Good Vibrations: A Little Radiation Can Be A Good Thing

One does not think of science as being subject to fashion. But it is, and nothing could be less fashionable than hormesis. This phenomenon was identified over a hundred years ago, and then was slowly forgotten. It has been so widely observed that it deserves to be called a law of nature. But it rubs environmentalists the wrong way, and few people have heard of it. In outline, hormesis is simple: things that are toxic in large doses are beneficial in small doses. And that seems to be true across the board -- from alcohol to dioxin to mercury to nuclear radiation...

Hormesis contradicts a reigning assumption of public health and public policy. It is both dogma and law that something toxic in large doses will continue to be toxic in smaller and smaller doses. The relationship between dose and response is said to be linear. The EPA has further decreed that if the substance is a carcinogen, there is no "threshold." No dose, however low, is considered to be safe.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science

More later about hormesis and radiation. I will simply observe here that if the EPA applied their no tolerance rule to vitamins we would have to make do without vitamins A & E because in large doses they're quite toxic (no doubt there are others toxic in large doses but these are just the ones that occur to me at the moment).