99% Invisible - 248- Atom in the Garden of Eden

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

As the world entered the Atomic Age, humankind faced a new fear that permeated just about every aspect of daily life: the threat of nuclear war. And while the violent applications of atomic research had already been proven, governments and … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. At the end of World War II, as the world began to process the powerful and devastating effects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humankind entered a new era, an era defined by the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and the global arms race to acquire them. And while the violent applications of atomic research had already been proven, governments and scientists suspected atomic science also held promise for good. Peaceful applications that could bring the world into a new age of scientific progress and technology. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldier.

It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. That's President Dwight Eisenhower addressing the UN in a 1953 speech titled, Adams for Peace. In it, he proposes creating an agency to oversee and promote safe, secure, and peaceful nuclear technologies while also continuing to build up the United States arsenal of nuclear weapons. That agency, created in 1957, was called the International Atomic Energy Association. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities. These efforts to find peaceful applications for nuclear research would spur growth in

nuclear energy, which now provides around a fifth of the United States electricity, and expand the use of nuclear medicine, giving us imaging techniques and therapies still used for cancer treatments today. That's our own Sherefusif. But then there were ideas that seemed kind of crazy in hindsight. One science writer thought nuclear alchemy was possible, though we would have nuclear factories that manufactured gold. He also believed we could create artificial suns to control the weather, and others believed we could shower plants and ionizing

radiation, to mutate them into better, stronger crops. But unlike the others, that one actually happened. When I ran across it, I was just kind of gopsmacked, you know, I was just stunned, and then just so surprised. I mean, there was very little scholarly writing about it. That's Paige Johnson. I'm a chemist and material scientist. I have a hobby of the history of gardens. Johnson is one of the few experts on the often forgotten atomic gardens of the 1950s and

60s. Gardens that used radioactive materials and attempts to mutate and breed new plants that would benefit mankind. People kind of assume it was some sort of a conspiracy. You know, oh, this was all hidden from the public, wasn't it? And this was a part of the CIA or it was a part of the propaganda agencies, or that sort of thing. And actually, it wasn't.

It was widely talked about in speeches. It was written about in popular magazines. Atomic gardens have been largely forgotten, but they weren't top secret government projects purposely obscured from us. They were right out in the open, and they produced new kinds of fruits and grains and vegetables that we still have

on our grocery store shelves today. The atomic gardens of the 1950s and 60s were part of a broader interest in atomic research that ramped up during and after World War II, but they were also part of a much older quest, to breed better, harder crops. Humans have been messing with plants to suit our needs for a long time, but to understand the history of using radiation to mutate plants, we need to take a step back to the 1920s, and a relatively new technology of the time. X-rays In 1927, Herman Muller conducted a famous genetics experiment where he exposed fruit flies to x-rays, a form of ionizing radiation. So basically ionizing radiation is just any form of electromagnetic radiation that has

the power to penetrate matter, so it has the ability to potentially go inside the cell and actually alter the genetic material. The x-rays change the genetic makeup of some of the fruit flies, and some of those changes those mutations were heritable, meaning that they could be passed along to the next generation. In the 1920s and 30s, some plant breeders started using X-rays on plants, and hopes that they could induce mutations that could make them grow faster or produce more fruit or create interesting flowers. But enthusiasm for those techniques would soon die down.

And for a while, the world lost interest in how radiation could alter plants. Fast forward to World War II, in a top-secret mission spearheaded by the US government, the Medhaton Project. engineers was established to administer work on military uses of uranium. The US began doing research not only on how to make atomic bonds, but what their effects might be after detonation. In concert with the kind of weapon-based experiments, they had started to kind of try to monitor what the effect of the nuclear radiation and fallout would be on plants and animals as well. That research continued after the war in a project called Operation Crossroads where the

US tested nuclear bombs around a small cluster of islands in the Pacific. The bikini atoll is where the US was testing the atomic bombs, not in the middle of the ocean. And that's the first place where they really start intentionally planting plants and seeing how they're affected. Researchers wanted to find out how plants would respond to the heat and the gamma rays that the bombs gave off. The U.S. also docked boats nearby, filled with rats and goats and pigs to see the effects of bombs on living animals. A lot of them died, from the blast as well as the radiation. But there are other strains of nuclear research going on much closer to home, particularly

in national labs where the government was willing to throw funding at the new hot topic of nuclear science. Even if those projects weren't directly related to weapons. Enter the atomic gardens, and a new quest to alter genetic material and plants. Something we're still doing today. With modern genetic modification techniques, we have the ability to go in and very carefully slice the genome with a scalpel. The radiation experiments the atomic gardens were essentially just hitting the genome with a hammer and seeing what would happen.

