“The People’s Professor”
By Gabe Rivin
On March 28, 1979, catastrophe loomed as Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, endured a severe meltdown in one of its nuclear reactors. The power plant’s failure released radioactive gases into the air, prompting worries across the region about the public’s exposure to dangerous radiation.
Federal and state officials later concluded that the accident hadn’t harmed residents’ health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains that residents’ average exposure was about one-sixth that of a chest X-ray.
Yet for Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at UNC-Chapel Hill who studied the issue, the official narrative ignored residents’ concerns.