They further recommend collaborative studies of the
oceans and their organisms and though a beginning has been made
urge a greater effort,
Finally, they contend that in ten or
twenty years certain radiotracer expériments will not be possible
because of widespread low level contamination of the seas,
This
may weil be true,
Committee on the Effects of AtomicRadiation on Agriculture and
Food Supplies ~ Chairman,Prof, A, G. Norman,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
This group first discussed the application of atomic energy
techniques to the agricultural sciences,
They feel great advances
will be forthcoming, but perhaps not as soon as some claim,
They
note the value of radioactive tracer studies in improving our
knowledge of how most economically to apply fertilizers, and to
improve plant nutrition.
They note the great potential value of
Lonizing radiation to induce mutations in mpeeding up crop
improvement
programs,
They point up to the invaluable contribution
tracer studies can make to our understanding of animal nutrition,
They touched on the problem of radioisotopes as possible contaminants in food products and point
out that present law classes
radioisotopes of any sort or in any amount as poisons,
They
urge a@ more realistic approach to this inasmuch as no food pro-
duct is or ever has been literally free of radioactivity.
There is a general discussion of possible effects of fallout
and the like on the ecology of the country.
The committee
recommends that it may well be in the public interest to expand
the present programs to a continuous study of the changes in
level of background radiation and the movements of radioactivity
in the system,
(This ig in essence an activity that the AEC has
already underway and is expanding very much along the lines re-
commended, )
- 14 -
Enclosure II
: