13
Concern about the toxicity of radioactive fallout fran the detonation ijn
March, 1954, resulted in @ sertes of articles about fallout as a new peril for
civil defense (Lapp, 1954, 1955a), fallout and goverrment secrecy (Lapp,
1955b), the persistence of fallout and the problem of internal emitters (Lapp,
1955¢), and global fallout (Lapp, 1955d).
The Atomic Energy Commission
reported on the effects of the March 1954 test in 1955 (AEC, 1955). Also in
1955, Congresstona) hearings were held to place on the public record factors
about the effects of atomic weapons testing at the Nevada test site (US
Congress, 1955).
e
By 1956, reports on the global distribution of fallout 1311 ang 905r
fron weapons tests were published (Van Middlesworth, 1956; Machta et®al.,
1956).
By 1957, the correlation between weapons tests and !3!1 {n human and
bovine thyroid glands was established, and the importance of cows’ milk in
human contamination was discussed (Comar et al., 1957).
At about the same
time, 137Cs was shown to be in people (Miller and Marinelli, 1956).
In
1957, Congressional hearings to bring together information on radioactive
fal tout were held (U. S. Congress, 1957).
Further hearings were held in 1959
and 1963 (U. S. Congress, 1959, 1963).
The discipline of radioecology was finnly established in the early 1960s
(Caldecott and Snyder, 1960; Schultz and Klement, 1963).
Since that time it
has becane more sophisticated, with elaborate models of radionuclides in the
environment used to predict exposures to human populations.
Much of the
information in these models, now used primarily for evaluating the environnental significance of various steps in the nuclear fuel cycle, had its origins
in studies of weapons-related fallout.
There were many occurrences and investigations that took place durtng the
era of atmospheric weapons testing.
We have fncluded what we consider
important dates. fn thts history of radioactive fallout tn Table 1}.
eg