Radiation risks: Raiders of the lost archive

Old collections of irradiated tissues could answer modern-day questions about the dangers of radiation. Now, researchers are making a concerted effort to save the stores.

The town of Ozersk, deep in Russia's remote southern Urals, hides the relics of a massive secret experiment. From the early 1950s to the end of the cold war, nearly 250,000 animals were systematically irradiated. Some were blasted with α-, β- or γ-radiation. Others were fed radioactive particles. Some of the doses were high enough to kill the animals outright; others were so low that they seemed harmless. After the animals — mice, rats, dogs, pigs and a few monkeys — died, scientists dissected out their tissues to see what damage the radioactivity had wrought. They fixed thin slices of lung, heart, liver, brain and other organs in paraffin blocks, to be sliced and examined under the microscope. Some organs, they pickled in jars of formalin.
http://www.nature.com/news/radiation-risks-raiders-of-the-lost-archive-1.10599