Reprinted, with additions, from The Journal of the American Medica Association, October I, 1955,.pP- 430-434 Copyright, 1955, by American Medical Association RESPONSE OF HUMAN BEINGS ACCIDENTALLY EXPOSED TO SIGNIFICANT FALL-OUT RADIATION Commander Eugene P. Cronkite (MC), U.S. N. Victor P. Bond, M.D., San Francisco Commander Robert A. Conard Lieut. N. Raphael Shulman Lieut. Richard S. Farr, (MC), U.S. N. Stanton H. Cohn, Ph.D., San Francisco Charles L. Dunham, M.D., Washington, D.C. and Lieut. Col. L. Eugene Browning (MC), U.S. Army After detonation of a nuclear device in the Marshall Islands during the spring of 1954, radioactive material fell upon several neighboring inhabited atolls. Thefallout material consisted of pulverized and incinerated coral (calcium oxide) coated with radioactive fission products, forced high into the atmosphere by the violence of the explosion. The particulate matter was then distributed over a wide area by the wind structure. The field of radiation resulting from the deposition of this radioactive From the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Md., and U. S. Navat Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco. Commander Cronkite is now at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, N. Y. Lieut. Farr is now at the University of Chicago, School of Biological and Medical Sciences, Read before the Section on Military Medicine at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, Atlantic City, June 8, 1955. Drs. David A. Wood, University of California Hospital, San Francisco, and Edward L. Alpen, U. S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco, made the histopathological evaluation of the skin Jesions. The discussion of this paper was opened by Dr. Lee E. Farr, Upton, N. Y., and Major Carl Hanson, Washington, D. C. The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude and indebtedness to many members, too numerous to mention by name, of the Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, the Joint Task Force, and Trust Territory for their assistance. 1. Effects of High-Yield Nuclear Explosions, statement by Lewis L. Strauss, chairman, and report by United States Atomic Energy Commission, Atomic Energy Commission, Feb., 1955.