Lope, Belk" Ie acy? Merril Eisenbud Sc.D. 711 Bayberry Drive Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514 FAX/TEL (919) 967-4561 February 28 1994 Representative George Miller Chairman Committee on Natural Resources U.S.House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Mr. Miller: I appreciated the opportunity you gave me to appear at the hearing you conducted on the legacy of the nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands. As I testified, it is significant that in the forty years that have passed since that tragic event occurred, this was the first time I have been asked to record my knowledge of the matter, despite the central role played by the laboratory I directed. Many of the unusual circumstances surrounding the BRAVO fallout, as known to me, are described in my autobiography, An Environmental Odyssey, to which several references were made during the hearing. I found myself in disagreement with much of the anecdotal information presented by others concerning the allegation that heavy fallout must have occurred far beyond the islands that have traditionally believed to have been affected. As I testified, the AEC Health and Safety Laboratory (HASL), of which I was then director, undertook extensive aerial surveys of the islands of the Central and Western Pacific, and our findings are a matter of record. My own participation. in those surveys was limited to the D+l day overflights of the islands downwind of MIKE, and the D+6 day over-flights of the islands north of Guam in the far Western Pacific. Other associates, the late Dr. John Harley, Mr. Mel Cassidy, and Mr. Alfred made similar flights over islands. A copy of my field notes from October 30 I left the islands on November 7 is attached letter. Note that I surveyed 20 islands from Breslin 1952 until to this a height