in the 1920’s it was suggested that unlike everything else in the known universe, “all ionizing radiation will cause harm and damage from ionizing radiation can never be repaired.“ Most scientists considered this to be a crazy idea. Many objected and pointed to information that showed this was not true. The powers that be, such as those with money invested in coal and oil backed the idea that “all ionizing radiation will cause harm and damage from ionizing radiation can never be repaired.”
This idea became known as Linear No-Threshold model (LNT). Trying to prove this did not start well as scientists found their laboratory animals were far more resistant to radiation than they expected. One man, Muller made it his life work to promote LNT by irradiating fruit flies and examining their off-spring.
He found that by using 130 million times background ionizing-radiation he could cause mutations. He drew a straight line from 130 million to zero and said that all ionizing-radiation causes mutations and so everyone needs to avoid all ionizing-radiation.
