Tea & the Atom

Tokyo's 1,090 trolleys and 2,300 commuter-railroad cars blossomed last week with hastily printed posters headlined "Protection from Radiation" and concluding, "Drink tea and rebuild bright future." In between was an explanation of the connection between these seemingly unrelated items. And between the lines was the unconcealed hope of Japan's tea industry that it could capitalize on fears of nuclear war to build future profits.

The movement got its start last year when portly Dr. Teiji Ugai, 63, president of Shizuoka Pharmaceutical College, was worrying over reports that the tea plant avidly takes up strontium, including radioactive strontium 90 (TIME, Oct. 27) and that port of New York authorities had detected radioactivity in Japanese tea. Shizuoka prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, grows more than half Japan's tea, and the industry was already ailing before radiation sickness hit it.

Dr. Ugai remembered that strontium chloride combines with tannic acid to form an insoluble compound. From this he reasoned that strontium, instead of being deposited in the bones to do long-term damage, might be eliminated from the human system if there was enough tannic acid present. It worked in Dr. Ugai's laboratory, where mice stored up 30% less strontium in their bones when they also got tannic acid. Then he found that a standard brew of green or black tea worked like a weak solution of tannic acid.

The tea growers launched their campaign without even consulting Dr. Ugai. Said one merchant: "Favored from ancient times, tea now stands the test of the atomic age as a safeguard against one of the most dreaded byproducts of that age." But one thing was missing: evidence that what works in laboratory mice will work equally well in men.

In 'Britain a dozen scientists working for the Medical Research Council were taking test doses of two radioactive iso-fopes of strontium. With atomic numbers 85 and 87, these are less deadly than strontium 89 or 90, but still have enough activity for their presence and distribution in the body to be checked by radiation counters. Missing from the evidence being studied in this test: any mention of how much strong, black tea the volunteers were tippling.

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