obearvations on the rodularity developing in these exposed human thyroifis seers to be not unlike ti: produced experimentally in animals under this conpract. be Five additional c:: "OF Rodularity in the Rongelap people tured up in|the past the cc... _@ of thie recent survey, the exposed people that hfd been cn Rongelap and Uterik, as well an many teKgosed Marahallese, were givfn complete physical examinations. This included children born after exposure to tie fallout The occutrence on Rongelap of rather significantly enlarged thyroids infmany of the adolescent and preadolescent ages was most interesting. These individuals were born of women who had been exposed, but these children hai been caliceived some years after that exposure. The significance of these goiters is d ficult to evaluate at this time, because adequate data on the occurrence of addlesce: the is not available, but itwas sumprising to see so many significant adolescent goiters on Rongelap in a strain off people who are notoriously free of goiter and seemingly free of adolescent™er geme! in this iodine abundant environment. It should he emphasized tha thesq adolescent goitersin individuals born of exposed mothers, although not exposed ti emselves, may have been influenced in utero by substle thyroid deficiencies which ere’ lingering in the mothers after all radioiodine from the fallout was gone. Under such an influence, the thyroid of the offspring may have been influenced in its early development. Such a postulation seems mich more likely than that Df a genetic defect. Control observations must be more fully scrutinized ad expanded to validate the above observations, but, in the meantime, some animal experiments are getting under way in our laboratory under this contract and will be fonsidered As a recent participant in the Marshallese observations, the principe individuals, the possibility of more minute and subtle changes in these pids were of interest because of the cellular changes we have studied in patignts treated with 1311 and in animals studied under this contract. With this]in mind, all microscopic preparations previously prepared from the Marshallese pids from Rongelap were mixed with nodular goiter preparations from the Unite: States. With the identity of the slides unknown, the principal investi.7ator revigwed the sections in an attempt to identify those tissues which hadcome from : Marshallese and had presum'sly received appreciable doses or radioiodine and ‘ those which had not (there being approximately, but not exactly, one half from each source). All but one of the Marshallese thyroids were identified aq having radiation changes. This judgement was based on nuclear changes as they Ad been observed during previous work under this contract. Only ome of the non-yadiated "nodular goiters" fram the United States was classified as ha-ing receives radiation. Although these judgemerits probably could not be repeated witty was not a basis for judgement here. It was suspected that there is same difference in the criteria for judgement rendered here and criteria used py pathologists. the some The principal investigator has also been involved in the annual examination of the children in the Utah-Nevada fallout area (exposed in 1954) where « emdemic goiter is present. A week was spent there again this year in the]anmal thyroid examinations of children that had been screened from the populatipn the United States Public Health Service screening teams. oo 7 tae og: eo : ' : Discrete thyroi@ Ly . we: honey : . by lesions, + eee rt LSette