NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/talk/environm/5335

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From: [e-mail] (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: "SECRET FALLOUT, Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to TMI" [2/15]
Summary: part 2 of 15: chapter 2 through chapter 3
Keywords: low-level ionizing radiation, fallout, deception, secrecy, survival
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Date: 4 Jan 93 22:55:52 GMT
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                                      2


                             The Unheeded Warning




    THE TROY INCIDENT was easily forgotten because, at the time, little
    was known about the effects of low-level radiation--either from
    fallout or from other sources.  The subject had hardly even been
    thought about.  Scientists generally assumed that such levels were
    harmless, since they produced no immediately observable effects.
    During the next few years, however, tremendously improved radiation
    measurement techniques coupled with detailed laboratory studies
    revealed many previously unsuspected hazards from fallout.  And with
    these discoveries, the forgotten incident in upstate New York re-
    emerged and took on great significance.
       By 1953, it was already known that many of the radioactive elements
    (called isotopes) created by an atomic explosion, once they entered
    the atmosphere in the form of tiny fallout particles, would
    contaminate food, water, and air and thus find their way into the
    human body.  What was not widely known, however, was the extent to
    which these isotopes became concentrated in various body organs.
    Inside the body, they behaved just like their nonradioactive natural
    counterparts.  The isotope strontium, for instance, which is similar
    to calcium, settled in bones and teeth.  Radioactive iodine behaved
    like regular iodine, seeking out and concentrating in the thyroid
    gland, an organ which is vital in regulating the growth and
    functioning of the human body.
       It was in the case of iodine that some of the most alarming
    discoveries were made.  In the early 1950s researchers found that
    iodine became concentrated in the milk of cows that grazed on pasture
    contaminated with fallout.  When people drank the milk, the iodine
    began building up rapidly in their thyroid glands.  Since the thyroid
    gland is small in size, the concentration was very heavy.
    Measurements revealed that in any given situation the radiation dose
    to the adult thyroid would be as much as a hundred times the external
    dose from the fallout in the outside environment.  But far more
    important were the results of extensive studies conducted at the
    University of Michigan and published in 1960.  These showed that the
    radiation dose to the thyroids of unborn children and infants was ten
    to one hundred times higher than that to the adult because of the
    greater concentration in the smaller thyroids.  This discovery held
    serious implications for the health of the children of Troy.  It meant
    that the doses to their thyroids might have been as much as a hundred
    to a thousand times higher than those estimated by Dr. Clark and the
    AEC scientists, who had only considered the overall dose from the
    fallout in the external environment.
       However, by the time these discoveries became widely known, a
    voluntary halt in atmospheric testing had been agreed upon by the
    Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain, and there was
    considerable hope that incidents of heavy fallout would never occur
    again.  Thus it seemed less urgent to pursue investigations into the
    problem.  But in 1961, during the Berlin crisis, Russia's detonation
    of a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb high over Siberia marked the resumption
    of large-scale atmospheric testing by the nuclear powers, and the
    levels of radioactivity in air and water once again rose sharply
    throughout the world.  In the weeks that followed, an enormous peak of
    radioactive iodine was detected in milk throughout the northern
    hemisphere.  As the testing continued, many scientists began to feel
    it was imperative to find a conclusive answer to the question:  Just
    exactly how harmful was low-level radiation from fallout?
       It was in this context that the well-known nuclear physicist Ralph
    Lapp wrote an article for {Science} magazine in 1962 which first
    focused attention on the significance of the Albany-Troy incident.
    Lapp's article showed that radiation doses far larger than those
    permitted by federal safety guidelines must have been received by the
    children of Troy and numerous other cities that had been subjected to
