Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan

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THE GOLDEN RULE OF JOURNALISM — keep one’s dental appointments — I had now neglected for a couple of years, but in obedience to the current practicalities of Japan I made haste to cultivate my hygienist, who pressed the X-ray camera’s snout against patients’ cheekbones and therefore wore a dosimeter badge clipped to her pinkish smock. Thanks to her, I grew acquainted with the phone number of Carol (on subsequent dialings I got Ginger), who connected me with a salesman named Bob, who allowed that he did still have one Geiger counter in stock — or, more precisely, a post — Geiger-Müller sort of gadget which, said Bob (who had not actually inspected it but seemed to be interpolating from some data screen), resembled an electronic calculator. Current and cumulative exposure, X-ray and gamma, a programmable exposure alarm — oh, delicious! Never mind its inability to detect alpha or beta particles; wouldn’t those be approximately innocuous so long as I refrained from ingesting them? (Within the body, remarked my radiation incident guide, “alpha and beta emitters are the most hazardous” since they “can transfer ionizing radiation to surrounding tissue, damaging DNA or other cellular material.”)1

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