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The first official Civil Defense guidance on levels of radioactivity
in food and water to be rermitted under emergency conditions in wartime was developed in 1950 by Dr. William F. Bale of the University
of Rochester while on temporary assignment to the Division of Biology
and Medicine of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
I should like to
quote from Dr. Bale's report. l4
"It is probably not generally realized that water, and also
food, can be very appreciably radioactive as measured by
many portable radiation monitoring instruments now available and still be perfectly acceptable for human use under
emergency conditions. The danger at the present time is
probably greater that the presence of small amounts of
radioactivity will lead to unwarranted shutting off ofa
municipal water supply or to a proclamation forbidding
its use for drinking purposes thus causing an acute exacerbation of emergency conditions that may exist,
rather
than that consumption of contaminated water will cause
significant damage toa military organization or a civilian
municipality. "
At about the same time, Mr. Adrian Dahl of the University of
Rochester, and later Dr. Edwin P. Laug of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration prepared comparison standards to be used with a conventional-type Geiger counter survey meter for evaluating the degree
of contamination of a sample of food and water.
In 1952, the FCDA
published two bulletins; one provided guidance on the levels of contamination acceptable under emergency conditions! (based on Dr. Bale's
work); and the other described methods for making measurements, and