    similar "rainouts" in the early years of testing.  The purpose of the
    article was to point out that the Troy incident provided an excellent
    opportunity to find out just what the effects of fallout were.  The
    surrounding area's population of half a million persons was large
    enough to insure that any increase in the normally low incidence of
    such radiation-caused diseases as thyroid cancer or childhood leukemia
    would show up.  (The normal incidence of leukemia among children under
    ten years old was about two to three cases per year per 100,000
    children.  Thus, if any area with only a few thousand children were
    studied, no cases at all might be found in some years, even if the
    radiation were strong enough to double the normal expected number.)
    And the detailed radiation measurements taken by Dr. Clark's students
    and the AEC meant that relatively accurate estimates could be made of
    the doses involved.
       The study that Lapp proposed had enormous potential ramifications.
    At the time, many people in government, military, and scientific
    circles still believed that mankind could survive the levels of
    fallout that would result from a nuclear war, levels thousands of
    times greater than those from peacetime testing.  The United States
    had embarked on an extensive civil-defense program based on this
    belief.  But if it were shown that peacetime fallout levels led to a
    significant increase in fatal diseases, then by implication, nuclear
    war would probably mean the end of mankind, and thus the vast nuclear
    war machinery developed by the United States and the Soviet Union
    would become useless.  In the second place, if it were shown that
    large numbers of children had already died from the effects of
    fallout, then tremendous public revulsion would probably be generated
    against *all* activities that released more radioactivity into the
    environment.  These would include not just the testing of nuclear
    weapons, but also the monumental program planned by many governments
    and industries throughout the world for the peacetime uses of atomic
    energy.  For nuclear power reactors, atomic gas-mining explosions, and
    other forms of nuclear engineering all normally release low levels of
    radioactivity and, in the event of an accident, they entail the risk
    of much worse.  And, finally, those individuals who had been in
    positions of responsibility would have a terrible guilt to bear for
    the damage already done.
       The appearance of Lapp's article also served to highlight another
    extraordinary fact.  It was then seventeen years since the first
    atomic explosion at Hiroshima in 1945, yet no large-scale cancer
    studies such as he proposed had ever been carried out, even though the
    AEC had long been in possession of detailed fallout data for many
    areas of the U.S.  A great deal of information existed on the effects
    of high doses of radiation, such as those received by the survivors of
    the explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there was no real
    evidence regarding low-level effects, either from laboratory animal
    studies or from direct observations of large human populations.  The
    lack of animal studies was somewhat understandable, since no such
    experiments could be carried out at the extremely low doses produced
    by fallout without requiring hundreds of thousands or even millions of
    animals and many years to detect the small increases of a rare disease
    such as leukemia.  But in the case of humans, such a large study
    population had already been created by the fallout from years of
    atomic testing.  Yet the AEC had ignored this opportunity to resolve
    such an important issue.  Thus, those who wished to minimize the
    danger of continued atomic testing could argue, in the absence of data
    to the contrary, that long-term, low-level exposure such as that from
    fallout had not been proven to increase fatal diseases.
       The absence of such studies was all the more striking because there
    were already strong indications that such danger existed.  It was
    toward the end of 1955 that Dr. Alice Stewart, head of the Department
    of Preventive Medicine at Oxford University, first became aware of a
    sharp rise in leukemia among young children in England.  A young
    statistician in her department, David Hewitt, had discovered that the
    number of children dying of this cancer of the blood had risen over 50
    percent in only a few years.  In the United States an increase about
    twice as large had occurred.  One aspect of this rise was extremely
    puzzling:  The leukemia seemed to strike mostly children over two to
    three years of age--there was little or no increase for younger
