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-PRIVAGYACT MATERIAL pyMOVED

GISOOKE IAVEN NAI IONAL LABORATORY

ASSOCIATED UNIVERSITIES, INC.
Jpton. New York 11973

weeG CG vupatmnen

(216) 345-3577
July

7,

L978

Dr.Walter Weyzen

Manager, Human Effects Studies
DBER
DOE
Washington, D.C.
Dear

20545

Walter:

At the time of the recent Congressional hearings on Bikini, several
people from Bikini who were attending the hearings in Washington visited
BNL June 21-22.
(Mr. Oscar DeBru’m, District Administrator, Marshalls,
and Ataji Balos, Marshellese Congressman, also visited.)
Two of the

Bikini people, Mr.
, who: had been living on Bikini as Health Aide,
and a Mr.
who had been living on Majuro, had whole body gamma spectrographic analyses for Cs-137 and K-40: done by Dr. Cohn's group at BNL and at
NYU by Dr. Cohen. The latter also did an analysis for Am-241 in his special
counter.
Copies of these reports’ with comparison with Mr. Miltenberger's
counts at Bikini in the latter part of April are enclosed.
You will note that there is a discrepancy between the BNL and NYU

Cs-137 counts

(which are in close agreement)

Miltenberger at Bikini in April.
were 1.62 at BNL,

on the one hand,

and those of

The estimated body burdens of Cs~-137 (CL)

1.72 at NYU and 3.3 at Bikini.

Mr. Miltenberger offers

the following explanation of this discrepancy.
At the time of the finding
of elevated counts at Bikini, the people were advised to refrain from eating
home-grown products including coconuts.
He believes Mr.
may pave.
complied.
If so, he claims a subtraction for loss due to biological turnover
would put his counts only 10-15% above those reported above (a reasonable
difference).

explanation.

The agreement between the K-40 counts would tend to support this

In any event, this is only one case.

The finding of no detectable Am-24L (200 pCi lower limit of detection) ©
in the skull of Mr.
and no x-ray peak for Pu-239 is encouraging.
It will be interesting to see the results of radiochemical urine analyses
on the people living at Bikini now in progress and to be reported soon by
Dr. Naidu.
Sincerely yours,

PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REM
OVED
Robert A. Conard, M.D.

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