Dangers of Nuclear Power and Low Level Radiation:
                                      A Bibliography
                                          by Hattie Nestel 

Three women are the primary shakers, movers, original thinkers and researchers regarding the dangers of low level radiation emitted by nuclear reactors. Dr. Alice Stewart, an M.D. and epidemiologist, born in 1906 in Great Britain did the ground breaking studies regarding the little known and less acknowledged dangers of low level radiation. Dr. Rosalie Bertell is a Gray nun and scientist who has written at length about the extreme, irreversible dangers of the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. BEIR, and  Dr. Helen Caldicott, the Australian Pediatrician and co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility who has devoted her life to warning the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Gayle Greene’s’ 1999, biography of Alice Stewart, The Woman Who Knew Too Much; Alice Stewart and The Secrets of Radiation ; Rosalie Bertell’s  1986 masterpiece which took ten years to write, No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth and Helen Caldicott’s latest book, 2006, Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer are all excellent works by and about women who forged ahead doing groundbreaking research in fields that were particularly resistant to women.

These three women are marvelous studies in brilliance and determination. They each emphasize the irreversible danger of genetic mutations caused by radiation which is passed on by the sperm, ovum and mothers milk to future generations.  Most of us now understand cancers, leukemia, thyroid diseases, infertility and birth defects can be ascribed to radiation. However, the real punch line hit me while reading Alice Stewart's words, “Even more than the cancer is the threat to future generations. That’s what you ought to be really afraid of. It’s the genetic damage, the possibility of sowing bad seeds into the gene pool from which future generations are drawn. There will be a buildup of defective genes into the population. It won’t be noticed until it’s too late. Then we’ll never root it out. Never get rid of it. It will be totally irrevocable.”