45 SESSION Il THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST (Continued) THE MARSHALL ISLANDS PROBLEM BRUES: This afternoon Dr. Conard will initiate the discussion without, I guess, telling us where it rnay lead. Bob! CONARD: haveoutlined on the board a few topics I thought might be worthy of a brief review and discussion. Also [ put down belowthe main groups that were involved in the 1954 fallout accident with the numbers of people involved and the approximate dosage of radiation that they received. (See Figure | and Table I.} In discussing the case of the Marshall Islands accident, [ think it’s important to point out that this represents a situation on a coral atoll and it may be quite different from other fallout situations that might occur. Characteristics of a particular faliout situation depend on many factors such as whether the bomb is detonated over water, under water, over land, the geography of the terrain, the populations exposed, time of fallout arrivai, length of fallout, etc. Fallout effects are somewhat different from those produced by direct effect of the bornbs. In Japan, for instance, the major casualties came fromblast and heat, with fewer casualties from radiation exposure, whereas with fallout itis a purely radiation exposure situation. In Japan there were psychic trauma, physical trauma, starvation, disease and many complications; in the Marshall Islands the Marshallese people had a minimum of these factors involved. [n addition, the fallout produces a more complicated type of radiation exposure in that you have not only whole body exposure but also the exposure of the skin and internal deposition of radioactive materials. nT a reas A few other points of comparison with the ABCC studies might be made. The Marshallese groups, of course, are considerably smaller than those of the ABCC studies. The vital statistics are very poor in