    children.  This had not been the situation prior to World War II, when
    both groups had shown a parallel, much more gradual rise.  The
    question was:  What new postwar development could be responsible for
    the increase in deaths among the older children?
       Dr. Stewart undertook a study to find out.  With the assistance of
    health officers throughout England and Wales, she obtained detailed
    interviews with the mothers of all of the 1694 children in those
    countries who had died of cancer in the years 1953 to 1955, as well as
    with an equal number of mothers of healthy children.  By May 1957, the
    analysis of 1299 cases, half of which involved leukemia and the rest
    mainly brain and kidney tumors, had been completed.  The data showed
    that babies born of mothers who had a series of X-rays of the pelvic
    region during pregnancy were nearly twice as likely to develop
    leukemia or another form of cancer, as those born of mothers who had
    not been X-rayed.  As Dr. Stewart noted, the chance of finding such a
    two-to-one ratio purely as a result of statistical accident was in
    this case less than one in ten million.  Thus, in the paper she
    published in June 1958, Dr. Stewart concluded that the dose from
    diagnostic X-rays could produce a clearly detectable increase in
    childhood cancer when given during pregnancy.
       This was an extremely low dose.  It was roughly comparable to the
    dose that most people receive in only a few years from natural
    background radiation.  (Mankind has always lived with a "natural
    background" of radiation, produced by cosmic rays and various
    naturally occurring radioactive substances.  The annual dose from the
    radiation averages about 100 millirads.)  But still more significant,
    this dose was comparable with what the pregnant mothers of Albany-Troy
    must have received from the fallout of the "Simon" test in 1953.
       In this connection, there was another finding of Dr. Stewart's
    study that was even more disturbing.  This concerned the timing of the
    X-rays.  Children whose mothers were X-rayed during the first third of
    their pregnancy were found to be some ten times more likely to develop
    cancer than those whose mothers were X-rayed toward the end of
    pregnancy.  In other words, the earlier the worse.  This finding had
    much more serious implications for fallout than for medical X-rays.
    Almost 90 percent of pelvic X-ray examinations occur shortly before
    delivery time, but since fallout comes down indiscriminately on whole
    populations, it irradiates unborn children at all stages of
    development, including the earliest.  The fallout hazard was further
    compounded by the tendency of various radioactive elements, such as
    iodine and strontium, to concentrate in vital body organs.  This meant
    that the doses to the thyroids and bone marrows of unborn children
    from fallout could be many times higher than the doses received from
    diagnostic X-rays by the children in Dr. Stewart's study, which had
    already nearly doubled the cancer incidence.
       But in order to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship
    between the X-rays and the additional cancer deaths, there had to be a
    direct relationship between the amount of radiation received by the
    fetus and the chance that the child would develop cancer a few years
    later.  And indeed, when Dr. Stewart and David Hewitt examined the
    available records for the number of X-ray films taken, they found that
    there were distinctly fewer cancer cases among the children whose
    mothers had only one X-ray than among those who had four or more.  The
    number of cases where this information was available was too small to
    establish a conclusive connection between dose and cancer risk, but
    there was other evidence that supported this general trend.  For
    example, whenever the X-rays had been taken only of other parts of the
    body, such as the arms and legs, so that only a small quantity of
    scattered radiation reached the unborn child in the womb, the increase
    in cancer risk was only about one-fifth as great as in those cases
    where the abdominal region itself was X-rayed.
       These latter observations were in direct contradiction to a belief
    that was essential to the continuation of all programs for nuclear
    testing and the peaceful uses of the atom--namely, the so-called
    "threshold" theory.  This theory held that there was a certain low
    level of radiation exposure, a "threshold," below which no damage
    would be caused.  If this threshold was about the same as the yearly
    dose from background radiation or from exposure to typical diagnostic
    X-rays, as various supporters of nuclear programs maintained it was,
