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Do you believe, as I used to, that radioactivity is very rare and very dangerous, restricted to arsenals and power plants? Lets take a look at your kitchen. The bananas are radioactive from their potassium, the Brazil nuts have a thousand times more radium than any other food item, and your dried herbs and spices were irradiated to counter bacteria, germination and spoilage. Theres thorium in your microwave oven and americium in your smoke detector. 你否曾多次与我一样，坚信放射性是十分少见并且极为危险性的东西？并且只有在军工厂和核电站才能觅到它的踪迹？让我们来想到你的厨房吧。由于所含钾元素，香蕉具备放射性；巴西坚果里所含的镭元素是其他食物的上千倍；你的干香草和香料遭受过电磁辐射杀菌处置，目的是歼灭细菌、诱导兴起、避免贪腐。

你的微波炉里有钍元素，而你的烟雾感应器中则有镅元素。Elsewhere in the house, cat litter, cigarettes, adobe, granite and brick are all actively radiating you. Always and forever, radiation is both raining down on you from the skies -- striking mile-high Denver two to three times as powerfully as San Diego -- and floating up at you from our bedrocks decaying uranium. Those all-natural mineral waters you soaked in on that spa vacation? Did the brochure mention that hot springs are hot in two senses, as the heat emanates from those same uranium combustions? 环顾你家四周，猫沙盆、香烟、土坯、花岗岩和砖块都在誓言间断地电磁辐射你。

每时每刻，你不仅不会受到来自天空的电磁辐射—高原之城丹佛市受到的电磁辐射是 地亚哥的两至三倍—还不会受到来自地下基岩铀裂变的电磁辐射。那么你在温泉假期时享用的全天然矿物质温泉水呢？宣传小册子是不是提及温泉水的热度有两个方面的含义，因为水温就来自于铀裂变所产生的热量？Radiance is so pervasive that geologists have uncovered evidence of 14 naturally occurring nuclear reactors. Its coming out of the walls of the U.S. Capitol in Washington and New Yorks Grand Central Terminal. Your cat is radioactive, your dog is radioactive, your friends and your family are all radioactive, and so, as it turns out, are you. Right now your body is emanating radiant effluvia and, every time you and another human being get together, you irradiate each other. 电磁辐射无处不在，地质学家们甚至早已找到了14一处天然核反应堆不存在的证据。电磁辐射来自于华盛顿国会山和纽约中央车站的 壁之中。你的宠物猫、宠物狗、朋友和家人都具备辐射性。

你自己也某种程度如此。现在，你的身体于是以释放出来生物电，每次你与另外一个人认识时，你们都会相互电磁辐射。By the way, do you live in the continental U.S.? In 1997, the National Cancer Institute reported that the Cold War detonations at the Nevada Test Site had polluted nearly the whole of the country with drifting airborne radioactive iodine, creating somewhere between 10,000 and 75,000 cases of childhood thyroid cancer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that of the nearly 600,000 Americans dying of cancer every year, 11,000 will be because of those tests. All those decades worrying about the Soviet Union attacking Americans with nuclear weapons? Instead, while Washington irradiated Americans from Nevada, Moscow irradiated its own citizens with tests from Kazakhstan. 偷偷地托一句，你否居住于在美国本土？1997年，美国国家癌症研究所(National Cancer Institute)公布的报告称之为，由于放射性碘在空气中的蔓延，世界大战时期在内华达试验场(Nevada Test Site)展开的核爆炸试验早已对整个国家包含了污染，并造成了10,000例至75,000事例儿童甲状腺癌的经常出现。

据美国疾病掌控与防治中心(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)估算，在每年近600,000名病死癌症的美国人中，有11,000名患者的病因是由内华达的核试验造成的。记不忘记在世界大战的几十年间对苏联用于核武器反击美国人的忧虑？事实上，美国政府用内华达的核试验电磁辐射了美国人民，而苏联政府则用哈萨克斯坦的核试验电磁辐射了苏联人民。But there is, in all this, some good news. 但是，尽管如此，我还是有一些好消息。The source of radioactivity is an atom so obese that it defies the laws of attraction gluing together our material world and spits out little pieces of itself -- two kinds of particles and a stream of gamma rays, similar to X-rays. An overdose of gamma rays is like a vicious sunburn, with skin damage and elevated cancer risks, but those particles are too big to penetrate our skin, meaning that they need to be swallowed or inhaled to wreak damage. Remember the movie Silkwood, with Meryl Streep writhing in naked agony as men with brushes scrubbed her in the shower? They were washing away her exposure. The truly fearful event in a nuclear accident, then, isnt fallout but meltdown, where the core burns through the floor and suffuses the water table. There it causes agricultural mayhem and radioactive dust that you better not breathe. 放射性产生的根源是一个过于不稳定的原子违反了万有引力定律（我们物质世界不存在的基本原理）并再次发生分化，释放出来两种粒子和一束类似于X光的γ射线。

