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

:

Select target paragraph3