From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.censorship,alt.activism
Subject: "SECRET FALLOUT, Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to TMI" [1/15]
Summary: part 1 of 15: beginning through chapter 1
Keywords: low-level ionizing radiation, fallout, deception, secrecy, survival
Date: 18 Dec 92 18:44:04 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu



        The following is reprinted here with permission of the author, 
          Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass who owns the rights to this book.  
              Permission to distribute this book is freely given 
               so long as no modification of the text is made.


  __________________________________________________________________________








                             Ernest J. Sternglass



                                SECRET FALLOUT
                                 ____________

                             LOW-LEVEL RADIATION
                              FROM HIROSHIMA TO
                              THREE MILE ISLAND












                           McGraw-Hill Book Company




                      New York  St. Louis  San Francisco
                     Auckland  Bogota  Guatemala  Hamburg
                 Johannesburg  Lisbon  London  Madrid  Mexico
                         Montreal  New Delhi  Panama
        Paris  San Juan  Sao Paulo  Singapore  Sydney  Tokyo  Toronto
















                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *









               From the back jacket and inside cover of the
               1982 paperback edition of "Secret Fallout:"







    Politics/Health

    SECRET FALLOUT
    LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM HIROSHIMA TO THREE-MILE ISLAND

    ERNEST STERNGLASS
    Introduction by George Wald

       In "Secret Fallout" Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor of Radiation
    Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents the evidence he has
    for twenty years battled to bring before the public--the cumulative,
    devastating effects of low-level radiation on our health.
       In the early 1960s, when nuclear testing filled the rains with
    radioactivity, Dr. Sternglass discovered a related increase in fetal
    deaths, infant mortality, and certain kinds of cancer.  His studies
    were disregarded, discredited, or suppressed--even though documents
    available under the Freedom of Information Act make clear that top-
    level government officials were aware of the accuracy of his findings.
       Nuclear power plants became the topic of his studies in 1970, and
    he gathered data showing that nuclear emissions have resulted in
    increased genetic defects, mental retardation, and death among
    newborns, as well as death due to lung disease in all age groups.
    Nuclear power plants have nonetheless proliferated.
       Dr. Sternglass made headlines in 1979 by a study linking the
    decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores that has puzzled educators
    to past atomic testing.  Most recently, he has looked at the evidence
    of the aftereffects of the Three-Mile Island incident and found that,
    contrary to popular opinion, tragedy was not averted:  Infant and
    fetal deaths rose dramatically in the months following the accident.

       "Secret Fallout" is the story of a courageous scientist struggling
    to uncover the dangers of nuclear power;  it is a shocking expose of
    the indifference and neglect of officials of the government and
    apologists for the nuclear industry.  But most of all it is a stern
    warning that unless we face up to the damage we have already done we
    cannot prevent our future destruction.



















    "Professor Sternglass's courageous voice has helped keep alive the
    debate on the health effects of low-level radiation, a debate that the
    military, the nuclear industry, and even some biologists and
    physicians have tried to bury.  His new book, {Secret Fallout:  Low-
    Level Radiation from Hiroshima to Three Mile Island}, is an important
    new contribution to that debate and should be required reading for all
    who are concerned with their own health, the health of their children,
    and of their children's children."

                                  Victor W. Sidel, M.D.
                                  Professor and Chairperson
                                  Department of Social Medicine
                                  Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center
                                  Albert Einstein College of Medicine






    {Dr. Ernest Sternglass} is Professor of Radiology, specializing in
    radiological physics, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School,
    as well as Adjunct Professor in the Department of History and
    Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington.  He is past
    president of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Federation of American
    Scientists, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the
    Radiological Society of North America and the American Association of
    Physicists in Medicine.  He has testified on low-level radiation
    before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and many other groups both
    here and abroad.

                                  {Dr. George Wald}, Nobel Laureate in
                                  Physiology and Medicine, is Professor of
                                  Biology at Harvard.

























    Copyright (c) 1972, 1981 by Ernest J. Sternglass

    All rights reserved.  Printed in the United States of America.  No
    part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
    system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
    mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
    prior written permission of the publisher.

    This book is an expanded version of {Low-Level Radiation}, first
    published in 1972 by Ballantine Books.

