INTRODUCTION
The Division of Operational Safety or DOS (now Safety Standards and Compliance) portion of the Laboratory of Radiation Ecology (LRE) Pacific
Radiocology Program (formerly Johnston Atoll Program) began on 1 July 1974 and
is continuing, The purpose of this program is to determine the kinds and

amounts of radionuclides distributed in the foods, plants, animals, and soil

of the Central Pacific, especially the Marshall Islands, and to furnish these
data to SSS/ERDA and other appropriate agencies (Lawrence Livermore Laboratory,
Nevada Operations Office ERDA) so that they may make an assessment of the dose
of ionizing radiation received by the people living throughout the Central
Pacific. Here we report the results of the analyses of samples collected on
five field trips conducted from April 1974 to August 1975 and analyzed by 31
December 1976. A list of previous reports and letters containing data included
in this report is given in Table 1,
SAMPLING PROGRAM
The field trips noted above are listed in Table 2, Atolls visited in the
Marshall Isiands are shown in Figure 1. Christmas Island in the Line Islands
is about 2000 miles east of the Marshall Islands,

All the trips, except the

trip to Christmas Island, were joint surveys with personnel from Brookhaven
National Laboratory, Representative biological and soil samples were collected

with emphasis on food items

common to the diet of the Marshallese people

(i.e., fish, coconut, pandanus, breadfruit, coconut crabs, etc.) although nonedible portions of these items were also collected and analyzed. Soils were
collected to provide data for estimating future distribution and quantities of
radionuclides in the environment and biota.
The number of samples, after division into tissues or soil fractions, is
shown in Table 2. Over half the samples were biota-plants, fish, clams, and
coconut crabs, while just under half were surface (0-2,5cm) and profile

TRE ORB Ag Ree, itap,

(0-100+cm) soil samples.

Approximately one-third of the samples came from

Bikini Atoll, one-third from Rongelap Atoll, and one-third from Christmas
Island, and Wotho, Utirik, Kwajalein, Ailinginae, and Rongerik atolls,

In addition to the samples our Laboratory collected, personnel from Brookhaven National Laboratory collected samples,made TLD measurements and took

radiation survey readings with sodium iodide (Nal) scintillation detectors
and a pressurized jon chamber. The results of the Brookhaven analyses and
measurements will be combined with the LRE results in a series of joint reports

to the open literature.

ANALYTICAL METHODS
Gamma-Ray Spectrometry
:
All of the samples were analyzed by gamma-ray spectrometry, either with
a 3"x3" sodium iodide (thallium drifted) crystal and 200-channel pulse-height

analyzers or with a germanium (lithium drifted) diode detector and 4096-channel,

pulse-height analyzer, Soil samples were analyzed on the Ge (Li) system, and
the biological samples were analyzed on both systems.

Er

DOF Rie:

ett

Select target paragraph3