    then there would theoretically be no ill effects from past or present
    weapons tests, from the radioactive releases of nuclear reactors, or
    even from the radiation persisting after a nuclear war, since this
    radiation would probably not exceed the threshold if it were averaged
    out over a lifetime.  But Dr. Stewart's study implied that if there
    were any safe threshold for unborn children and infants it would have
    to be less than the dose from a single X-ray picture.  And her finding
    that the risk of cancer seemed to be directly related to the size of
    the dose suggested that there might not be any safe threshold at all,
    and that *any* increase in radiation exposure might produce a
    corresponding increase in the risk.  Even if the risk for a certain
    tiny amount of radiation was extremely small, say, one chance in ten
    thousand, then if millions of people were exposed to this radiation,
    hundreds would be likely to get cancer.  Fallout had already exposed
    millions of people to doses comparable to those received by the
    children in Dr. Stewart's study, and the proliferation of nuclear
    explosions for peaceful purposes would make this exposure even more
    extensive.
       There was widespread refusal to accept the implications of Dr.
    Stewart's work.  Her findings were regarded as doubtful for such
    reasons as their dependence on the memories of the mothers as to the
    number of X-ray exposures received.  Other studies were cited that
    showed no effects from X-rays.  It was said that her study was
    inapplicable to fallout because it had been shown that a specified
    dose of radiation given all at once--as is the case with a diagnostic
    X-ray--is more damaging than the same total dose given gradually over
    a period of weeks, months, or years--as is the case with fallout.
       This argument opened up another important area of disagreement
    about radiation dangers.  Were the cancer-causing effects of radiation
    cumulative?  Or did body cells recover?  There was no question that
    body cells did repair themselves in the case of such damage as
    radiation burns, which healed with the passage of time.  Supporters of
    the threshold theory hypothesized that this would also hold true for
    cancer.  This was another bulwark of the "threshold" theory, for, if
    such recovery did take place, then there would indeed exist a level of
    radiation low enough so that the body's repair mechanisms could keep
    pace with the damage.
       However, evidence was soon forthcoming that would refute the
    criticisms of Dr. Stewart's study and thereby cast further doubt on
    the validity of the threshold theory.  After the publication of Dr.
    Stewart's results, Dr. Brian MacMahon of the School of Public Health
    at Harvard University undertook another study of the relationship
    between diagnostic X-rays and childhood cancer.  He constructed this
    study so that there would be no question as to the number of X-rays
    given to the mothers.  Using the carefully maintained hospital records
    of 700,000 mothers who delivered their babies in a series of large
    hospitals in the northeastern United States between 1947 and 1954, he
    compared the risk of cancer for the children of the 70,000 mothers who
    had received one or more X-rays with the risk for the children of the
    remaining 630,000 mothers who had received no X-rays during pregnancy.
       The results of his study, published in 1962, fully confirmed the
    findings of Dr. Stewart:  There was a clear and highly significant
    increase in the risk of cancer for the children who had been X-rayed
    before birth, and, most important, the risk did indeed increase with
    the number of X-rays taken.  The overall risk was somewhat smaller
    than had been found for the British children by Dr. Stewart, but this
    could easily be explained by the fact that the dose to the mothers in
    MacMahon's study from each X-ray picture was substantially lower than
    for those in Dr. Stewart's, due to improvements in X-ray technology.
    As for the studies cited by critics which did not show any increase in
    cancer risk from prenatal X-rays, it developed that these were all
    based on small study populations, and even then the indications were
    that if these results were carried out to larger numbers they would
    confirm Stewart and MacMahon.
       But there was still one major question that remained unanswered.
    To what degree were the effects of diagnostic X-rays comparable with
    those of fallout?
       There were already many indications that the effects might be
    similar.  Among these was the fact that had prompted Dr. Stewart to
    undertake her study in the first place, namely, the evidence that in
