-7- declined to acceptable levels, a new model village was built according to the On June Z9, 1957, the people of Rongelap, style preferred by the Rongelapese. now numbering 250, were repatriated. They came home to the finest homes with the best support facilities to be found on any such an isolated atoll. Medical Observations on the Marshallese The Atomic Energy Commission, was centrally involved in effects and” radiological after their Repatriation by way of its Division of Biology and Medicine, these operations both as to medical and environmental safety (l). When the Marshallese returned to a more or less civilian status, the Division undertook to carry on the series of medical surveys and continue the environmental surveillance of the test area. Dr. Robert A. Conard, who had been a member of the survey teams for the second (1956) and third (1957) examinations lead the annual surveys. post-exposure, was chosen to organize and Each year since then, he has led a team of medical specialists to the Islands to examine the exposed people plus unexposed comparison populations of Marshallese. As a Senior Staff Member of the Medical Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Dr. Conard is in a specially favorable position to obtain the nation’s best medical collaborations and laboratory’s support. For example, when urine samples collected from the Rongelapese before and after returning to Rongelap Atoll suggested tl~at the people misht be acquiring increased but still low-body burdens of certain radionuclides counter was transported biopllysical parameters. from the residual fallout in the soil, a whole-body to the Islands to maintain surveillance over these It was found that tilebody burdens of certain radionuclides were higher than those of people in the United States, but they still were far below the guidelines established by the Federal Radiation Council, now EPA.