Althougn most of the local fallout was confined to the tests site,
occasionally some extended into inhabited areas.
The estimates are
that the total doses to people within these areas were low.
Dr. Gordon
Dunning of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has estimated that the
nighest external exposure for any one person was 13.5 roentgens and
to any community was 6 roentgens. 9
than these values.
Most of the doses were far lower
Some fallout radionuclides, however, were deposited
on pasture land, and they could have been ingested as a result of drinking fresh milk from the grazing cattle.
Children were at greatest risk
because of the smaller size of their thyroids, and because children
usually drank more milk than adults.
During the Fall of 1965, physicians
examined some 2,000 of the Utah children from areas where the fallout
occurred and, as a control,
there was little or no fallout.
some 1400 children from Arizona where
Preliminary findings indicated thyroid
abnormalities, as evidenced by the presence of nodules, in appreciably
more of the Utah children than in those of Arizona. 10,11
In March of this year, a further report on the results of the Utah
and Arizona study was released by the U.S. Public Health Service.
This report stated that no malignant growths of the thyroid gland were
found in any of the children.
The study revealed, however, a number
of cases of thyroiditis, an inflammation of the thyroid that may produce
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