The Stir of Waters: Radiation, Risk, and the Radon Spa of Jachymov (Kindle Single)

Tucked away in the Ore Mountains of northwest Bohemia, near the German border, is the radon spa of Jachymov. For 100 years, arthritic pensioners have eased themselves into the spa's radioactive waters, seeking respite. Many return every year and swear by the treatment. It's the oldest radon spa in the world. From the attached mine's waste the Curies isolated radium; later, after the Soviets seized it, it became a gulag and Stalin's first source of uranium.

Several years ago, Paul Voosen, a science reporter based in Washington, DC, visited Jachymov, drawn by the certainty of its doctors, its history, the counter-intuitive notion that radiation could, in any way, be beneficial. And what he found there, and later, in visits with U.S. scientists studying the health effects of low-dose radiation, is a science far less certain than we assume, and a spa and town that have an outsized, if little known, influence on all our lives.