HANGING ITSELF

At their best, lidars have detected sodium and lithium in the stratosphere at a range of 56 miles at concentrations as improbably low as a few atoms per cubic centimeter. The day will surely come when Ralph Nader finds out about that, darts for the dictionary (for he probably has not heard of lithium before) and then into Congress, where the fools and the knaves will hold hearings as the Sunday supplements scream how to stop the galaxies from flying apart due to a lithium-poisoned solar system.

This effect of science hanging itself is particularly sharp in the area of radioactivity. The curse of radioactive isotopes is not that their radiation can cause cancer (which it can only at high intensity and under certain conditions), but that they are detectable in ridiculously small quantities. As I pointed out last June, the Chernobyl radioiodine washed down in the US could become dangerous if, in the most "contaminated places, one drank more than 63,000 gallons of rain water. Yet the assistant secretary for health, when asked at the time whether he would drink Oregon rain water, had no better answer than "It depends on how thirsty I was," and to this day poets, charlatans and politicians wail about the worldwide radioactive contamination since last April.

What these pundits don't realize is that for every radioactive atom in the atmosphere there are hundreds of molecules of crud, dung and excrement floating through it, and people happily eat, drink and breathe them, for unlike radioiostopes, they have one gigantic advantage that keeps the ignorant guzzler in blissful contentment: they don't make their presence known.

It has recently become possible, by the use of thick leaden shields screening out background radiation, to measure radioactive levels as low as a single disintegration per second. That's 64 microkennedys (0.000064 kennedy), where I have taken the estimated 15,664 times higher radioactive level of the body owned by the Hon. Senator from Chappaquiddick as a standard [AtE Oct 86].

"Oh, my goodness," said the paling lady, "now you have really given me something to worry about."