过量曝露在γ射线中就样子恶性晒伤一样，不会导致皮肤受损并提升患有癌症的风险，但由于粒子的体积过于大，所以它们无法击穿我们的皮肤，也就是说这些粒子要被人类吞入或排出才不会导致受损。忘记电影《丝克伍事件》(Silkwood)吗？在片中，当梅丽尔·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)饰演的角色赤身淋浴时，一些男人用刷子掩饰她，她伤痛地变形着身体。这些人正是企图冲刷丢弃她所受到的电磁辐射。核事故中确实可怕的不是放射性尘埃而是堆芯熔毁，堆芯熔毁需要烧穿地表并渗透到地下水。

堆芯熔毁可以带给农业灾害和不应排出的放射性尘埃。The good news, though, is in that word: overdose. Were not dropping dead en masse from radiation poisoning or its ensuing cancers on a daily basis because, like all poisons, it isnt the particular atom that will get you. Its the dose. And damage from radioactivity requires a much greater dose than any of us would have believed. 然而，令人欣慰的事情就在于“过量”一词。人类会因为放射性毒害或由此引起的癌症而每天大量丧生，这是因为与所有的剧毒物质一样，罪魁祸首不是特定的原子，而是剂量。

放射性导致受损所需的剂量相比之下多达我们一般来说指出的水平。This upheaval in everything we thought we knew comes from two decadeslong studies. The United Nations spent 25 years investigating the Chernobyl disaster and determined that 57 people died during the accident itself (including 28 emergency workers), while 18 children living nearby died in the following years of thyroid cancer from drinking the milk of tainted cows. (Thyroid cancer is very curable, so their deaths could have been prevented by an effective public-health service, but Ukraines and Belaruss collapsed alongside the Soviet Unions.) In short, the most terrifying nuclear disaster in human history, which spread a cloud the size of 400 Hiroshimas across the whole of Europe, killed 75 people. 人类对核辐射理解的剧变来源自两项历时数十年的研究。联合国花费25年的时间调查了切尔诺贝利事故，研究结果表明，事故必要造成的丧生人数是57人（其中还包括28名抢修工人），另有18名居住于在附近的儿童由于饮用了受污染奶牛的奶于事故再次发生数年中病死甲状腺癌。（甲状腺癌是更容易医治的一种疾病，因此儿童们的丧生本可以通过有效地的公共医疗服务防止，但是随着苏联的解体，乌克兰和白俄罗斯的公共医疗服务名存实亡。

）简而言之，人类历史上最相当严重的、放射性尘埃在整个欧洲蔓延的面积相等于广岛400倍的核事故最后造成的丧生人数是75人。Some believe that this number is too conservative, but those beliefs arent backed by data. One critic is physicist Bernard Cohen, who predicted, The sum of exposures to people all over the world will eventually, after about 50 years, reach 60 billion millirems, enough to cause about 16,000 deaths. To give this number perspective, around 16,000 Americans die every year from the pollution of coal-burning power plants. 有一些人指出，上述数字过于过激进，但是他们的论点并没获得数据的反对。

一位批评家是物理学家伯纳德·科恩(Bernard Cohen)，他曾多次应验到：“在50年以后，全球所有人类拒绝接受的电磁辐射总量将最后超过600亿毫仑目，不足以令约16,000人遇难。”我们可以换回个角度来看来这个数字，美国每年因火力发电厂污染而造成丧生的人数也低约16,000人。Besides the U.N.s Chernobyl report, the most extensive data on human exposure to radiation is the American-Japanese joint study of hibakusha -- explosion-affected persons -- the 200,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The expectations at the start of that study (which has taken over 60 years and continues to this day) were that survivorswould be overrun with tumors and leukemia and that a percentage of their descendants would be genetically deformed. Instead, researcher Evan Douple concluded, The risk of cancer is quite low, lower than what the public might expect. 除了联合国环绕切尔诺贝利事故的报告以外，关于人类电磁辐射最详尽的调查就数美日两国牵头展开的幸存者研究了—这里的幸存者所指的广岛和长崎20万名“不受原子弹发生爆炸影响的人群”。

