. “A Study of One Million U.S. Radiation Workers and Veterans: A New NCRP Initiative. Boice Report No. 6.” Health Physics News, November 2012.

  Brady, L. W., S. Kramer, S. H. Levitt, R. G. Parker, and W. E. Powers. “Radiation Oncology: Contributions of the United States in the Last Years of the 20th Century.” Radiology, 219:1–5, 2001.

  Bragg, W. H. Concerning the Nature of Things. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1929.

  Brenner, D. J., and C. D. Elliston. “Estimating Radiation Risks Potentially Associated with Full-Body CT Screening.” Radiology, 232:735–737, 2004.

  Brooks, M. 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Life. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

  Brown, D. E. Inventing Modern America: From Microwave to the Mouse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.

  Brown, E. “Radioactive Tuna from Fukushima? Scientists Eat It Up.” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2013.

  Brown, P. American Martyrs to Science through the Roentgen Rays. Baltimore, MD: Thomas Books, 1936.

  Buchholz, M. A., and M. Cervera. Radium Historical Items Catalog. Oak Ridge, TN: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2008.

  Campbell, J. Rutherford: Scientist Supreme. Christchurch, New Zealand: AAS Publications, 1999.

  Cardis, E., D. Krewski, M. Boniol, V. Drozdovitch, S. C. Darby, E. S. Gilbert, S. Akiba, et al. “Estimates of the Cancer Burden in Europe from Radioactive Fallout from the Chernobyl Accident.” International Journal of Cancer, 199:1224–1235, 2006.

  Carlson, E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H.J. Muller. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

  Carlson, W. B. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

  Cathcart, B. The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006.

  CBS News. “Ancient Stone Markers Warned of Tsunamis.” April 6, 2011.

  Charles, D. R., J. A. Tihen, E. M. Otis, and A. B. Grobman. “Genetic Effects of Chronic X-irradiation Exposure in Mice.” Genetics, 46(1):5–8, 1961.

  Chen, J. “A Review of Radon Doses.” Radiation Protection Management, 22(4): 27–31, 2005.

  Clark, C. Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

  Close, F. Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.

  Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

  Conant, J. 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

  Council of the National Academies. Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety of U.S. Power Plants. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2014.

  Coureau, G., G. Bouvier, P. Lebailly, P. Fabbro-Peray, A. Gruber, K. Leffondre, J. S. Guillamo, et al. “Mobile Phone Use and Brain Tumours in the CERENAT Case-Control Study.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 71:514–522, 2014.

  Crockett, C. “Searching for Distant Signals.” Science News, 186(3):22–27, 2014.

  Crowther, J. G. The Cavendish Laboratory 1874–1974. New York: Science History Publications, 1974.

  Cullings, H. M. “Impact on the Japanese Atomic Bomb Survivors of Radiation Received from the Bombs.” Health Physics, 106(2):281–293, 2014.

  Cullings, H. M., S. Fujita, S. Funamoto, E. J. Grant, G. D. Kerr, and D. L. Preston. “Dose Estimates of Atomic Bomb Survivor Studies: Its Evolution and Present Status.” Radiation Research, 166:219–254, 2006.

  Dahm, R. “Discovering DNA: Friedrich Miescher and the Early Years of Nucleic Acid Research.” Human Genetics, 122:565–581, 2008.

  Dando-Collins, S. Caesar’s Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar’s Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2002.

  Davis, E. A., and I. J. Falconer. J. J. Thomson and the Discovery of the Electron. London: Taylor & Francis, 1997.

  Davis, T. C. Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

  Deltour, I., C. Johansen, A. Auvinen, M. Feychting, L. Klaeboe, and J. Schüz. “Time Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, 1974–2003.” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 101:1721–1724, 2009.

  DeMartini, D. G., D. V. Krogstad, and D. E. Morse. “Membrane Invaginations Facilitate Reversible Water Flux Driving Tunable Iridescence in a Dynamic Biophotonic System.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 110(7): 2552–2556, 2013.

  Deorah, S., C. F. Lynch, Z. A. Sibenaller, and T. C. Ryken. “Trends in Brain Cancer Incidence and Survival in the United States: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, 1973 to 2001.” Neurosurgical Focus, 20(4):E1, 2006.

  Dobson, J. The Goldsboro Broken Arrow. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2011.

