SESSION II!

W5

UPTON: I've been apparently laboring under a wrong impression
for many years that the internal dose to the marrow was higher than
you say it is, Bob.
TAYLOR:
UPTON:
another.

Is that from concentration of strontium-90 in plants ?
Just total fission product intake from one source or

EISENBUD:
general?
UPTON:
WARREN:

Are you talking specifically in these cases or in

No, the Rongelap cases.
They weren't there right along to eat local food or get

exposed internally.

CONARD: Theactual body burdens of strontium-90 that had accumulated over years for the Rongelap> people amount to about 5 percent of the MPC for adults and ten percent for children.
EISENBUD: The Japanese fishermen lived at sea for 14 days in
very intimate contact with fallout. It's quite a remarkable thing
that Koboyama had, I believe, when he died, 2 millicuries of atrontium90 per gram of calcium in his bones, which is about 20 percent of
what children have today. I mean it's a small dose. I think that one
of the comforting things that came out of this experience is that the
human body in close contact with surface contamination apparently
has better defenses than we had anticipated against absorption of at
least the less soluble components.
Now, the iodine did get in, as Bob indicated.
SONARD: Wefelt very encouraged about the whole internal situation. To be honest with you, we were misled. We feit that the internal situation was far less of a hazard than any of the others and,
of course, we still do, but we certainly did underestimate the hazard

of the absorption of radioiodines, as you'll see in a few minutes when
[ get into that aspect of it.

WARREN; Wouldn't the radioiodine be in gaseous form and inhaled
rather than ingested, and wouldn't that be why the concentration could
have been higher?

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