One of the most fascinating examples of this research was happening at Brookhaven National Labs. So the Gama Gardens of Brookhaven in New York were probably the largest gardens in the US governmental effort devoted to the atomic radiation of plants. The Brookhaven Gama Garden was created in 1949. And its original goal was to study the effects of prolonged exposure to gamma rays on plants.

But eventually, they began to research whether they can use gamma gardens to induce beneficial mutations. The essence of a gamma garden is it looks like a big circle with pie-shaped wedges, and at the very center of the pie is a radioactive source that was usually contained in a pole and would be raised above the level of the ground. To call them gardens actually makes them sound smaller than they were. Many of these gamma gardens were five acres in size, so they were really massive installations. And because of the wedges, when viewed from above, it almost looks like the symbol for radiation danger. The center pole contained a radioactive isotope, usually cobalt-60, that would shower the field with gamma radiation for about 20 hours a day. When it was time for researchers to

go in and see the results, they would lower the source into an underground bunker made of concrete or lead, step inside the field's high fence, and inspect the plants arrayed around the center. Generally, at the very front of the source, almost all those plants would die pretty much, or they'd be shrunken and shriveled. As you got back towards the back of the pie shaped wedge, you'd see plants that were living that might look normal, but which were going to be evaluated to see if they had any abnormal growth patterns. Mutations naturally randomly occur in every living cell, but here the researchers were

hand-rearing the plans with radiation in an attempt to increase that rate of mutation in the plans DNA, so in a sense the scientists hoped to speed up evolution. They were hoping to create crops that could withstand harsh growing conditions that were more resistant to disease that could produce more food to help feed the world. I was struck again by just what a utopian quest it was to kind of rebuild plants and end world famine and make the world they even used this language as smiling garden of Eden. And this quest wasn't just taking place in the US. By the late 1950s, similar

experiments were happening around the world. In Norway, Sweden, Costa Rica, and the Soviet Union, among other places. And not all of these efforts were run by the government or fancy research universities. Some were done by curious citizens. The Adams for Peace Movement began to support the idea that home experimenters could run their own nuclear projects. As part of this Adams for Peace effort, it was really actually designed to enable atomic entrepreneurship as well, which seemed startling.

You know, it's like kind of if the startup culture of today existed, only you could get a radioactive source from the government, with which to run your startup company. In the late 1950s, an oral surgeon in Tennessee became one of these atomic entrepreneurs. His name was CJ Spees, and he built a little bunker in his backyard where he started irradiating seeds and selling them to home gardeners and to children looking for science fair projects. These irradiated seeds weren't dangerous to handle, just because something's been irradiated doesn't make it radioactive. One of Spies' biggest clients was an English woman named Muriel

Howard, who was an enthusiast of all things atomic, and all things gardening. She formed something called the Atomic Gardening Society. And its purpose was really to engage the lay gardener in the sorts of atomic experiments that were taking place in the national laboratories. So she wanted to provide them with irradiated seeds, and they would hopefully discover useful mutations in people's backyards. People could become members of her atomic gardening society, and mural would ship out the irradiated seeds and ask them to send back any data they could about the plants.

