THE media are forever being accused of scaremongering. And, yes, sometimes that even goes for science magazines. We鈥檙e all interested in the next big thing to worry about. But too many scare stories can be exhausting. You end up tired of the message and the messenger.
Since 11 September the scaremongering industry has gone into overdrive. If it isn鈥檛 terrorists trying to crash the plane we鈥檙e on or under, it鈥檚 biocrazies armed with anthrax or even smallpox. Then there鈥檚 the 鈥渄irty bomb鈥�, an explosive device surrounded by radioactive material designed to spread fear and panic through city centres by coating them with fine, hazardous dust (see 鈥淧ea-sized 鈥榖omb鈥� could clear a city鈥�).
So has the world suddenly got more dangerous? In two ways, yes it has. Since last autumn, we鈥檝e learned there鈥檚 a new, highly motivated group that hopes to achieve its aims by killing people in Western-style democracies, regardless of their roles in those societies or personal beliefs. Then there鈥檚 Al-Qaida鈥檚 spectacular use of civilian machinery as a weapon of destruction, which some deranged individuals have already tried to copy.
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The media are not the only ones to cash in on the resulting fear. Companies wanting to sell their latest products are happy to perpetuate scare stories. And this magazine has already highlighted the way politicians are prepared to exploit 11 September when they want to push through authoritarian policies. It鈥檚 a theme that鈥檚 revisited this week in our new Comment and Analysis section (see 鈥淎 poor bargain鈥�).
Some of the latest scare stories revolve around things we already knew were dangerous, and the dirty bomb is one of them. Terrorism experts have known for years that people can create nuclear havoc without building an atom bomb (New 杏吧原创, 6 July 1996, page 10).
There鈥檚 a plethora of places to find radioactivity. Your household smoke detector, and a host of medical and industrial equipment, uses americium-241. The gamma rays that sterilise food and check industrial welds come from cobalt-60, while gamma rays from caesium-137 are used in instruments that measure everything from moisture to rock strata. This is all very well until these devices become junk and the radioactive bits get lost.
An insane amount of caesium is missing in the former Soviet states. But this is not the only worry: people died in Brazil in 1987 when they found caesium in discarded hospital equipment; caesium from a medical source turned up in North Carolina this year; and discarded cobalt was found in Uganda in April. The stuff is everywhere, and we should long ago have thought about cleaning it up.
It鈥檚 a safe bet that scaremongering played its part in convincing the US and Russia, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to finally start that process in earnest. This is a win-win situation. The public is rid of dangerous waste while terrorists are deprived of a weapon. The world will become a safer place. Of course, that鈥檚 so long as we find the stuff before the terrorists do. But that鈥檚 another scare story.