including cancer,
disturbances
raGlation injury,
and that the continuing injury is
Cataracts,
in vision probably due to
and deformities of birth are a part of the
in
large part due to food-chain entry by long-lived radioactive elements.
I strongly suspect that the leukemias
were radiation induced.
There are other areas about
which
I wonder and about which I
yet have formed no firm opinion.
am suspicious,
I
but as
am told by the islanders
that diabetes has become very comnon.
When I spoke to
the old people who remember the way the islands were
before the nuclear testing, they all routinely deny that
diabetes was a great problem for the inhabitants.
Now as
I speak to the Marshallese, I think that they have more
diabetes than the Navajo Indians, and I had always thought
the highest incidence was among the Navajos.
Although
Giabetes is exceedingly common among the Marshallese, I
know of no direct radiation effect that causes diabetes.
On the other hand, I do not know ell that is to be known
about food chain radiation iniury and neither does anybody
else.
Our particular human experiences on radiation have
been either with therapeutic radietion or the exterior
type of radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Knowledge
about food-chain radiation is scant and I am unable to
Say whether the diabetes is related to the radiation or
not.
There are some sexual problezs among the males of
the island, or among the females.
A number of men from
one atoll had told me that they develcped a failure of
sexual interest after the explcesions, this persisting,
and in several cases their families did not exdband after
the bomb blasts.
This also is likely rediation induced
but I cannot say whether this is food-chain or whether
this 1s perhaps external radiation coming from the soil,
Since the testicles are in an expcesed position, particularly in people who so commenly sit on the
ground or
squat as do the people of the Marshall Islands.
Immediate effects of the radiation occurred in some
individuals who spoke to me,
these changes consisting of
hair loss,
and burns of the skin.
The burns of the skin
occurred in those islanders in which there was a dusty,
powdery fallout after the explosion called Bravo, which
was effected by metereologic or inadvertence.
There were
MIs CALECUKN TION