beg SyME sa ate oe MRReae nitetlielr WASHINGTON POST NOV. 3, 14G5 Il Vears After Pacific Blast | ASA G7 ‘L-Bomb Fallout Damage ” Appears in Test Victims By Howard Simons Washington Post Staff Writer ~ A significant number of Marshall Islanders are only now—11i years latcr—beginning to show thyroid. gland damage after being accidentally drenched with radio-' active fallout from an American U-bomb test in the! Pacific. ° ee The finding of latent dam-, there had been no evidence of . ithyroid disease. ase, according to the! Six of the thyroid victims: Government doctor in chargejhave undergone successful, oi treating the islanders for operations. thyroid damage, means that', . . . Dt. Conard said he was | jhopefui that additional cases, atomic experts how must re-| og thyroid tumors among the’ vise upwards their estimates! oxnosed natives can be avert: of the hazard from short-lived | gq through treatment with a radioactive debris. This is the! conthetie thyroid kind of fallout, such as ra-'now being given to dioactive iodine, that Occurs ers mostly near an atomic blast’ The hormone the Island-| Brookhaven medical! and gets into the human body! caioentist also is anxious to! through food and drink, learn whether the hormone! _Moreover, said Dr. Robertjtpatment will have any effect! Conard in a telephone inter! on the apparent link between view, there is some evidence! radiation - damaged thyroids that fallout damage to theland the retarded growth seen thyroid gland might also bei among some of the exposed the cause of an observed children, stuating among some of the! Jn pr. Confad'’s view. the children exposed to the fall emphasis hitherto given to out. ‘the immediate and external Dr. Conard is the leader ofleffects of radiation now must 4 medical survey team that)be balanced with a new ap- commutes between Brookha- preciation for the latent, in‘ven National Laboratory on ternal effects that can be 'Long Island and Rongelap Is- caused by radioactive mate‘land in the Marshalls. The, riais, such as radioiodine, that team’s most recent report to get into the body. Radiviodine the Atomic Energy Commis- selectively concentrates in the sion is being circulated this thyroid gland. :rweek to members of the Joint The Rongelap findings re‘Congressional Committee on ported this week to the Joint Atomic Energy. What this re- ‘Committee follow a U.S. Pub‘port shows is this: lic Health Service report Jast Between March and Octo- week of a tenuous link belber of this year 10 new cases tween fallout in Utah and of thyroid abnormalitics have 'Arizona and the incidence of: ibeen found among the 82 Ron- suspicious thyroid nodules or: igelap natives who were ex- ;small lumps among children’ Iposed to fallout in the first there, The Utah report, actually a ,week .of March, 1954. This brings to 18 the total number ipreliminary report of a superof the 82 fallout-drenched na- ficial medical study, is drawtives who show thyroid gland ing heavycriticism from other Government agencies. The jabnormalities, | Most of the abnormalities leritics point out that there are thought to be benign tu- i'was no real agreement among, mors. But at least one has the non-thyroid experts who! turned out to be a caneer of performed the physical exami-! the thyroid gland. nations. There is virtually no, Significantly, in a control data from other areas for! geoup oof Ronvelap nattves judging the Utah-Artzonn find:: Who es¢aped the 1054 fallout ings. And manyof the children, euctading same near pels exnnitned were born gttes.. oa thved uf thosy nol aa lneky — most of tho Cathoyt fet, . “ ~~ ee ee eeeeaeEAI