Facts Associated with the Continuance of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program - Page 2
September 5, 1957
From these pertinent points the President concludes that we should continue to
test and continue negotiations aimed at disarmament with safe guards.
Since the major objection to continued weapons tests is based on the argument
that human biological damage will result from the consequent fallout it is important
to give as much data as possible that bears on this problem, so that this possible
demage can be compared to the necessarily brief statement given above of the diplomatic and military reasons for continuing these tests». In order to evaluate the
radiation levels associated with the long-range fallout from nuclear detonations it
seems to be pertinent to compare this radiation with other sources of low level radiation that are present in our natural environment. It is, of course, possible to compare the predicted injury caused by small radiation exposure with the injury caused by
many other hazards of modern living. However, several of these other hasards of modern
living are very different in their nature from radiation and such a comparison, even
though made in terms of shortening of life expectancy or some other criterion, involve
many value judgements which are hard to place on a quantitative basis»
‘The relatively
small biological damage which may be caused by natural radiation coming from our environment and the necessarily smaller damage which might be caused by radiation fallout are both unimportant compared to the well~-kmow large soale dangers of modern
living- Both these possible forms of radiation demage are essentially undetectable
by any biological observations, even though enormous numbers of people or animals
are involved. Other large scale hazards of modern living are so easily detected and
produce such a large number of injuries that it seems unfair to compare the radiation
problem to them and ae a result all subsequent remarks will be confined to a numerical
comparison of radiation due to fallout to other forms of radiation know to be essentially harmless.
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Radiation dose rates will be expressed in terms of the wit sillirocentgens per
¢ Briefly, the acceptable official dose rate established by the National Canmittee on Radiation Protection and the International Commission on Radiological
Protection for individuals who work in the radiation industry is 5,000 mr/yr-
‘The
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acceptable dose rate for bone effects in individuals who do not work ih the radia-
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non-workers is 500 mr/yr-
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tion industry is 51008r/ while the acceptable dose rate for genetic effects in
‘The value of 5,000 ar/yr is established on the criterion
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exposure to the bones for eeeee es.008 er/ore
Tf an extrapo-
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