UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
LABORATORY OF RADIATION BIOLOGY
FISHERIES CENTER
SEATTLE 5, WASHINGTON
April 27, 1959
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Dr. John N. Wolfe, Chief
Environmental Sciences Branch
an
»
Division of Biology and Medicine
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Washington 25, D.C.
Dear
John:
Enclosed are data concerning gr 90 in food samples
collected at Rongelap Island in August 1958.
These are
being sent in response to a request from Gordon Dunning
to Al Seymour.
Information concerning the collection of the food
samples is to be found in a letter_to Seymour 23 Sep-
tember 1958, and in the table "Cst37 in Daily Rations
of Food Grown at Rongelap Atoll!
These two items are
pages 31--38 of the "Rongelap Notebook!
Some additional remarks might clarify questions as
to the interpretation of these data.
First, it should
be clearly understood that the samples are daily rations
of locally grown foods only and do notrepresent the
total daily ration.
If the weight of the total ration
given by Dunning in "Radioactive Contamination in the
Pacific Ocean; 1957, is used, then the locally grown
foods accounted for about 40 per cent of the total daily
ration on the average in August 1958. At the present
time this proportion of locally grown foods in the diet
is probably lower due to the current supply of "C-rations!
(Dr. Conard obtained data concerning diets during March
1959 and may have sent them to Dr. Dunning.)
Second,
obtaining a truly representative sample of
the diet for even a single day involves many possible
sampling errors as, for example, bias on the part of
the Rongelapese in an effort to please.
This might result in too large a sample being taken.
As has been
pointed out before, it is to be expected that there will
be discrepancies between information obtained at different
times.
Third, the gr 90 results enclosed are based on analysis of aliquots of a pooled sample made up of the 13 sam-