What’s to be done?
HIS report cannot be ended with a clear recom-
find themselves confronting many thousands of times the
average fallout hazard which tests to date have produced.
and neutral lands across the globe could expect hazards
a thousand times greater than what they have now.
What’s to be done? Muchresearch is now being carried
mendation. None exists. No doubt the Best Buv is
milk without strontium-90, air without fallout, and
on, but investigation of all the unknown factors is urgently
of these solutions are to be had, and it would be as foolish
to stop drinking milk as it would be to refuse an X-ray ex-
it from milk are being studied. Of course, such measures
adequate medical care without diagnostic X rays. But none
amination for a broken limb. The surveys of the strontium90 content in milk made by CU andbyother agencies have
demonstrated that there is a potential hazard. A judgment
as to whether we are now within or without prudent limits
depends on a variety of uncertain factors—ranging in
character from the nature of bone growth to the problem
of leukemia induction by X rays—the answers to which
have not yet been set by science. Even if those answers
were in, we are far from knowing how variable can be the
responses of man and weather and soil the world around.
Here is a new problem in public health: a world-wide
hazard which neither man nor nature can wash away.
We can surmise that westill are not heavily dosed, but
we also can be sure that there have been unattributed individual tragedies caused to persons by fallout. Further, we
can project the data here presented in weighing the consequences of a major war fought with nuclear weapons.It is
probable that in such a warthe surviving belligerents would
Conclusion based
on uncertainty
NTERNATIONALactivity in the fallout problem has
I produced four major developments since last summer including two significant reports made public by
two international groups—one governmental, the otherpri-
vate.
.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects
of Atomic Radiation issued an exhaustive evaluation of the
known scientific facts. The importance of this report lay
in its demonstration that scientists around the globe are in
substantial agreement on existing and potential hazards.
The second of these reports was issued by the so-called
Pugwash group sponsored by Ohio industrialist Cyrus
Eaton and named for its original meeting place—Mr.
Eaton’s summerretreat at Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The 1958
“Pugwash” meeting was the third in a series begun in response to an appeal for an international forum ofscientists
made in 1955 by Lord Russell, Albert Einstein, and other
prominent scientists. The 1958 sessions were held in Austria under the good offices of many sponsors, including the
Austrian government. The attendance included not only
scientists who have been critical of bomb testing but ones
long associated with the scientific policy-making of their
countries—such men as Sir George Thomson of England.
needed. Among other areas, practical measures to reduce
the absorption of strontium-90 from soil and to eliminate
may beonly palliatives. It is the diplomat who holds the
key to the solution of the base problem: cessation of nuclear
explosions in the atmosphere (see below).
The growing use of fission-operated power plants requiresa similar study because the veryfission reactors which
will become increasingly important sources of electric pow-
er in the years ahead also produce a great deal of radioactivity. Obviously, while the bomb would spread the ra-
dioactivity into the four winds, the fission plant may be
able to keep it carefully sealed up and safely disposed of.
But managing the safe storage of the long-lived radioactive
by-products is by no means a simple problem. Here, too.
the initiative of the Public Health Service (supported by
Federal legislation for control of radiation) , and eventually
of the World Health Organization, would be logical.
With this report CU hopes to stimulate wider interest and
understanding on the part of the public, of public health
agencies, and of commercial producers in the problems of
radiation and in the control of its hazards.
Prof. D. V. Skobeltzyn of the U.S.S.R., and Prof. Eugene
Wigner of Princeton University.
The 1958 “Pugwash”
statement included a paragraph which rather fairly summarizes the present prevailing opinion among scientists:
“_.. the bomb tests produce a definite hazard and will
claim a significant number of victims in present and following generations. Though ... the genetic damage appears to
be relatively small compared with that produced by natural
causes, the incidence of leukemia and bone cancer ... may
. add significantly to the natural incidence of these diseases. This conclusion depends upon the assumption (not
shared by all authorities in the field) that these effects can
be produced by even the smallest amount of radiation. This
uncertainty calls for extensive study and ... for a prudent
acceptance of the most pessimistic assumption.”
Meanwhile, the political pressures generated by public
concern at least have been moving diplomatic machinery. A
meeting of experts from the big powers in Geneva produced
agreement last summer on the feasibility of a control and
detection system which could enforce a possible agreement
to end tests of nuclear weapons.
And at the time of this writing, diplomats are in Geneva
trying, through a welter of bargaining points, to bring
about an agreed cessation and a suitable control system.
They have wrangled endlessly, and yet there has been about
the proceedings an air of hope. The end oftests would, of
course, stop the production of bomb fallout in peacetime.
Far more importantly, one could view the end oftests, if it
came, as a first step toward the prevention of nuclear war.
CONSUMER REPORTS
111