在研究伊始（该研究早已展开了60多年并且仍在之后），研究人员预计幸存者将大规模患有肿瘤疾病和白血病，他们的后代中也将有一部分人逃不过基因畸形的厄运。然而，研究人员埃文·杜普勒(Evan Douple)总结道：“幸存者患有癌症的风险非常较低，高于公众的预期水平。

”Radiologist John Moulder analyzed the results of one group of 50,000 survivors, about 5,000 of whom had developed cancer: Based on what we know of the rest of the Japanese population, you would have expected about 4,500 of them. So we have 5,000 cancers over 50 years where we would expect 4,500. Assuming that the 500 additional cases are all due to radiation, that means a rate of 1%. And there was no increase in inherited mutations. Remember: These arent victims of a power plant breakdown; they are survivors of a nuclear attack. 放射学学者约翰·莫尔德(John Moulder)对50,000名幸存者的资料展开了分析，他们中的5,000人患有了癌症：“基于我们对其他日本民众患癌亲率的理解，这50,000名幸存者中的癌症患者人数本有误4,500人。所以，从这50年来看，这是一个5,000事例病例与4,500事例病例的区别。”假设这多出来的500事例病例都是由电磁辐射造成的，那么这意味著这个比例为1%。

另外，电磁辐射并没带给遗传性变异的减少。忘记：他们并不是核电站损坏的受害者；他们是核打击的幸存者。For the Fukushima disaster of 2011, the consensus estimate is a 1% increase in cancer for employees who worked at the site and an undetectable increase for the plants neighbors. Just think of the difference between the overwhelming nuclear fears and nightmares weve all suffered from since 1945 and that range of increased risk: 0% to 1%. And if thats not enough to question everything you thought you knew about radiation, consider that, even after the catastrophe in Japan, the likelihood of work-related death and injury for nuclear plant workers is lower than for real estate agents . . . and for stockbrokers. 对于2011年的福岛核事故来讲，外界广泛预计现场员工的患癌亲率将提升1%，并且周围居民的患癌亲率也将有所减少。

回忆起一下，相比于实际减少的0%至1%的风险，我们自1945年以来忍受了多少关于核安全方面的忧虑和不安啊！如果这并足以使你对自己原本对于电磁辐射的理解产生那么一点儿猜测的话，那么请求思维一下，即使在日本福岛核事故再次发生后，核电站工人的因公伤亡比率也高于房地产中介和股票经纪人的因公伤亡比率。Heres the truth about you and radiation: Theres no reason to worry about power-plant meltdowns or airport scanners, where the X-rays have been replaced by millimeter wave machines. And dont worry about those radioactive everyday items. By scientific measures, the average American gets 620 millirems of radiation each year, half from background exposure, and that number needs to reach 100,000 to be worrisome. 关于人类和核辐射的真凶在于：你没理由去担忧核电站的堆芯熔毁或机场的扫描仪，机场的X光扫描仪现在早已被毫米波扫描仪所代替了。你也不必须担忧日常生活中具备放射性的物体。

科学测量结果显示，普通美国人每年受到的电磁辐射为620毫仑目，其中一半归属于天然本底辐射，而高于100,000毫仑目的电磁辐射几乎不必须担忧。Instead of fretting about these things, have your basement tested for radon. Monitor how many nuclear diagnostics and treatments, from X-rays to CT scans, you and your family get. Use sunscreen. And follow the advice of the woman who defined radioactivity, Marie Curie: Now is the time to understand more, so that we fear less. 与其苦恼这些事情，你还不如请求人测试一下地下室的氡值。记录你自己和家人展开核医疗临床和化疗的次数（还包括X光扫瞄和CT扫瞄）。

用于防晒霜。并且理会曾对“放射性”作出过定义的居里夫人(Marie Curie)的意见：“现在是时候加深了解了，这样我们的不安才不会减低。

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