For many years, gummed film sampling comprised the only widespread
network for measuring fallout,

This technique fulfilled its original pur-

poses of delineating the geographic distribution of fallout and indicating
the time of arrival of radioactive material.

While the test pattern re-

mained simple and included only fission devices, it was also possible to

estimate individual long-lived nuclides such as Sr” and to estimate the
fallout infinity gamma dose,

;

a

More complex test patterns and delayed fallout from thermonuclear
devices made the sr? and gamma dose estimates very difficult.

Despite the

complexities, considerable effort has been devoted to testing various mathematical models to allow computation of these two parameters and thus to
extract the utmost from the available data,

‘This report describes the model

adopted and gives the results of these computations in some detail,

In ad- .

dition, comparisons have been made with more direct measurements of gr90
fallout where these are available,

The data indicate that useful information on Sr 90 deposition has been
obtained by the gummed film technique.

The gamma dose estimates cannot be

rT
‘
3
wee

i
-

- confirmed, but are the best availatle for any network,

Historical
The first detection of radicactive fallout away from the site of the
explosion was in Rochester, New York, in February of 1951, although web‘?
had reported activity of unlmown origin in paperboard in 1945,

r

v

&..

a

fp

i

The Health

and Safety Laboratory was subsequently given the responsibility of determining the relative fallout at distances beyond 200 miles from the Nevada
test site.

Later this responsibility was modified to delineating world-wide

fallout from the megaton weapons fired in the Pacific and elsewhere,

=

-

=

7

4

a

Select target paragraph3