    First McGraw-Hill Paperback edition, 1981

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0   FGFG  8 6 5 4 3 2 1

    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

    Sternglass, Ernest J
    Secret fallout.
    Ed. of 1972 published under title:  Low-level radiation.
    Bibliography:  p.
    Includes index.
    1. Radioactive pollution--Toxicology.  2. Radiation--Toxicology
    I. Title.    II. Title:  Low-level radiation from Hiroshima to
    Three Mile Island.
    RA569.S69 1981    616.9'897  80-22390
    ISBN O-07-061242-0

    Book design by Roberta Rezk

    The author acknowledges the following sources for permission:

    {The Washington Post} for Bill Curry's "A-Test Officials Feared
    Outcry after Health Study."
    {The New York Times} for James Reston's "The Present Danger."  (c)
    1978 by The New York Times Company.  Reprinted by permission.
    {Harrowsmith Magazine} for Tom Pawlick's "The Silent Toll."
    {Beaver County Times} for Joel Griffiths' "State Panel Questions,
    Radiation, Safety."



















                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *










                            {The duty to endure
                        gives us the right to know.}
                                 --JEAN ROSTAND











                              {For Marilyn,
                              and our children
                              Daniel and Susan}






































                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




        Contents


            Acknowledgments
            Preface
            Introduction
         1. Thunderstorm in Troy
         2. The Unheeded Warning
         3. A Small Error in the Assumptions
         4. A Ray of Hope
         5. The Evidence Begins to Emerge
         6. The Hidden Tragedy of Hiroshima
         7. Death before Birth
         8. The Crucial Test
         9. Both Young and Old
        10. The Clouds of Trinity
        11. The Battle for Publication
        12. Counterattack at Hanford
        13. The Public's Right to Know
        14. The Price of Secrecy
        15. Fallout at Shippingport
        16. The Minds of the Children
        17. Incident at Three Mile Island
        18. Too Little Information Too Late
        19. The Present Danger

            Bibliography
            Glossary
            Index
































                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *


                               Acknowledgments




    THIS BOOK could not have come into being without the understanding,
    concern and support of many individuals whose help I was privileged to
    receive during the years in which the events recounted here took
    place.
       Although it is impossible to list all those to whom I have become
    deeply indebted, there are a few individuals whose help went far
    beyond anything I shall ever be able to acknowledge adequately.
       First among these is my wife Marilyn, who not only stood by my side
    throughout these years, but also provided the constant counsel,
    encouragement and understanding needed in the long and arduous task of
    writing this book.
       And it was the great personal dedication of my editor, Joel
    Griffiths, that shaped the first edition of the book, helping
    immeasurably in the difficult task of explaining for the non-scientist
    the complex scientific and technical arguments underlying the events
    described.  Thus, though the responsibility for the accuracy of the
    facts and their interpretation must remain mine, whatever success this
    book may have in clarifying the nature of the scientific problem and
    the dangers arising from the misuse of nuclear radiation will be to a
    large extent a reflection of his efforts.
       Among the many others who contributed importantly to bringing this
    book into being, I must express my indebtedness to Larry Bogart,
    long-time conservationist and founder of the National League to Stop
    Environmental Pollution, who together with Leo Goodman of the United
    Automobile Workers was responsible for first drawing my attention to
    the full hazard of an unchecked nuclear technology.
       In these researches, I was greatly aided by two of my colleagues,
    Dr. Donald Sashin and Ronald Rocchio, who worked out the computer
    programs that made the analysis of the vast amount of statistical data
    possible, as well as by Michael Szulman, Diane Gaye, Mitchel Margolis
    and Debbie Conant, without whose dedication in patiently collecting
    and analyzing the data the task would have been insuperable.
       In the collection of the basic data, I was also generously helped
    by a number of young volunteer student assistants who spent long hours
    in the library.  My gratitude goes to all of them, and in particular
    to David and Harold Colker, Randolph Strothman, and Gary Harris, whose
    important contributions were particularly appreciated.
       Last but not least, I must express my deep appreciation to my
    secretary, Judy Czachowski, who patiently suffered through the agonies
    of gathering the data, preparing papers and repeated retyping of the
    original manuscript, and without whose cheerful help and dedication
    the task would have been vastly more difficult.
       The present, greatly expanded edition owes its existence to my new
    editor, Joanne Dolinar, who persuaded me that it was important to tell
    the story of the developments in the ten years since the book's
    original publication.  For her persistence in this I am deeply
    grateful.  I am also grateful to my secretary, Nancy Siegel, who
    greatly eased the task of completing the expanded version of the book
    with her unwavering patience in tackling the never-ending pages with
    their illegible revisions.