    both the United States and England cancer and leukemia among school-
    age children had increased sharply beginning a few years after World
    War II.  This was the period when nuclear fallout was first introduced
    into the atmosphere.  And now, Dr. Stewart's and Dr. MacMahon's
    studies had served to point up the following significant aspects of
    this increase:
       First, the effects of X-rays, although very real, were not strong
    enough to have caused all of the very large general increase in
    childhood cancer, which ranged from 50 to 100 percent.  Dr. Stewart
    herself estimated that X-rays could only have accounted for perhaps 5
    percent of this increase.
       Second, this general increase had taken place only among children
    older than two or three--exactly the age group that had suffered the
    greatest effects from X-rays.  This suggested that some other form of
    radiation might be causing the unexplained portion of the increase,
    since the characteristic age at death was the same.
       Third, other possible factors such as the introduction of new
    drugs, pesticides, or food additives had been ruled out because these
    factors had been found to be essentially the same for the healthy and
    afflicted children alike.
       But the main reason why it seemed that fallout was at least as
    effective as X-rays in producing childhood cancer was the growing
    evidence for a direct relationship between the number of X-ray
    pictures taken and the risk of cancer.  For if the risk increased with
    each additional picture, as the studies of Stewart and MacMahon
    indicated it did, then this clearly implied that there was no
    significant healing of the damage and thus that the cancer-causing
    effects of radiation were cumulative.  This would mean that the
    effects of a dose received over a period of time from fallout would be
    similar to those from an equal dose received all at once from X-rays.
       Such a direct connection between the amount of radiation absorbed
    and the likelihood of cancer could be predicted on the basis of a
    theory developed by Dr. E. B. Lewis of the California Institute of
    Technology.  According to Dr. Lewis, cancer could be triggered if one
    particle of radiation scored a single bulletlike hit on a crucial DNA
    molecule in the chromosomes of a cell.  The DNA contains the genetic
    code that controls the functioning and reproduction of the cell.  If
    it were damaged by a particle of radiation, this might disrupt the
    governing mechanism and cause the cell to begin the unlimited growth
    which characterizes cancer.
       The significance of this theory was twofold.  First, it was already
    established that such damage to the DNA was one of the ways that
    radiation produced hereditary or genetic damage in the female ova and
    male sperm cells--the type of damage that results in malformations and
    other harmful mutations in offspring.  What Dr. Lewis stated, however,
    was that it was exactly the same type of damage, but to the DNA of any
    body cell, that could produce cancer.  This was extremely important
    because it had already been decisively demonstrated that genetic
    damage was cumulative.  In one experiment after another, using fruit
    flies and large colonies of mice, it was found that it did not matter
    how slowly or quickly a given dose of radiation was administered--in
    every case the number of defective off-spring was essentially the
    same.  The resulting effect on offspring was determined only by the
    total accumulated radiation dose received, regardless of the length of
    the time period over which it was given.  There were some indications
    of repair in the ova of female mice, but the effect was relatively
    small at best.  Thus there existed clear evidence that radiation
    effects of the type that produced genetic damage were cumulative,
    especially in the male sperm cell.  But if Dr. Lewis was right, and
    radiation caused cancer in body cells in exactly the same way as it
    caused genetic damage in reproductive cells, then this clearly implied
    that the cancer-causing effect of radiation was also cumulative.  And
    if this was so, then the greater the radiation dose, the greater the
    risk of cancer.  Dr. Lewis's theory therefore supported the findings
    of Stewart and MacMahon, and simultaneously gave weight to the theory
    that the cancer-causing effects of protracted radiation from fallout
    would be the same as for X-rays given all at once.
       All of this evidence combined pointed toward a single tragic
    conclusion:  Man, especially during the stage of early embryonic life,
    was hundreds or thousands of times more sensitive to radiation than
    anyone had ever suspected.






