Strange Glow The Story of Radiation by Timothy J. Jorgensen

Strange Glow The Story of Radiation by Timothy J. Jorgensen is a stunning book published by Princeton University Press. I waited it with trepidation.

You know, apart the daily base use and abuse of radiation we do everyday using PC and a cell phone, what moved me to read this book was the risk of a nuclear attack, so distant, an old phantom of the past unthinkable since at recent times, but now back to popularity (sic!)

I grew up with this horror, watching movies like The Day After Tomorrow and remembering very well what my teachers told us about Hiroshima and Nagasaki starting from the elementary school 'till the high school because it was necessary after that mess for the next generations to build a world of peace, nuclear-free.

No sure if teachers are still involved in telling to their students the risks of a nuclear war but I warmly suggest them to add this chapter, terrorism apart in their scholastic lessons because the senseless of a war like that one would mean the most horrible scenario that could be created by human beings and must be avoided.

Did we forget what it means radioactivity? Did we forget the risks for the humanity, for the environment, for fishes and plants, and every other human being? Did we forget what it meant for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the survivors? Did we forget what said Einstein?
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Right.
It's impossible to experience another World War because it would mean the end of the world.

Also for this reason I decided to read this book.

I can start to tell you that this reading is captivating and simple also for the most profane person like me without too many intense and profound notions of physics. The purpose of the author: the creation of a book in grade to reach everyone. The masses and not just professors or scholars.

It's a story, this book. The history of radiation. One of the most fascinating stories of our modern age and this approach payed a lot because the book remains colloquial, historical, very clear and the exposition of the various facts is all the time attractive, brutal and interesting. There are no boring times.

At first you know it was electricity. Electricity can be seen and we know risks of electricity everywhere and dangers that an improper use can produce in our body, killing us at the instant as well, bloody hell.

Problem is that the rest of the big family of radiation is invisible at the eyes and so we don't know what to do or how to act sometimes in our daily life.

The story of radiation started exactly with electricity. After it someone discovered waves, and Guglielmo Marconi tried thanks to them to transmit a message via radio waves in the USA. It was a success and a new instrument of communication was born. When Marconi died it was a terrible loss for Italy and was paid great respect for the scientist.

Roentgen discovered that rays could pass through solid objects and bodies as well. We will see in the book the first r-x pic of the story. The hand of his wife with a ring.

Francis H.Williams and William H.Rollins a physician and a dentist from Boston thought that this intuition was great and they started to use this invention for medical purposes. Williams and Rollins because of this intuition became the fathers of diagnostic radiology.

Becquerel was attracted by uranium dividing the Nobel with the Curies at the beginning of 1900s. The couple was  working on the radium sadly famous for what happened in various factories in the USA at many girls.

But what is radioactivity exactly?

The definition given by the author:

"The ability of an atom to spontaneously release radiation without any stimulation from light, electricity or any other form of energy. It is a property intrinsic to the nucleus of an atom and resistant to modification by any outside forces."

When we will discover what can "neutralize" the radioactivity, thanks to an outside force in grade to giving us back the old state of things then we will be free from the most scaring experience that a massive radiation can bring with it.

Ernest Rutherford was the founder of the nuclear physics with his discovery about the atom. It is analyzed not just the composition of the atom but also the scission and fission.

After this first knowledge, mainly historical but also with some technical and physical notions, the second part of the book treats the health effects of radiation.

Yes: you will largely find  the story of the so-called radium girls.

I also reviewed months ago a wonderful and truly sad book published by Sourcebooks called The radium Girls. The link is this one if you are curious to discover more

https://alfemminile.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-radium-girls-dark-story-of-americas.html

These happy girls, plenty of life, expectations and with a great good pay  worked per years in several factories in the USA where they massively stayed at close contact, in particular their mouth, with radium.


Later most of them became very sick and died. The autoptic exam revealed that their bodies were radioactive. What an irony: radium was considered a magic "ingredient."

Some men experienced similar problems in particular the ones working in Schneeberg's mines. Doctors through autoptic exams discovered that twenty of these men died for the same exact reason: lung cancer.

The most scaring and of course massive and terrible example of an exposure with deadly results at radioactivity was the one of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where two bombs where launched by the Americans last second world war after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor.

Sasaki one of the doctors still healthy immediately after the explosion of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima tried to help all the people arrived to the hospital immediately after the explosion of the bomb.

The atomic bomb is the most horrible possible scenario for the humanity and no one should never think of using this bomb for a second according to my modest point of view because after it there is no return and the land can't be lived anymore.

What saw Sasaki with his eyes immediately after at the hospital ?

There were people with strange symptoms never seen before and although treated they died pretty abruptly and for horrible reasons.

Apart the ones disappeared immediately, there was the case of a family who discovered just the bones of their dear one, still yet sat where they had left him just few minutes before. Just he was disintegrated. His tissues, muscles, hair, gone.
Just the skeleton could tell that the man sat there, was the one of the dear one of that two ladies.

The wristwatch was not destroyed by the atomic bomb.

The survivors, in general would have been dead in a few days experiencing horrible pains and sufferance at various levels.

Some of them knew the destruction, disintegration of brain cells. These cells have a massive destruction when exposed so massively at radioactivity with the implosion of all the body.

There are people who vomited although no one knew at first the reason, other ones were treated because of horrible burns.
There was a man in company of a friend.
The friend apparently untouched by the bomb, the other man burned. But later, the burned friend the one who will carry the other one to the hospital because his friend developed much more profound problems.

Other patients suffered before to dying of severe diarrhea, hair loss, high fever, dehydration before to dying.

All the bodies accumulated in the hospital were burned.

We leave Hiroshima alone for a while.

If radiation kill outside they cure cancer as discovered the Curies inside.

Is it possibility to develop a new cancer because of the assimilation of radiations during chemotherapy and radiation from a person in cure? Yes it's possible and the author says that the period should be taken in consideration is ten years.
The author suggests everyone with this problem of continuing these cures because it's just a probability and anyway in an old person the possibility of re-develop a cancer diminish a lot.

Fukushima. The tsunami of various years ago provoked as we all know also a big environmentalist problem similar to the one Chernobyl lived in Europe in 1986.
A site like that one won't never be back at the normality, not for the people still alive and not in a very close future, because once a place is attacked by radioactivity can't be cultivated anymore, can't be secure anymore.
It's dead, dead. Fruits, veggies, milk, meat, tea, everything is radioactive. Nothing is anymore normal but altered and extremely dangerous for the health of people.
If people survive, the only answer is to going away forever and for good as it happened for the people living close to Fukushima.

The book later will also treat new technologies like cell phones and radiation in our daily life.

In conclusion Timothy J. Jorgensen is more than sure of something: that after we have read his book we will be more conscious of our daily life, of the radioactive instruments close to us in a daily base from the microwave to the smart phone and how we can use them. We will be in grade to make wisest choices for us, the community and maybe the world.
I agree.
He closes his foreword wishing to all of us: good luck!


I thanks Princeton University Press for this wonderful book!



Anna Maria Polidori