                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




                                   Preface


    WHEN I UNDERTOOK to write the first edition of this book, originally
    published in 1972 under the title {Low-Level Radiation}, my primary
    concern was with the health effects of worldwide fallout from nuclear
    weapons, particularly on the developing infant in the mother's womb.
       At that time I also discussed the first evidence for possible
    health effects of routine releases of radioactivity from nuclear
    reactors in their ordinary day-to-day operation.
       In the ten years that have intervened since then, my concerns about
    the safety of nuclear plants have unfortunately been reinforced far
    more than I could have anticipated.  Not only in the accident at Three
    Mile Island, whose likely effects on human health are discussed in the
    present book, but also in the normal operations of many other nuclear
    plants, there is now growing evidence for rising infant mortality and
    damage to the newborn.  In the decade that has passed, cancer rates
    increased most sharply in areas closest to the nuclear reactors whose
    radioactive gas releases were found to rise most strongly, following
    the earlier pattern of death rates among the newborn described in the
    original book.
       The first fourteen chapters have been left nearly unchanged, while
    the rest of the present book brings the story up to the present time.
    It deals with the newly disclosed evidence that the possibility of
    serious health damage from weapons testing was long known to our
    government.  It also presents the evidence for widespread damage to
    the learning abilities of the children born in areas of heavy fallout
    during the period of massive nuclear weapons testing.
       What emerges is that in order for major governments to be able to
    continue threatening the use of their ever-growing stockpiles of
    weapons to fight and win nuclear wars rather than merely to deter
    them, they must keep from their own people the severity of the
    biological damage already done to their children by past nuclear
    testing and the releases from nuclear reactors near their homes.
       It is to focus attention on the need to end this hidden threat to
    the future of human life on this globe that this new edition has been
    prepared.

                                                      Ernest J. Sternglass
                                                                Pittsburgh
                                                                 July 1980




















                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




                                 Introduction




    I SHOULD LIKE TO START with a few words concerning the human
    condition, and go on with a little of the special problems of the
    author in writing this book.
       As a scientist I take a long view of history:  20 billion years of
    this universe;  6 billion years of the solar system;  4.7 billion
    years of the planet Earth;  3 billion years of life on Earth;
    something like 3 million years of something like human life;  10,000
    years of civilization;  and then--something happened.
       In 1976 we celebrated the bicentennial of American independence.
    That independence was an interesting event, but not nearly as
    important even to Americans as something else that was happening at
    the same time.  That was the Industrial Revolution.  At first it
    promised humanity endless leisure and abundance.  But a half-century
    ago it turned life-threatening on the grand scale;  and now killing
    and destruction are the biggest business in the world.  Military
    expenditures worldwide in 1979 were over $460 billion, and rising
    rapidly.  The simple reality is that a trivial two hundred years of
    the Industrial Revolution have brought the human species to the brink
    of self-extinction.
       Nuclear war is the most immediate threat.  Just the "strategic"
    nuclear weapons--the big ones, in the megaton range*--now stockpiled
    by the U.S. and the Soviet Union add up to the explosive equivalent of
    about 16 million tons of TNT.  There are just over four billion
    persons on the Earth, so about 4 tons of TNT for every man, woman and
    child in the world.  In addition each superpower has stored tens of
    thousands of so-called "tactical" nuclear weapons, and the material to
    make hundreds of thousands more.
       So I had better say what a tactical nuclear weapon is.  The bomb
    that in a moment leveled the city of Hiroshima and by the end of that
    year--1945--had killed 140,000 persons rates in the present arsenals
    as a pitifully small "tactical" weapon, a mere 12.5 kilotons.  For
    comparison the Titan missile whose fuel recently blew up in its silo
    in Arkansas had perhaps 100 times that explosive power.
       But the explosive power--the blast and heat and radiation--are just
    the immediate release of nuclear weapons.  There is also the mushroom
    cloud of radioactive fallout that enters the atmosphere and
    stratosphere and eventually covers the entire globe.  This goes on
    showering the Earth with potentially lethal ionizing radiation, and
    every rain and snowfall brings down radioactive elements to be
    inhaled, and by entering the food chain, ingested.  And that goes on
    and on, from the comparatively short-lived iodine-131 and strontium-
    89, dangerous for 6 months to a year, to plutonium-239, perhaps the
    most toxic substance known, whose half-life--the time it takes for its
    radioactivity to half-decay--is 24,400 years.  That remains dangerous,
    in human terms, forever.

