U.S. Atomic Tests in 50's Exposed Millions to Risk

[Andy Hull <hull@mail.sep.bnl.gov>]

The above Subject is the headline in an extended news item in today's New
York Times (National Report, Page A10) by Matthew Wald (who often covers the
atomic?nuclear beat for the Times. Since it doesn"t add much to the AP
release  on the same topic, I won't try to recap it here. However, the
article includes a map of the U.S.  with the counties in which children are
believed to have received the highest doses of radiation (10-30 and 30-95
rads indicated by light and dark shading). NCI is reported to have said that
thus, it had accommodated two of the goals that Congress set for it in 1982.
The third, assessing the risk of cancer is still to be finished. The article
states that NCI  released the information "after several  days of reports
about the contents of the study, which it plans to complete by October"

In addition, the article states that "The cancer institute warned doctors in
1977 that the incidence of thyroid cancer had risen to 3.9 cases per 100,000
population  in a 1969-71 survey from 2.4 cases in 1947. Among white people
aged 20 to 35 the increase was 'two-fold to four-fold' the Institute said,
referring to people who were children at the time. But the cause is not
clear; doctors had been using radiation to  treat everything from acne to
deafness from the 1920s on".

Andy Hull
S&EP Div., BNL
Ph. 516-344-4210
Fax 516-344-3105