  Douple, E. B., K. Mabushi, H. M. Cullings, D. L. Preston, K. Kodama, Y. Shimizu, S. Fujiwara, and R. E. Shore. “Long-Te
rm Radiation-Related Effects in a Unique Human Population: Lessons Learned from the Atomic Bomb Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 5:S122–S133, 2011.

  Einstein, A. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. New York: Crown Publishers, 1961.

  Engelmann, W. “Radium Emanation Therapy.” Lancet, 1 (May 3, 1913):1225–1258, 1913.

  Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes. Washington, DC: US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Radiation and Indoor Air, 2003.

  Essig, M. Edison & the Electric Chair: The Story of Light and Death. New York: Walker, 2003.

  Fackler, M. “Tsunami Warning, Written in Stone.” New York Times, April 20, 2011.

  Fagin, D. Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. New York: Bantam Books, 2013.

  Figueroa, R., and S. Harding, eds. Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology. New York: Routledge, 2003.

  Fisher, N. S., K. Beaugelin-Seiller, T. G. Hinton, Z. Baumann, D. J. Madigan, and J. Garnier-Laplace. “Evaluation of Radiation Doses and Associated Risk from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident to Marine Biota and Human Consumers of Seafood.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(26):10670–10675, 2013.

  Foundation for Promotion of Cancer Research. Cancer Statistics in Japan—2013. Tokyo, Japan, 2013

  Frame, P. W. “Tales from the Atomic Age.” Health Physics Society Newsletter, July 1996.

  Gaynor, M. “The Quietest Place on Earth.” Washingtonian Magazine, 50(4):60–67, 2015.

  Gigerenzer, G. Calculated Risks: How to Know When the Numbers Deceive You. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

  Gigerenzer, G. Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions. New York: Viking, 2014.

  Glad, J. “Hermann J. Muller’s 1936 letter to Stalin.” The Mankind Quarterly, 43(3):305–319, 2003.

  Glasstone, S., and P. J. Dolan. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, and the Energy Research and Development Administration, 1977.

  Gleick, J. Isaac Newton. New York: Vintage, 2004.

  Gottschall, J. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Mariner, 2012.

  Graham, L. R. “The Eugenics Movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s.” American Historical Review, 82(5):1133–1164, 1977.

  Graves, J. L. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

  Greene, K. “No Fukushima Radiation Found in Coastal Areas.” Berkeley Lab News Center, September 2, 2014.

  Greenwood, V. “My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium. And It Killed Her.” New York Times (Magazine), December 3, 2014.

  Grobman, A. B. Our Atomic Heritage. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1951.

  Grubbe, E. X-Ray Treatment: Its Origins, Birth, and Early History. St. Paul, MN: Bruce Publishing, 1949.

  Hacker, B. C. The Dragon’s Tail: Radiation Safety in the Manhattan Project, 1942–1946. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

  Hall, E. J., and A. J. Giaccia. Radiobiology for the Radiologist, 7th ed. New York: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2011.

  Hall, K. T. The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double Helix. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014.

  Hardell, L., and M. Carlberg. “Mobile Phone and Cordless Phone Use and the Risk for Glioma—Analysis of Pooled Case-Control Studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009.” Pathophysiology, 22:1–13, 2015.

  Harris, R. P. “How Best to Determine the Mortality Benefit from Screening Mammography: Dueling Results and Methodologies from Canada.” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 106(11): dju317, November 12, 2014. doi:10.1093/jnci/dju317.

  Henig, R. M. The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics. New York: Mariner, 2000.

  Hersey, J. Hiroshima. New York: Vintage, 1989.

  Hill, A. B. “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58:295–300, 1965.

  Hodges, P. C. The Life and Times of Emil H. Grubbe: The Biography of a Pioneering Chicago Radiologist. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

  Hoffman, M. “Forgotten Atrocity of the Atomic Age,” Japan Times, August 28, 2011, p. 11.

  Hough, S. Predicting the Unpredictable: The Tumultuous Science of Earthquake Prediction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

  ICRP (International Commission on Radiation Protection). The 1990 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiation Protection. Publication 60. Annals of the ICRP, 21:1–3, 1991.

  ICRP (International Commission on Radiation Protection). The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Publication 103. Annals of the ICRP, 37:2–4, 2007.

  INTERPHONE Study Group. “Brain Tumour Risk in Relation to Mobile Telephone Use: Results of the INTERPHONE International Case-Control Study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 39:675–694, 2010.

