BOOK REVIEW : Fatal Delusions of Age of Radiation

Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age by Catherine Caufield (Harper & Row: $19.95; 304 pages; illustrated)

Among its many dubious distinctions, the 20th Century has been the era of radiation, which was discovered in 1895 and which has haunted humanity since. Nearly 100 years have passed since Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally stumbled on X-rays, but no one yet knows how to handle the danger that radioactivity presents to human life.

One fact about radiation is clear: From the beginning to the present day, its hazards have been consistently minimized or overlooked. This willful or haphazard history of neglect is the theme of Catherine Caufield’s alarming book, “Multiple Exposures,” which documents, chapter and verse, how the experts have misled the public from the start.

Specifically, Caufield, a San Francisco free-lance writer, deals with so-called ionizing radiation, which includes X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons and alpha and beta rays, which are at the high-energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum and which can cause great damage to human tissues.

This is the radiation, for example, that is created and released in a nuclear explosion, though, as Caufield points out, it took a while before the public learned of this byproduct of atomic bombs. She notes that the New York Times headlined an article in September, 1945, “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin.”

As her book makes frighteningly clear, this was no aberration. Caufield writes: “X-rays, radium, nuclear fission--each new discovery was greeted with wild enthusiasm, which gave way to alarm when unforeseen side-effects appeared. Protection measures were introduced, and always, sooner or later, they had to be strengthened, and strengthened again.”

What’s more, though radiation standards have been established and strictly enforced, they are “not based on scientific certainty, but on judgment, hunches, and compromise.”

Uncertainty is built into the process for the same reason that there is uncertainty about every substance that is hazardous to people. There is no way to carry out human experiments with such substances, so the data must always be incomplete and anecdotal, based on unfortunate real-world experience or accidents rather than on controlled laboratory findings.

This means there will almost always be room for differing interpretations and arguments. Then it becomes a matter of weighing the uncertain dangers of radioactive substances against their benefits, which leaves great latitude for the personal preferences that go in the balance.

For example, when doctors (and the public) discovered the diagnostic benefits of X-rays early in this century, it was hard to argue that they should not be used extensively, despite the evidence that they were far from harmless and that large doses could be lethal.

On a societal level, a similar balancing of competing claims occurred during the 1950s in the argument over atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. By that time, the worldwide hazards of radiation were well-known and rightly feared, but the proponents of testing argued that it was a small and necessary price to pay to ensure nuclear superiority during the Cold War.

In the 1950s, Caufield reminds us, “anyone who questioned the safety of testing atomic weapons was opening himself or herself to accusations of disloyalty.”

During that period, the U.S. government consistently and deliberately pooh-poohed the radiation dangers that atmospheric testing created both for the world and for the many thousands of soldiers who witnessed the tests as part of their training for the next war.

It is easy to look back at that period as one of crass lying by the government, and the facts support that conclusion. It is harder to recall the Cold War fervor that pervaded this country at the time, which affected official judgments about where the greatest dangers lay.

In hindsight, it is obvious that the dangers of radiation have been consistently downplayed throughout this century. But it is an oversimplification to conclude that everyone involved in this process was a liar, though some of them certainly were.

Balancing competing claims involves many assumptions, at least some of which are unstated and unexamined. When we look back years later, many of those assumptions have changed, and we reach different conclusions.

Decision-making in the real world is hardly ever a process like Euclidean geometry, in which one is sure of the axioms and sure of the theorems that follow logically from them.

Caufield does a very good job of showing the mistakes of the past, and her book excoriates the people who made them. We should learn from this history to be very skeptical of the experts, in this field and in all others.

They are not bad people. It would be easier to dismiss them if they were. By and large they are good people. Honest people. Trying to do the right thing. But facts are almost always manipulable to fit preconceptions and advance other goals.

Caufield’s book offers a century of evidence of how honest people can delude themselves and others. This is more dangerous than outright lying. And it reminds us again: Don’t trust the experts.