. . . AND ONE FROM THE TOP DRAWER

Ah, but what a relief it is to report on a most wonderful book by Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, Trashing the Planet ($18.95, 206pp., hdbd., Regnery Gateway, 1130 17^th ST. NW., Wash., DC 20036)! The subtitle is "How science can help us deal with acid rain, ozone depletion and nuclear waste (among other things)," but mainly it is highly readable, yet written with the cool steel rapier of a great and genuine scientist. Sample: the radioactive level in a natural thorium deposit in Brazil is 1.5 mR/hr. (Like plutonium, thorium is mainly an alpha emitter, so I make the delivered tissue dose about 130 rems/year, or 6,500 times that from the US natural background.) But the rats living there are doing well, thank you, and so are the plants, though they glow in the dark (on auto-radiographs, anyway). Get this book now! There will not be many reviews of this exquisite work, not even bad ones, for the quacks, hacks and media hate Dr. Ray not just as a former AEC Chairman and as a genuine, unenthralled scientist, but as a woman who need not beat the drum of loony feminism because she is not inferior.