                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




                                      3


                       A Small Error in the Assumptions




    MY OWN INVOLVEMENT in the subject of fallout hazards began in 1961.
    That was the year of the Berlin crisis, when the Soviet Union ended
    the voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and the U.S. government
    called for a large-scale fallout shelter construction program.  The
    intensified threat of nuclear war caused much concern in the
    scientific community, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a group called
    the Federation of American Scientists, of which I was a member,
    decided to participate in a study of the chances for survival of a
    large industrial city like Pittsburgh in the event of a nuclear war.
    Since I was professionally involved in research on new techniques for
    reducing the radiation dose from medical X-rays, and therefore was
    interested in the problem of low-level radiation effects, it was
    suggested that I join the section investigating the health hazards
    from fallout.
       Almost as soon as we had begun our work, a disturbing fact emerged.
    All the calculations made by government agencies as to the radiation
    protection necessary after a full-scale nuclear war were based on the
    assumption that the adult could tolerate the enormous dose of 200 rads
    spread over a few days and as much as 1000 rads over a year.
    Apparently it had been decided by the government's scientific advisory
    groups that it was not necessary to take into account the long-range
    after-effects of radiation, either on the survivors themselves or on
    their offspring.  Yet, as I well knew from my own research, the reason
    why so much effort was being spent to reduce the dose from medical X-
    rays was that the doses of only a few rads per year received by
    radiologists in the course of their work had been found to decrease
    their life spans significantly, while among their children there had
    been a definite increase in congenital defects.  Furthermore, if Dr.
    Stewart was correct, only 1 to 2 rads would double the chances of a
    child developing cancer when the radiation was received in the last
    few months of the mother's pregnancy, and only one-tenth of this
    amount might have the same effect when received in the first few
    months.  Exposed to the radiation levels that would be present in the
    aftermath of a nuclear war, then, a great many children born in the
    years following could be expected to die of leukemia, cancer, or
    congenital malformations before reaching maturity.
       Additionally, these doses of hundreds of rads that the government
    agencies considered tolerable were only estimates of the external
    doses from the fallout in the environment.  The internal doses from
    the fallout particles concentrated inside the body, which would be
    hundreds or thousands of times higher still, had not even been taken
    into account, although the knowledge necessary for calculating these
    internal doses was widely available.
       It thus appeared that the chances for survival after a nuclear war
    were being presented to the public in a far more optimistic light than
    scientific evidence justified.  And then, with the publication in 1962
    of Lapp's article in {Science}, revealing the extremely high internal
    doses received by the children of Albany-Troy from the 1953 rainout,
    it became evident that the same held true for the health effects of
    peacetime fallout.  Since by 1962 the intensive nuclear testing was
    filling the rains all over the world with radioactivity approaching
    the amounts that had descended on Troy, the number of children that
    could be expected to die as a result was very large.
       I made an estimate as follows:  According to figures presented at
    congressional hearings, the fallout from each 100 megatons* of
    hydrogen bombs tested would give an overall dose of from 200 to 400
    millirads to every man, woman, and child in Europe, North America, and
    Asia.  This was approximately the total megatonnage of the bombs
    already exploded in the latest test series as of the end of 1962, and
    200 to 400 millirads was roughly equivalent to the dose from a pelvic
    X-ray.  Thus, if there were indeed no difference in the effects of
    diagnostic X-rays and fallout, one could expect as much as a 20
    percent increase in cancer rates for those children born within a year
    after the recent tests.  Since, at the time, about one child in a
    thousand normally died of cancer before reaching adolescence, and
    since four million children were born in the United States each year,
    then every year some 4000 children normally developed cancer.
    Therefore, a 20 percent increase would mean close to 800 additional
    deaths in the United States alone.  For the rest of the world, the
    figure would be perhaps ten times larger, all as a result of only the
    most recent atmospheric tests.

* One megaton is the equivalent in explosive energy to a million tons
 of TNT.