This was really an early example of crowdsourcing science was what she was doing. And her atomic gardening society was just one of Howard's efforts to get people involved and interested in nuclear science. Previous to the forming the atomic gardening society, she had published something called the atomic digest, whose byline was safeguarding the atom for the layman. That digest was part of another society she started,

called the atomic society for the layman. Albert Einstein agrees to be the first patron of her society. She was invited to gatherings of the Nobel laureates who acknowledged her who say our goals are much like yours. A lot of atomic scientists liked the idea that their work was being used for something besides making bombs. So the atomic scientists were very concerned that the power of the atom would be kept kind of only

for evil and only for weaponry and felt like the safest route for it was for it to be brought out into the open and into the realm of the layperson and into these more peaceful causes. And Miriel certainly made great efforts to help this cause. She had a lot of atomic gatherings and events, so there were film screenings, about atomic topics, there were lectures, there were parties, and she was particularly unique in that she spoke explicitly to women about this. In 1950, she even staged an elaborate performance in which actors pantomined the basic structure of an atom,

and it was reviewed by some pretty major publications. So here is the review of the performance in Time magazine. Before a select audience of 250 wrapped ladies and a dozen faintly bored gentlemen, some 13 busomy atomic energy associates in flowing evening gowns gyrated gracefully about a stage in earnest imitation of atomic forces at work.

By the 1960s, popular interest in atomic gardening was coming to an end. Members of the Atomic Gardening Society grew tired of seeing very few promising results from their seeds. It was extremely rare to get a beneficial mutation, and mutations were hard for people without scientific training to detect. Backyard atomic gardening basically reached its peak with Muriel Howarth. But radiation plant breeding didn't completely disappear. Japan has an institute that uses a radiation field very similar to the Brookhaven Gamigardens,

and the International Atomic Energy Association and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have a joint plant breeding team, still conducting research with radiation today. And there are still varieties of plants in our food system that came about from radiation experiments, a strain of Durham wheat in Italy, varieties of rice throughout Asia, certain pairs in Japan, and a breed of sunflower in the US, just to name a few. Also, the Rio Star grapefruit came about because of radiation breeding experiments, and now accounts for about 75% of the grapefruit grown in Texas.

A producer, Delaney Hall, used to live in Texas and can confirm that it is delicious. Yeah, I can confirm that it is delicious. But despite some successes, radiation plant breeding never managed to live up to its ideals of ending famine and turning the world into a quote, smiling garden of Eden. Basically, after the 60s, it was clear that things didn't live up to their promise. It definitely didn't live up to its aspirations. That's Helen and Curry.

I'm a senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. She's also the author of Evolution Made to Order, Plant, Breeding, and Technological Innovation in 20th century America. Curry thinks that over time, especially as environmentalist movements started, people may have become less intrigued by and more wary of all things new clear, including radiation breathing. Whether it's gonna create horrible things

in the field that I might not wanna ever eat anyway, I wonder if radiation lingers on the seeds and might pose a threat to me. So I think this view becomes much more mixed about what the possibilities are. Some historians believe that the atoms for Peace movement was just a cover anyway, a way to put a positive spin on atomic research as the US continued to build up its nuclear arsenal. When Eisenhower assumed office in 1953, the US had about 1,000 nuclear weapons.

When he left in 1961, there were around 18,000. Eisenhower needed people to believe that there was hope in nuclear research, not just fear, so that we wouldn't turn away from nuclear weapons completely. He wanted us to keep pursuing nuclear technology even if it scared us, because the Soviets were certainly pursuing it, and that was even scarier at the time. But this march toward mutually assured destruction would leave us with other world-changing non-military innovations, too. Like nuclear power, the expanded field of nuclear medicine, and, of course, the unarugably delicious, Rio Star grapefruit.

Paid Johnson runs the blog Garden History Girl and the Nano Technology Company 109 Tech. She's also collecting oral histories of the backyard atomic gardens, so if you or someone you know, planted some irradiated seeds, go to atomicgardenane.com to add your story. If you want to learn more about the history of radiation breeding, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff that we couldn't fit into this story, check out Helen Curry's book Evolution Made to Order, Plant Breeding in Technological Innovation in 20th Century America. It's available from University of Chicago Press, and you can also find it on Amazon. It's really good. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Shereefusive

With Delaney Hall, Avery Trouffman, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sam Greenspan, and me Roman Mars. Katie Mingle is our senior editor, Kurt Colstead is our digital director. Taren Mazze is our office manager and Sean Rial composed all original music for this episode. We are a project of 91.7KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. You can find this show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI Orc. We're on Instagram and Tumblr too. But if you need to catch up with all the stuff we did for Frank Lloyd Wright Week or learn

how to properly adjust your car mirrors, that was a really popular article this week. You have to go to 99pi.org. Radio Tepi from PRX.