and fallout
THE LIVING AMPLIFIER
Why fallout creates a problem
foods. Herewrth a 10-page report,
I. the time it takes you to read across this line. many
thousandsof the individual atoms which make up the mat-
data for the milk supply in 50 cities
sources of radioactive materials in man’s diet and in his
environment. With respect to milk, the samples examined
have not necessarily represented the milk being drunk by
the majority of consumers even in the few areas studied.
By testing samples of milk purchased over store counters
in 50 widely-distributed places in the U.S. and in Canada,
CU has sought to extend the work done by the Government
agencies. The results, which are presented on pages 108
to 110, serve to check the relatively scant data on milk
published by the AEC and the PHS, and to extend their
coverage to include many more areas. That a private or-
ganization of limited means can carry out such a program
suggests that an expanded monitoring network should be
economically feasible under Federal, state, or even community or dairy auspices.
CU goes further. Though the interest of the PHS in the
matter has led it to equip and staff some very competent
laboratories, it is still true that the overall problem has remained the province of the AEC. Butit is hard to see why
judgments on matters of public health should have to depend primarily on the reports of the very agency charged
with the responsibility of manufacturing nuclear weapons,
rather than on those of an agency whosespecific job is to
safeguard the public health. Without reflecting in any way
on the AEC’s competence or integrity, CU would support
measures which would lead to thorough and independent
investigations (as well as routine surveillance)
by the
Public Health Service on fundamental biological and con-
trol problems, wherever there is concern with fallout.
The fact is that fresh clean milk, which looks and tastes
just as it always did, nevertheless contains (wherever you
get it these days) an unseen contaminant, a toxic substance known to accumulate in human bone. There is an
analogy: bacterial contamination. There, too, the presence
of unsensed contaminants can bring grave harm. Mostofus,
even if we are not bacteriologists, know by now the danger
from germs, and yet know howto estimateit rationally, and
not to fear it unreasoningly. It is exactly with this kind of
reasoned concern that we seek to approach the more novel
problem of fallout contamination.
@ In the next column and on the next few pages,
before we proceed to the results of our analyses of
milk samples, we proposeto tell something of the
story of low levels of radiation as they existed in
the pre-atomic-bomb era, and of how they have
been changing since. For it is only against this
background that the findings have meaning.
ter of your own body spontaneously disintegrate. These
disintegrations occur in all human beings, in all living
things. Radioactive materials always have been with us in
extremely minute quantities. They exist in the foods we
eat and consequently in the tissues of our bodies. Some
radiant energy produced by the disintegrations, rather
like the X rays to which we may be subjected by a dentist
or physician, passes right out of the body. If you climb
into a “counting cylinder” (see photo), the special liquid
inside the tank’s wall will react to this radiation and
translate it into tiny pulses of light.
Our senses cannot detect such radiation at all—which
does not mean that it is without consequence for living
matter. Just as the rays by their bombardment produce
light pulses within the special liquid of the tank, so they
preduce changes in the living cells through which they
pass. The energy thus imparted within these cells is small
in total amount, but it is intensely concentrated; an
average of a few hundred atoms will be altered chemically
in every living cell through which the rays pass. And
thus begins a biological chain of events.
For living matter acts as a kind of amplifyins system,
somewhat analogous to the electronic circuits of the
laboratory counter. The living amplifier takes time; it is
slow to respond. Sometimes the cell which was damaged
by traversing rays will recover. But the damage to one or
a few cells may become in time a self-regenerating and
uncontrollable tumor. If the cells affected are cells of the
special reproductive tissues, the damage may be done to
the subtle molecules of genetic material which contains
the blueprint for the next generation; such damage is
what we call genetic. When the damageis to a cell of the
body not engaged in reproducing the next generation, the
effect is said to be somatic. In its most serious form the
somatic damage may be malignant (cancer or leukemia) ;
in milder form, it may appear as an apparentacceleration of
the aging process. For very low levels of radiation, it may
be that no somatic effect is observable.
The “counting cylinder” in the photograph across the
page includes in its count the rays from a perfectly normal constituent of all living cells: potassium. This chemical element is essential to life, as every gardener knows;
one of its isotopes (isotopes are chemically identical but
physically different atoms) is radioactive. In a normal
160-pound man, about 5000 atomsof this isotope (potas-
sium-40) decay each second throughout life. Radiation
passes through us not only from internal sources like the
potassium in our muscle tissue, but from external sources
as well. The very rocks around us contain uranium and
thorium in small amounts, along with their radioactive
relatives, particularly radium. And there are the cosmic
rays, which come in from interstellar space to strike us.
In short, we know that life always has grown in the
midst of penetrating radiation. The question must be
put: How much has that radiation been? We have to work
out some answer to that question before we can proceed
to the next one: How much more, if any, can we tolerate?
CONSUMER REPORTS
103