2
"Fallout" deposited in the various areas was evaluated and estimated primarily from milk data, although a few other sources were used. Attempts

were made to correlate increases in ?°Sr with mortality rate increases.

The article quotes Dr. Sternglass as saying, "We found that five years after
the first New Mexico test in 1945, there was a narrow band of states -Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina -in a direct path under the fallout cloud where the infant mortality rate had
shot up by as much as 40 to 50 percent."
At the Biology Symposium he said that the increase was not as great in Texas
as in the other states. He postulated the fallout cloud was still quite
narrow in Texas and did not cover as much of the state as it covered in other
states, and since he used state totals for mortality rates the percent of the
population affected would be less in Texas than in other states and thus
would show less of a total state increase.
I believe this could be quickly
checked by doing a county-by-county mortality rate survey of Texas and see
if only the counties under the cloud trajectory were affected. North Dakota
had an anomalous rise at this time that Dr. Sternglass did not explain.
Following the Pacific tests, according to Dr. Sternglass, there was an

increase in the mortality rates in the Western States; and when atmospheric
testing was carried out in Nevada, the mortality rate increased throughout
the United States.

This latter increase,

according to Dr. Sternglass, was

averaging 25 to 30 percent above the normal expected figure.

In addition to this work of Dr. Sternglass, there have been similar studies
(Grahn and Kratchman (2); Solon, et al (3); Lichty, et al (4); and Greim (5))
which taken together are inconclusive. Most papers presented at the Ninth
Annual Hanford Biology Symposium (May 5-8, 1969, Richland, Washington) indicated the fetus to be very susceptible to low levels of irradiation.
(Throughout this memo I shall frequently refer to discussions and papers
at this Symposium.)
On July 16, 1969 (at 1:00 p.m.), Miss Mary Manning, a reporter for the
LAS VEGAS SUN, interviewed me on my reactions to the Sternglass paper.
Mrs. Douglas was with us during the interview.

I made everal points in this interview. (I am giving a resume in this
paragraph, and the following paragraphs have more detail.)
1.

Dr. Sternglass presented a similar paper at the Ninth Annual Hanford

2.

The part of the paper relating to the Troy-Albany incident and leukemia
is so full of mistakes that it undermines the creditability of other
studies by Dr. Sternglass.

3.

If one assumes the basic data (i.e., amount and deposition pattern of

Biology Symposium.

This engendered considerable discussion.

fallout, mortality rates, etc.)

are correct, and also assumes that

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