  Iqbal, A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home: Seeping Radon Gas Increases Family’s Lung-Cancer Risk.” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1987.

  Isaacson, W. Einstein: His Life and His Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007.

  Israel, P. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

  Jacobs, C. D. Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkins’s Disease. Stanford, CA: Stanford General Books, 2010.

  Jenkin, J. William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son: The Most Extraordinary Collaboration in Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  Johnson, S. The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. New York: Riverhead, 2007.

  Johnston, B. R., and H. M. Barker. Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008.

  Jones, B. “This Scary Interactive Map Shows What Happens If a Nuke Explodes in Your Neighborhood.” Business Insider, July 16, 2013.

  Jonnes, J. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House Trade Paperback, 2004.

  Kabat, G. C. Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards of Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

  Kean, S. The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. New York: Back Bay Books, 2011.

  Keane, A., and R. D. Evans. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Report, 952–5 (Part II), S–1 to S–10. Cambridge, MA, 1968.

  Kelly, C. C. The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

  Kelly, H. A., and C. F. Burnam. “A Resume of Results of Three Hundred and Forty-Seven Cases of Cancer of the Uterus and Vagina.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, 74:436, 1916.

  Kelly, M. “Cell Tower Proposal Back to Square One,” Scarborough Leader, July 25, 2014.

  Kendrew, J. C. The Thread of Life: An Introduction to Molecular Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

  Kevles, B. H. Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

  Kleinerman, R. A., M. S. Linet, E. E. Hatch, R. E. Tarone, P. M. Black, R. G. Selker, W. R. Shapiro et al. “Self-reported Electrical Appliance Use and Risk of Adult Brain Tumors.” American Journal of Epidemiology, 161(2):136–146, 2005.

  Klotz, I. M. “The N-ray Affair.” Scientific American, 242(5):170–175, 1980.

  Kohler, R. E. Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

  Kopans, D. B., and A. J. Vickers. “Mammography Screening and the Evidence: From One “Hominem” to the Other.” Medscape, January
3, 2011.

  Lai, H., and N. P. Singh. “Acute Low-Energy Microwave Exposure Increases DNA Single-Strand Breaks in Rat Brain Cells.” Bioelectromagnetics, 16(3):207–210, 1995.

  Lapp, L. E., and H. L. Andrews. Nuclear Radiation Physics, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

  Larson, E. Thunderstruck. New York: Three Rivers, 2006.

  Lazarus-Barlow W. S. “On the Disappearance of Insoluble Radium Salts from the Bodies of Mice after Subcutaneous Injection.” Archives of the Middlesex Hospital, 30:92–94, 1913.

  Levi, M. On Nuclear Terrorism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

  Lewis, E. B. “Leukemia and Ionizing Radiation.” Science, 125:965, 1957.

  Lindee, M. S. Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors of Hiroshima. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

  Lindley, D. Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. New York: Anchor, 2008.

  Linton, O. “Francis H. Williams and William H. Rollins.” Journal of the American College Radiology, 3(6):478–479, 2006.

  Little, M. P., P. Rajaraman, R. E. Curtis, S. S. Devesa, P. D. Inskip, D. P. Check, and M. S. Linet. “Mobile Phone Use and Glioma Risk: Comparison of Epidemiological Study Results with Incidence Trends in the United States.” British Medical Journal, 344:e1147, 2012. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e1147.

  Lorenz, E. “Radioactivity and Lung Cancer: A Critical Review of Lung Cancer in Miners in Schneeberg and St. Joachimsthal.” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 5:1–4, 1944.

  Lowry, I. S. “The Postattack Population of the United States.” Memorandum RM-5115-TAB, The RAND Corporation, December 1966.

  Lubin, J., J. Samet, and C. Weinberg. “Design Issues in Epidemiological Studies of Indoor Exposure to Rn and Risk of Lung Cancer.” Health Physics, 59:807–817, 1990.

  Madigan, D. J., Z. Baumann, and N. S. Fisher. “Pacific Bluefin Tuna Transport Fukushima-Derived Radionuclides from Japan to California.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(24):9483–9486, 2012.

  Maggelet, M. H., and J. C. Oskins. Broken Arrow: The Declassified History of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2008.

  Mahaffey, J. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters from the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima. New York: Pegasus Books, 2014.