"It makes good media. It's the emotional pulling on the idea that radiation kills you. But you talk to our cancer patients: Radiation cures you."
The nuclear expert sitting in front of me was dismissive about the fears surrounding the public's perception of radiation. Gerry Thomas runs the Chernobyl Tissue Bank at Imperial College London, and she knows more than most about the measurable effects of exposure to radiation.
The Tissue Bank collects and stores tumors from patients exposed to radioactive iodine in childhood after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine) in April 1986.