authors were directed by DOE to communicate the results of the 1978 Survey, Al SO , not report on past exposures or assess the risk from past exposures. I do not remember the in-vivo data for Rorigelap mentioned on page 25 being available to us in 1982. Considering the objective of our book, I do not know how comparing body burdens with national and international standards would have helped. The dietary habits of the Rongelapese during the previous 25 years as well as the levels of radionuclides in food would not apply to the next 30 years. An assessment of the past, present , and future radiological conditions and health risks on Rongelap was not in our scope of work for the 1982 book. Had it been, then clearly a more comprehensive approach would have been This appears to be what you have undertaken. appropriate. Page 36, paragraph 2, diet. The authors of the 1982 book also concurred that the Brookhaven diet involved a greater quantity of food. The Livermore report calculated doses for both diets. Since our task was to communicate the dose values .in this .repor.tto.the Marshallese, our onlY choice was to use the higher values. To use the lower values, which were . obviously more realistic, would have fueled charges that DOE was deliberately understating the radiological risks. To include both would have added further confusion to the situation for the Marshallese, who were getting all kinds of misinformation from numerous sources. . Page 47, last paragraph - it is more accurate to say that”Dr. Robison and colleagues, not DOE-1982, estimated the 30-year bone marrow dose to be 3.3 rem. The authors of the 1982 DOE book did not estimate doses, they only communicated Dr. Robison’s data. The only exception to this is that the authors of the 1982 book did elect to include a value for the maximum-exposed individual. In Federal Radiation Council, 1960, Report NO 1, the FRC suggests using the arbitrary assumption that the majority of individuals do not vary from the average by a factor greater than 3. Thus , we multiplied Dr. Robison’s values for the average dose for the population to’obtain “the largest amount of radiation a person might receive in one year.” Dr. Robison discussed dose distributions in a 1983 report (NCRP Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the NCRP} and concluded that “a dose three times the average falls at or above the 96th percentile” and “there is less than a 5% chance for a person to receive a dose that is greater than three times the average dose.” Thus, our calculations of the doses to the maximum individual in the 1982 book are probably reasonable. Page 52, section 6.1: In paragraph 1 you neglected to account for the 70 deaths in deriving an irradiated population of 427. 2: the cancer risk factors were taken from both BEIR IJ Paae 52. Di3ri3QRiDh an~-BEIR iII.< You have rounded the valuewe used, which is OK if The values given for cancer mortality do not agree with the acknowledged. to you, 0.1 to 0, 6, values in the book, or those in the table I Sent rounded from 0.095 to 0.647, respectively. . Page 53: The values for genetic defects do not agree with the va’ ues in the book or those in the table I sent you, 0.007 to 0.1.