The milk all of us drink—
New public health problems are raised by the effects of radioactive fallout on vital
evaluating the present and potential hazard and including test
ye since radioactive coral fell as white ash across
the decks of the Japanese fishing boat Fortunate
Dragon in the spring of 1954, fallout from nuclear
bombs has been making both news and history. Its involvment with man and his food supply has entangled it in
issues ranging from the biological to the diplomatic. Nor
have the public press, official statements, or comment from
independentscientific sources unraveled the tangles. What
active strontium-90 in the U.S. milk supply—is the substance of this report.
It seems whoily right for a consumer testing organization to undertake to evaluate a new constituent of our food.
even one not proclaimed on any label. The main sources of
information on the problems of fallout have been the
Atomic Energy Commission and, to a muchlesser extent,
most controversial issuesofall.
other Government agencies such as the United States Public
Health Service and the Food and Drug Administration.
Other governments and the United Nations also have pub-
atmosphere after nuclear blasts pass through a number of
Committee reported in 1957, “Information on fallout has
fallout means to us, and what to do aboutit, still are the
The radioactive materials which fall out of the upper
physical, chemical and biological processes, some of which
take years to occur. Each of these steps is a link in a long
lished extensive data on fallout; but, as a Congressional
evidently not reached the public in adequate or under-
standable ways.”
For at least a decade, the AEC has been studying fallout
chain of events which connect the blasts to damage in
people, the living and the yet unborn, even thousands of
problems of all kinds—physical, chemical and biological.
of these links have been well established. Our knowledge
terials in air, soil, water, people, and foods—including
miles away and years later. Thescientific facts about some
of other important links is vague and incomplete. It re-
mains necessary for us to arrive at some assessment of
the hazard, even though notall the necessary evidenceis in.
Every day each person in the world is exposed to and
consumes some measurable debris from fallout in his food,
in his drink, in the air he breathes. What this may mean to
him in general—but with particular reference to radio-
Some of our knowledge of the normal radioactivity of the human
body has come from counting cylinders of this type, which measure
rays that penetrate to the outside of a man from the decay of atoms
102
MARCH 1959
Measurements have been made of radioactive fallout ma-
milk, which is the principal source of strontium-90 in the
diet of Americans. The responsibility of the Public Health
Service for safeguarding the health of the country has led
it, too, since 1956, to study fallout materials in air and
food, particularly in milk. But these studies have been mainly exploratory, to study methods and to obtain typical values; they have not explored as yet the full gamut of possible
within him. The tank, heavily shielded against external radiation,
contains a liquid in which the radiation manifests itself as tiny light
pulses; complex electronic devices are used to count these pulses