PART IT NOTES AND COMMENTS N ABOUT THE SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP The amount of research effort aimed at an improvement in understanding of the fallout radiation hazards that would be associated with nuclear war has steadily declined since the signing of the test ban treaty terminated the atmospheric weapons test program. Among the reasons why this has occurred are: 1. A general tightening of research budgets for defense purposes; 2. The difficulties and costs associated with doing meaningful 3. The practical limitations in the amount and reliability of research in the absence of an atmospheric weapons test program; reference fallout data from past atmospheric weapons tests. As a consequence, the number of scientific and technical personnel active in this area of investigation also has declined markedly. In particular, the relatively small group of people with field-test experience continues to grow ever smaller. The membership of this ACCD/NAS Fallout Subcommittee was care- fully drawn so as to include a good sample of those people who have actual field-test experience and/or commensurate experience in other types of fallout research, In the belief that many readers of this document would appreciate knowing something about the "credentials" of the individual Subcommittee members, the very brief summary of their backgrounds which appears below was prepared. Melvin L. Merritt received his Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1950. Since then he has been with the Sandia Laboratories, an AEC prime contractor in Albuquerque. He has participated in most of the U.S, nuclear test programs since, having had responsibilities for fallout and thermal predictions on atmospheric tests before 1962, and for ground shock predictions and effects on underground tests since. He was Effects Evaluation Scientist responsible for all safety activities on the Milrow and Cannikin tests on Amchitka. ’ we ‘ ‘ pi po ‘ P pet rt wa ry | II-1