My job just brought me in contact with a kinda cool concept: hormesis -- the capacity for toxins or radiation to actually improve health and quality of life.
One of the leading researchers in the field is Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts, who was as surprised as anyone when he first noticed the effects in mint plants he accidentally treated with an overdiluted herbicide. Instead of wilting, the plants grew "green and luxuriant."
People get all twitchy around Calabrese's research because it basically says that leaky x-ray machines and dribbles of dioxin in your drinking water can be good for you -- that polluters are, paradoxically, improving our health. |
