June 23, 1980 Comments on Report: Assessment of Radiation Health Effects of the Resettlement of Enewetak Atoll Prepared by M. A. Bender and A. B. Brill by Karl Z. Morgan School of Nuclear Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332 The following are a few brief comments on this report by M. A. Bender and A. B. Brill dated October 12, 1979: 1, In general, this is an excellent report. The report accepts the dose measurements of Robinson et al. (1979) without providing the reader with any of the pertinent information needed so that he can judge its adequacy. For example, there is no breakdown of the dose between that which is external and that which is internal. There is no indication whether internal dose values include a contribution from the actinide alpha-emitters, yet one would expect that some of the islands have appreciable quantities 239 of Pu. It is not stated, but I assume their dose values are almost 90 90 239, u. I would expect the entirely from “~Sr + ~~Y and 137, s plus contribution from other radionuclides to be negligibie. 3. It seems odd that values are given only for total body dose. ince, as stated above, the dose is mostly from 905, + 90y | 137 Cs and 239, u, one would expect the external dose to be primarily beta-dose because 90 Sr and 90 and x-ray emitter. Y are pure beta-emitters and One wonders 137 Cs is a strong beta if the beta bremstrahlung dose was included with the total body dose. 4.) What would their estimate be on the skin cancer induction from this skin dose. UNSCEAR gives a wide variation of skin cancer co~ efficients of 2 x 10°’ to 1.8 x 10> skin cancers per person rem. I doubt these values apply here, however, because some of the betaradiation in this case has high energy and can penetrate ] cm into