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All the Beautiful Bioreactors

Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities (TED) by Rachel Armstrong. iPad, Kindle, Barnes & Noble.

Reviewed by Annalee Newitz

In the opening section of her long essay, Living Architecture (based on a TED talk), materials designer Rachel Armstrong lays out the problem facing all urban residents in a crisp, moving description of Sendai in the wake of the 2011 earthquake. Buildings in the coastal region of Japan had buckled and crumbled, and its streets pulsed with contaminated water. First responders tried to rescue a dog, but found that it wouldn't leave until they followed it to an area where they discovered another dog, barely breathing. Both animals were taken to safety and given medical attention. What this sad scene underscored was that in the face of disaster, all forms of life try to help each other survive. 

Encapsulated in that tale of two dogs is also the problem and, possibly, a solution to troubles in modern cities. As Armstrong explains, metropolitan areas will be home to nearly two thirds of the Earth's population in the next half century, but they are breakable, dangerous, and depend on unsustainable forms of energy. Still, those cities are filled with life that can make it through disasters that shatter buildings. Armstrong, whose research touches on synthetic biology, asks whether it might not be better to build cities that are as resilient (and compassionate) as the lives inside of them. 

Risks and Benefits of the Radium Palace

The Stir of Waters: Radiation, Risk, and the Radon Spa of Jáchymov. By Paul Voosen. Kindle Single

Reviewed by Ann Finkbeiner (guest reviewer)

Jáchymov is an old Czech city set in mountains under which are seams of uranium. The uranium is mined, and through the mines run hot springs -- "hot" both thermally and radioactively. The hot water is piped up into baths for Jáchymov's famous radon (a gas that's a byproduct of uranium) spas. The radon spas are a century old and even now, every year, nearly 20,000 people come to them to bathe and thereby treat a variety of ills. In a normal three-week treatment, the people inhale about 3.5 millisieverts of radiation. That's about forty times the 0.08 millisieverts I received in 1979 before I got in my car and got the hell out of Harrisburg, PA, panicked after the accident at Three Mile Island.

That enormous disconnect between the risk seen by a panicky me and the benefits seen by Jáchymov's customers is what The Stir of Waters is about. My panic about the risk is partly a reflection of the Western world's attitude toward radiation, which is neurotic. The perception of benefit is partly a result of the former Soviet bloc's attitude, which is relaxed and secretive; and partly a result of the relief of the customers' chronic aches and pains, especially for arthritis and auto-immune disorders. So how to balance the risks and benefits of radiation in low doses? Right here, right where you want Science to step out front and adjudicate, Science turns pink and disappears behind the curtains.

Science does know the risks of radiation that's high-dose: experimental subject--from the survivors of Hiroshima to the uranium miners of Jáchymov--die, get sick, get cancers. But scientists can't extrapolate from high dose/lots of sickness to lower dose/less sickness. The low extrapolated numbers of cancers that people might be getting after medical X-rays or radon spas get lost in the numbers of the cancers that people get normally. Scientists can't quantify the risk.