* Nuclear weapons are graded in terms of the equivalent explosive power
 in tons of TNT:  kilotons, which are thousands of tons;  or megatons,
 millions of tons.

       An interesting dialogue taking place in the Atomic Scientists
    Bulletin raises the question:  would anyone survive?  If the present
    stockpiles of nuclear weapons were used, would any human beings be
    left on the Earth?  That is at least questionable, and we would take a
    lot of the rest of life on this planet with us.
       Directly out of the business of nuclear weapons came the business
    of nuclear power, heralded in our country with the slogan, {Atoms for
    Peace}.  Even that innocent-sounding slogan is part of the endless
    pattern of public deception that surrounds the entire nuclear
    enterprise.  Let me interject a present example that poses the
    relationship nicely.  In our country the entire hydrogen bomb
    enterprise--both R and D and production--is not under the Department
    of Defense, but the Department of Energy.  It goes, not into the
    Defense budget, but the Energy budget.  It is by far the largest item
    in that budget, consuming well over one-third of it.  The next largest
    item in it is nuclear power.
       Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin.
    Nuclear power is life-threatening in three independent ways, each in
    itself formidable.
       First is the threat of accident in nuclear power plants.  This book
    tells in some detail the story of the accident at Three Mile Island.
    But one didn't have to wait for that to know that nuclear power
    plants--unlike what the public has been told--are thoroughly
    accident-prone.  Those great realists, the American insurance
    companies, refused from the beginning to insure nuclear power plants.
    Hence we have the Price-Anderson Act, renewed by Congress every 10
    years since 1957, which lays the bulk of the liability in the event of
    nuclear accident on "the government"--i.e., on the taxpayers.
       The second life-threatening property is that every nuclear reactor
    now in operation produces the artificial element plutonium-239 as by-
    product. This is not only, as already said, perhaps the most toxic
    substance known.  It is also the most convenient material from which
    to make fission bombs.  The "trigger quantity"--the smallest amount
    from which one can make a workable atom bomb--is 2 kilograms, 4 2/5
    pounds.  You could carry that, and safely, in a grocery bag.  To make
    a Hiroshima-size bomb would take 6-7 kilograms, say about 14 pounds.
    You'd need a shopping bag for that.  Every nation that now possesses a
    nuclear reactor can, if it chooses, begin to make nuclear weapons.  It
    is expected that within the coming decade perhaps a dozen more nations
    than now possess them will exercise this option.  It should be added
    that plutonium provides the trigger at the core of all hydrogen bombs,
    and in some also the shell.
       The third life-threatening aspect of both nuclear power and weapons
    involves the disposal of nuclear wastes.  No one knows what to do with
    them.  The periodic meetings of international experts have so far
    yielded no credible solution.
       In my opinion the entire nuclear enterprise, both power and
    weapons, represents a wrong turn for humanity, a development that
    cannot be tamed, that remains life-threatening not only in all its
    present manifestations, but all future developments that have been
    contemplated.
       Meanwhile the public is subjected to a continuous barrage of
    propaganda and misinformation designed to reconcile it to an
    increasingly problematical and expensive support of both nuclear power
    and weapons.  The weapons, ostensibly for our security, are of course
    the principle source of our insecurity;  and the nuclear power, that
    we are told we need for energy, supplies in 1980 only about 12% of our
    consumption of electricity, hence only about 2% of our total energy
    consumption, at a still unreckonable cost in both health and money.
       The author of such a book as this is under constant attack, not 
    only from the expected sources in industry and government, but from 
    certain quarters in the science establishment.  I have heard at times 
    from fellow scientists, some indeed on the same side as Professor
    Sternglass in opposing the spread of ionizing radiations, the somewhat
    querulous comment, "I don't like his statistics."  That would impress
    me more if I had ever met anyone who liked anyone else's statistics.
    That's the way with statistics:  they are highly individual.
    Sternglass has an exuberant way with them.  At times in this book I
    had the feeling he was going a little far.  But then I never could be
    sure, once I had read over carefully what he was saying, that it was
    *too* far.  The truth is that once one starts down this path, it's 
    hard to know where or whether to stop.  And on the fundamental issues,
    Sternglass is dealing with a very strong case.  I think that it is by
    now beyond doubt that ionizing radiations at all levels involve
    serious risks to health, causing increased chances of cancers,
    leukemia and genetic effects.  There is no threshold:  a little,
    however little, causes some increased risk, and more causes more risk.
    There is no level that fails to be potentially harmful.  From that
    point of view the existence of an official so-called "permissible
    level" is misleading.  A "permissible level" of radiation only has
    meaning in cost benefit accounting;  and that would mean more if the
    costs and benefits involved the same parties.  Unfortunately they
    usually do not:  one group--workers, general public--commonly bear the
    costs;  and another, quite different group--ownership, management,
    government--shares the benefits.  Having to deal with a lot of
    official talk about "permissible levels" of radiation at the time of
    Three Mile Island, I took to saying, "Every dose is an overdose."  I
    believe that to be true as a statement, not necessarily of overt
    effect, but of risk.

