Works in Progress

The piece leans on a Taiwan case: hundreds of apartments built with radioactive rebar gave residents years of chronic exposure, yet showed lower cancer rates than the general population. From that and Chernobyl's toll it concludes the Linear No-Threshold model overstates harm.

Then a researcher who worked on whole-genome sequencing of Chernobyl thyroid tumors pushed back: the claim of no chromosomal damage just means nobody measured at the resolution that would find it.

To prove the new warfarin bait was safe, a pest officer sat in front of farmers and ate rat poison treated oats while explaining the program. It worked: Alberta caught the rats at the border before they could breed.

The catch the thread surfaced: 'rat-free' is a verb, not a state. Seven municipalities still inspect thousands of buildings a year, and one Boise resident watched his own city choose the opposite path — 'good luck everyone.'