C.W. Mays -
+
2? 3.
to search for medical effects, and to estimate the
radiation dosage.
The medical phase is progressing
well, but the dose program requires much more work.
If the dosimetry is not completed soon, the best
opportunity to reconstruct the exposures may be gone
forever.
Memories fade, records are destroyed, and
these children will soon reach adulthood and scatter
across the nation.
Even if no effects appear, the
exposures should be evaluated as accurately as possible.
If a safe dose exists for iodine 131 in children,
proper study of the 250
thousand
/
irradiated Utah infants may
provide a unique chance to establish it.
my estimates of
In this paper I present/lower and higher limits
for the average doses received by Utah infants.
this for two reasons.
I do
First, I hope that the uncertainty
of these limits will stimulate interest in improving
the dosimetry.
Secondly, despite dose uncertainties,
the indicated exposures are sufficient to justify
continued study of the Utah children.
DOSIMETRY
Prior to the 196% Fallout Hearings,
I calculated
the number of radiation-induced cancers that might be
thousand
anticipated in the 250 /
Utah children exposed to
fallout iodine 131 as infants.
I withheld publication
or public discussion of these predictions primarily
because I felt that most of my estimates of dose
might be somewhat unreliable.
the time,
Working in isolation at
I was aware of milk measurements of iodine 131
for only one of the seven years of Nevada testing;
for the
other six years I
estimated
doses
from measurements
of beta-activity in the air or from fission yield
during the growing season.”
New information now permits
improved estimates for five of the seven test years,
and for the remaining two I have set lower and higher
limits.
DOE ARCHIVES
FF