                                                               GEORGE WALD
                                                   Paris, October 28, 1980






                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




                                      1


                             Thunderstorm in Troy




    ON MONDAY MORNING, April 27, 1953, the small group of students in
    Professor Herbert Clark's radiochemistry class at Rensselaer
    Polytechnic Institute walked into the metal shack that served as their
    laboratory, located high on a hill overlooking the city of Troy in
    upper New York State.  The students set about making preparations for
    the day's experiments, but then Professor Clark interrupted to draw
    their attention to something unusual.  All the Geiger counters were
    registering radiation at many times the natural rate.
       Since instruments nearest the outer walls were giving the highest
    readings, several students immediately went outside with a portable
    Geiger counter.  At once they found that wherever they walked, the
    count rate on the ground was far above normal, in some places a
    thousand times as high.  In particular, beneath the spout of the
    gutters that carried the rainwater down off the roof of the shack, the
    needle gave a disconcertingly high reading.  Evidently the previous
    night's heavy rains had brought down large amounts of radioactivity.
       Dr. Clark quickly guessed the source.  Such high readings could
    only have come from heavy deposits of fallout, the drifting clouds of
    radioactive debris created by the explosion of a nuclear bomb in the
    atmosphere.  To verify his guess, he phoned John Harley, a friend and
    former colleague who now worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy
    Commission's Health and Safety Laboratory in New York City.  As one of
    Dr. Clark's students recalled the story many years later, Harley's
    first reaction was that Clark must be kidding, and, expressing amused
    disbelief, he hung up.  But a few minutes later, New York called back.
    Dr. Clark summarized the details of the morning's measurements:  how
    the count rate from the gamma radiation on the ground was anywhere
    from ten to five hundred times normal, how the activity from beta rays
    had gone up even more, and how "hot spots" beneath rainspouts and in
    puddles on the pavement showed still higher readings, much higher than
    he had ever observed after other nuclear tests, when it had been hard
    to measure any additional radioactivity at all.  Thoroughly alarmed,
    the director of the New York Laboratory, Dr. Merrill Eisenbud,
    promised to check personally into the situation, to send some of his
    top people to make their own measurements on the spot, and to take any
    steps that might be called for to protect the public health.
       For, as Dr. Clark had just learned, there had indeed been a recent
    atomic bomb test, conducted by the AEC in Nevada two days earlier.
    The bomb, code-named Simon and equivalent in power to 43,000 tons of
    TNT, had been detonated in the atmosphere some 300 feet above the
    desert.  The upper portion of the mushroom cloud had reached an
    altitude of about 30,000 or 40,000 feet and then drifted 2300 miles
    across the United States in a northeasterly direction, passing high
    over Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and
    Pennsylvania before it encountered a severe thunderstorm in progress
    over most of upstate New York, southern Vermont, and parts of
    Massachusetts.
       The storm was an extraordinarily violent one, accompanied by
    extremely high winds, hail, and torrential rains that flooded streets
    and basements, undermined foundations, and caused heavy damage to
    trees and houses.  It was one of the heaviest flash storms Dr. Clark
    could remember.  The sudden cloudburst, he surmised, had probably
    brought much of the fallout down in concentrated form.  Dr. Clark
    quickly put his students to work in an effort to determine just how
    serious and widespread the danger might be.
       Students set out with portable radiation detectors and began
    measuring the radioactivity on the pavement, on pieces of cloth, on
    asphalt roof shingles, on burdock leaves and other vegetation--any
    place it would be likely to collect and adhere.  Samples were also
    taken of water from reservoirs and household taps.  Within a matter of
    hours the students were reporting back from such nearby towns and
    cities as Watervliet, Mechanicville, Saratoga Springs, Albany, and
    Schenectady that everywhere the radiation levels were about the same
    as on the campus.  Typical readings were twenty to a hundred times
    normal, with hot spots up to ten times higher than that.
       Now knowing the radiation levels as well as the source and age of
    the fallout, Dr. Clark could calculate that during the next ten weeks
    the total gamma radiation dose to the population from the
    radioactivity in the environment would be, on the average, roughly
    equivalent to that received from a typical diagnostic X-ray exposure.
