and most of the sicknesses were those usually seen such as upper respiratory
infections, gastroenteritis,
the exposed group.
skin infections, etc.
No deaths occurred in
One death in an older unexposed woman occurred while the
team was at Rongelap.
Death was due to infections complicating diabetes.
No miscarriages or stillbirths were reported and a number of healthy
babies had been born to both the exposed and unexposed people.
Examinations included:
1.
Interval case histories; 2.
examinations including careful thyroid examinations; 3.
complete physical
laboratory analyses
included routine blood work with collection of sera for later examinations
in the U.S., routine urine analyses and collection of 24 hr. urine samples
for determination of body burdens of radioactive material; 4.
x-rays of
selected case with routine x-rays of the hands and wrists of children
for growth and development studies; 5.
special cultures of white blood
cells were carried out on blood samples collected from some 50 exposed
and 140 unexposed people to determine if radiation exposure had any effect
on the ability of cells to grow in culture.
Findings.
Except for the thyroid abnormalities no unusual findings were
noted in the exposed people.
The general health of the people appeared
good and no nutritional deficiencies were noted.
This was reflected in
the general impression that we had that there were fewer infections,
respiratory, skin,
etc., present this year.
Thyroid examinations revealed 2 new cases with thyroid nodules.
Both of these were in children exposed at less than 10 years of age.
This
brings the total number of cases of thyroid abnormalities to 20 of the 67