,.. , US. DEPARTMENT OF ENERC DATE REPLY TO ATTN OF SUBJECT To December 9, 1980 13M?morandun EV-30 GTN rmSPS Review of “Reevaluation of the Potential Radinlnaieal for Residents Resettling Enewetak Atoll”, Draft, UCRL-53966 Bruce W. Wachholz, EV-30 GTN I kno~’ this draft report on doses at Enewetak Atoll and the new LLNL estimates of doses for Bikini and Eneu Islands at Bikini Atoll represent a lot of work, but I have numerous reservations regarding assumptions that are common to both sets of these estimates. These reservations may be identified as follows: 1. I cannot support ti~e of dietary information commonly referred to as the “Mitchell Coke Can Diet” (the MLS diet), as an “average” diet for use in predicting average exposures which are then used to estimate maximum exposures. At every opportunity I have spoken against such use in any planning estimates produced by DOE. The survey that produced this diet was conducted on a portion of the population on Ujelang Atoll, which was not a resettled population. This survey produced new and lower estimates of food intake (for most of the important foods) than that used in the past. This survey was initiated and conducted by Micronesia Legal Services (!4LS),legal representatives of the Enewetak people, with the assistance of the school teacher on Ujelang Island. The procedure used in this survey was to ask Ujelang residents to fill out a questionnaire in which estimates were made of how many 12 ounce beverage cans of food (a volume equivalent to this) and liquids each person was consuming. To my knowledge this survey was not based in any way on actual observations of use of food. Using conversion factors, LLNL converted these volume estimates into grams, and also into grams per day intake. This is certainly a tortuous path to get at such important information. So far as I know, no technical report has yet been published on the MLS diet and may never be, nor has there been any independent review of these critical new data or of their impact on dose asses-sments and risks. 2. The MLS diet has two categories for coconut intake; fluid and meat. Naidu’s diet (a diet based in part on actual observation of food use by Jan Naidu, BNL, living with a group of Marshallese) has six; milk, meat, water, flesh, husk, embryo, and sap. The total “no imports” coconut intake level for adult males (fluid and meat) has a mean value of 293 grams per day in the MLS diet. The equivalent for all six items in the Naidu diet (see his letter to Robison dated January 22, 1.980) is 929 grams per day. This is the low end of the range of values obtained from Naidu’s study which applies to the case of no imported food. Naidu’s dietary information was