    This was reassuring, since such a dose was not very different from
    what most people in the world receive each year from the naturally
    occurring cosmic rays that penetrate the earth's atmosphere.  And it
    was well below the maximum permissible dose limits set by government
    agencies.
       However, there was also the high radioactivity in the rainwater,
    which was certain to contaminate the reservoirs and thus the tap
    water.  The samples of rainwater collected from a puddle on the campus
    had shown a radioactivity level of 270,000 micromicrocuries per liter,
    thousands of times higher than the maximum levels then permitted by
    AEC standards, which were set at 100 micromicrocuries per liter.
    Normal drinking water usually had an activity of about 1
    micromicrocurie per liter.
       There was, accordingly, much apprehension among the students until
    the samples of actual drinking water from the taps and reservoirs
    could be analyzed early the next day.  When this was done, the first
    of the tap water samples, taken Monday night, showed an activity of
    2630 micromicrocuries per liter--not as great as was feared, yet still
    well in excess of the limit.  But by that evening, the same tap gave a
    sample with a greatly decreased activity of 1210 per liter, while
    samples from nearby Tomhannock Reservoir ranged from 580 to 960.  The
    radioactive rain was evidently becoming heavily diluted in the
    reservoir before reaching the taps in the households of Troy.
       Thus, all concerned were greatly relieved that the total radiation
    doses received by the populace would probably turn out to be
    relatively small.  It would not be necessary to filter the drinking
    water or decontaminate the streets and rooftops by means of elaborate
    and costly scrubbing procedures, a monumental task in view of the
    tenacity with which the radioactivity had been found to cling to rough
    surfaces such as pavement, asphalt shingles, and burdock leaves, and
    especially to porous materials like paper and cloth. Dr. Clark and his
    students found that even treatment with hot, concentrated hydrochloric
    acid--an extreme method--was only partially effective in removing the
    radioactivity from the objects to which it clung.  The class also
    conducted tests to determine the strength of this radioactivity.
    Surprisingly, they found that it was comparable to that reported the
    previous year by the AEC's New York Laboratory for fallout in desert
    areas only 200 to 500 miles from the point of detonation at the Nevada
    test site itself.
       But the possible health effects of any internal doses that might
    result from eating, drinking, or breathing the radioactivity were
    considered negligible by the New York State Health Department and the
    AEC.  And so it was decided that nothing further need be done.  An
    editorial in the local newspaper expressed some concern, but soon the
    whole incident was forgotten.
       Meanwhile, however, Dr. Clark, under contract to the AEC, continued
    to monitor the levels of radioactivity in the reservoirs, while AEC
    physicists, using an extremely sensitive gamma-ray detector mounted in
    an airplane, conducted extensive surveys of the entire region.
    Detailed reports on the findings were written by the staff of the New
    York Lab, but, since they were classified "secret," the public never
    learned of their contents.  All that appeared was the following brief
    statement in the 14th Semi-Annual Report of the Atomic Energy
    Commission for the first half of 1953:

      After one detonation, unusually heavy fallout was noted as far
      from Nevada as the Troy-Albany area in New York.  Following a
      heavy rain in that area on the second day after the detonation,
      the concentration of radioactivity was from 100 to 200 curies
      per square mile.  It is estimated that this level of
      radioactivity would result in about 0.1 roentgen exposure for
      the first 13 weeks following the fallout.  The exposure has no
      significance in relation to health.

       One fact the AEC did not announce, and the general public did not
    learn, since it was later published by Dr. Clark in the obscure,
    highly specialized {Journal of the American Water Works Association},
    was that, as the AEC continued its nuclear testing in Nevada during
    the spring of 1953, further rainouts repeatedly raised the
    radioactivity in the reservoirs serving Troy to levels comparable to
    those measured by Dr. Clark and his students the morning after the
    "Simon" rainout in April.






                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *


--
                                              daveus rattus   

                                    yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                                KOYAANISQATSI

    ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
        in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
          5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
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