[Bored chemist]

You might want to look into a therory called hormesis. It's a bit contraversial but it says that low level exposure is beneficial because it stimulates the body's defense mechanisms.

[iko]

Hi B.Chemist,
I think I am just fine with the 'background noise' of natural radiation, radon, cosmic radiations and UltraViolet rays to get older and crappier!
By the way, did you read that in Chernobyl there were 59 dead people in the end?
Not to mean that it wasn't an horrible disaster, but I thought that thousands had succumbed.
Talking of correct information!

ikod

[Bored chemist]

Yes, I saw that and I think it was mainly the firefighters who died as a result of trying to solve a problem that they hadn't caused and knowing that it might kill them. It seems only fair to me to point out that while the Soviet Union had some really bad polictics it had some truly fine people.
BTW, I seem to recall that some recent research on "conan the bacterium"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans
 has cast doubts on the model of radiation damage too.