Ae La 7
Sept 21, 1973
MARTANAS VAITETY NEWS _& YIEWS
Dear Editor:
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At a recent conference in Tokyo, I had the pleasure
of meeting Mr. Uludong and Miss Mendiola. At that time,
I expressed my concern over the radiation exposure of
the people of Micronesia who have returned to Bikini
and over the possible exposure condition that may exist
when Eniwetok is returned to your people.
The information that I have comes from a draft Environmental Statement on the Pacific Cratering Experiments (PACE) that was prepared by U.S. Department of
the Air Force and dated April 1972. That report indicates that the mean background exposure at Bikini Atoll
is 0,086 mr/hr.
Since
there
are
8,760 hr/yr,
means a yearly exposure of 753 mr. The
ground exposure on a wocldwide basis ig
mr/yr.
The Micronesians on Bikini are
this
average backonly some 120
thus
some 620 mr/yr from residual bomb radiation.
receiving
This
can
be contrasted with the U.S. radiation protection guidelines which allow an individual to recetve 500 mr/yr
but population groups are restricted to 170 mr/yr. It
has never been felt that these exposure levels are
harmless to man. In fact, the guides state that the
exposures should be kept as far below these guides as
is practicable. Moreover, a committee of our National
Academy of Sciences recently stated that these guidelines are unnecessarily high and the Atomic Energy Commission reduced the allowable exposures from nuclear
reactors to 5 mrem/yr. Quite obviously,thepeople
of
Micronesia are not being shown the same consideration.
Because of contaminated food supplies, the dosage to
the people of Bikini is larger than that stated
above.
Since the population of Micronesia is small and since
many of them have already been. expose to
substantial
dosages
from
the
weapon
test, their future exposure
should be more restricted than other less affected nations. I feel that the contamination levels on these
islands should be substantially reduced.This would
require the removal and replacement of the surface soil
but that is possible. Remember here that the U.S. now
'gtores a large amount of soil brought from Spain and we
brought back a lot of icewater from Iceland.
Sincerely yours,
- Arthur R. Tamplin
Natural Resources Defense
Counctl, Ine. Washington, D.C,
2051493