       And these figures did not even take into account the probability of
    much larger doses from local rainouts, where the fallout was brought
    down in concentrated form.  In the case of Troy, the type of
    calculations made by Lapp indicated that an overall dose of anywhere
    from a few hundred to a few thousand millirads must have been received
    by the unborn children in the area, equivalent to a whole series of
    pelvic X-rays.  Depending on whether they were in an early or late
    stage of development at the time, their chances of developing cancer
    would have been increased 100 percent or more.
       Thus it was clearly of the greatest importance to see whether the
    number of leukemia deaths among the children of Troy had in fact begun
    to increase a few years after the fallout arrived.  (A characteristic
    delay in the onset of the disease, when radiation was the cause, had
    been found by both Dr. Stewart and Dr. MacMahon and was also observed
    among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who began developing
    this fatal form of cancer some three to five years after their
    exposure.)  Furthermore, it seemed imperative that the worldwide
    scientific community be made aware of the implications of the data of
    Stewart and MacMahon, and of the urgent need for large-scale
    statistical studies of populations exposed to fallout.  Accordingly,
    by late fall 1962, I had completed an article on the subject and
    submitted it to {Science} magazine.  This seemed the most appropriate
    place for publication, since it was the official journal of the
    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the
    country's largest scientific professional association, and as such was
    read by a large, interdisciplinary audience of scientists throughout
    the world.
       This was, however, an inauspicious time for the publication of an
    article with such negative implications for nuclear warfare and
    peacetime testing.  The Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world
    to the brink of nuclear war, had just passed, greatly increasing
    pressure for further development and testing of nuclear weapons.
    Therefore, in anticipation of possible publication difficulties, I
    decided to submit copies of the manuscript to a few noted scientists
    in the hope of gaining added support.
       One copy went to Dr. Russell Morgan, chairman of the Department of
    Radiology at Johns Hopkins University and head of the National
    Advisory Committee on Radiation of the U.S. Public Health Service.
    Dr. Morgan was one of the country's most knowledgeable experts in the
    areas of X-ray technology and low-dose radiation effects.  In his
    reply, he stated that the article brought into focus important
    implications of the work of Stewart and MacMahon that had not been
    fully recognized, and recommended that it should be published with
    only a few minor changes.  Dr. Morgan also gave me his permission to
    refer to his statement if the paper had to be resubmitted to {Science}
    after an initial rejection.
       Another copy went to Dr. Barry Commoner, professor of botany at the
    University of St. Louis and one of the founders of the Committee on
    Nuclear Information, a group that pioneered in the public
    dissemination of information on the effects of nuclear testing.  Dr.
    Commoner said in his reply:  "I believe that it [the article]
    represents a very important contribution to the subject.  I hope that
    it will be published in {Science} just as it stands. . . .  Your
    conclusion regarding the need for large-scale surveys of the incidence
    of leukemia and other forms of cancer is of great urgency."
       The article, however, was returned by {Science}, accompanied by
    copies of two reviews and a letter of rejection from the editor,
    Philip Abelson.  Abelson was a physical chemist who had an extensive
    background in the nuclear field.  For many years he had worked closely
    with Glenn Seaborg, later chairman of the AEC and president of the
    AAAS, on the development of processes for the production of uranium,
    and he was now a member of both the General Advisory Committee of the
    AEC and the Project Plowshare advisory committee.  (Project Plowshare
    was the name given to the AEC's program for the development of
    peaceful uses for nuclear explosives.)  In his letter, Abelson stated
    that he had reviewed the article himself and found that "there is not
    enough solid material to justify publication."  He further expressed
    the opinion that "there is really no evidence of the functional
    relationship between the number of X-rays taken and cancer mortality."
    This meant that he did not consider significant the indications in the
    work of Stewart and MacMahon that the risk of cancer increased
    directly with the increase in X-ray dose, indications which were in
    sharp contradiction to the threshold theory.
       Upon examining the enclosed comments of the other two reviewers,
    who were nameless, as is the custom, I found that one was completely
    negative, stating that the article presented "no new observation" and
    ignored studies that showed no effects from diagnostic X-rays.  The
    other reviewer, however, recommended publication.  Apparently, then,
    it had been Abelson's opinion that weighted the scales in favor of
    rejection.
       A few days after the article was returned, I received an unexpected
    letter from Dr. James H. Lade, special assistant to the commissioner
    for radiological health of the New York State Health Department.
    Since 1951 Dr. Lade had also been director of the department's Bureau
    of Medical Defense, a part of the state's extensive Civil Defense
    Program, which had carried out an "exercise" at the time of the
    Albany-Troy incident.  As medical director, Lade had been one of those
    who participated in the decision that no health protection measures
    were necessary after the incident and that no ill effects were to be
    expected.  His letter read as follows:

       Dear Mr. Sternglass:

          I have had an opportunity to review your interesting paper on
       "Ionizing Radiation in the Pre-Natal Stage and the Development
       of Childhood Cancer," and noted your reference to Ralph Lapp's
       paper on the Troy-Albany fallout in 1953.  We in this department
       have done a little investigation of the circumstances which
       obtained in the Troy-Albany area at that time and the number of
       cancer cases and deaths reported in the age group who were under
       two years of age at that time.  You may be interested in the
       results of these investigations, summarized in my attached
       letter to {Science}.
                                               Yours very truly,
                                               James H. Lade, M.D.
                                               Director

       Lade, apparently, either had been the negative reviewer or had been
    consulted by him.  The "Science" letter to which he referred had been
    published in the November 9 issue in reply to Lapp's article.  In that
    letter Lade attempted to minimize the possibility of any radiation
    effects in the Albany-Troy area from the concentration of
    radioactivity in the milk by arguing that the cattle in the area had
    not been turned out to pasture until about May 12, 1953, or some two
    to three weeks after the fallout had arrived on April 25.  He argued
    that in view of the seven-day half-life* of iodine 131, the radiation
    would have decreased to only one-fourth its initial intensity by the
    time the cattle were turned out, so that Lapp's estimates of the dose
    to infant thyroids were at least four times too high.  Lapp had,
    apparently, been unaware of this factor when he made his dose
    estimates, but Lade failed to mention that even if Lapp's doses were
    reduced by a factor of four, they would still be vastly greater than
    the permissible limits set by government agencies.  Lade's letter also
    did not take into account the dose from the longer-lived isotopes such
    as strontium 90, strontium 89, and barium 140, with half-lives of 28
    years, 50 days, and 13 days, respectively, which would certainly still
    be present two to three weeks after the fallout had arrived.  Nor did
    he mention the information published by Professor Clark in the
    {Journal of the American Water Works Association}, namely, that in May
    and June, many weeks after the first rainout, fallout from additional
    tests repeatedly produced new levels of radioactivity comparable to
    those measured for April.  This meant, of course, that Lapp's
    estimates, far from being four times too high, were actually much too
    low, for Lapp had based his estimates only on the April 26 fallout.
    Lade, as medical director of the Civil Defense group, worked
    intimately with the scientists from the New York office of the AEC who
    sponsored the measurements of radioactivity in the reservoirs of the
    area.  Thus he presumably would have been aware of this circumstance.

* The half-life of a radioactive isotope is the time it takes for the
 radioactivity to diminish to half its original intensity.  The half-life
 of iodine 131 is 7 days so it is termed a short-lived isotope.  Strontium
 90, with a half-life of twenty-eight years, is a long-lived isotope.  The
 radiation from a short-lived isotope is much stronger because all of it
 is given off in a shorter time.

       Lade further argued that because of the heaviness of the spring
    rains, the radioactivity had soon been largely washed off the
    vegetables and pasture.  But Dr. Clark and his students had found that
    even extreme chemical treatment was only partially effective in
    removing the radioactivity from the leaves and other objects to which
    it clung.  Thus, ironically, the only effect of the rains of May and
    June would have been to bring down even greater amounts of fallout
    than had come down in April.
       As a final point, Lade stated that a review of New York Health
    Department records indicated that no cases of thyroid cancer had since
    developed among the children who were under two years of age in 1953.
    His letter closed with the remark that "it seems most unlikely that an
    event which has resulted in no increase of thyroid carcinoma during
    the ensuing nine years will lead to such an effect in the future."
    Yet it was common knowledge among specialists in the field that
    radiation-caused thyroid cancer generally takes ten to twenty years to
    develop.  And Lade said nothing about any increase in the incidence of
    leukemia, which by this time would certainly be detectable.
       It could thus be determined by someone with a scientific background
    that Lade's letter contained absolutely no evidence to support his
    conclusion that the Troy fallout had been harmless.  But how could the
    general public ever guess?  This was the voice of the New York State
    Health Department.
       Within a few weeks, I resubmitted my article to {Science} together
    with a letter referring to the statement given me by Dr. Russell
    Morgan.  Within less than a month, it had been accepted for
    publication.






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