“Stopping A-Tests Would Benefit Health”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28661, 11 August 1958, Page 9

“Stopping A-Tests Would Benefit Health”

(N.Z. Press Association—uopyngn) (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, August 10. The United Nations General Assembly’s Scientific Committee said today that to stop nuclear weapons explosions would act to the benefit of human health. “Radioactive contamination of the environment resulting from explosions of nuclear weapons constitutes a growing increment to world-wide radiation levels, ’’ the 15-nation committee said after a two-year study of a mass of data supplied by governments and private bodies. “This involves new and largely unknown hazards to present and future populations,’’ the international experts said in their 228-page report, which the Assembly is due to debate this autumn.

“These hazards,” they said, “by their very nature, are beyond the control of the exposed persons. “The committee concludes that all steps designed to minimise irradiation of human populations will act to the benefit of human health. Such steps include the avoidance of unnecessary exposure resulting from medical, industrial and other procedures for peaceful uses on the one hand and the cessation of contamination of the environment by explosions of nuclear weapons on the other. “The committee is aware that considerations.- involving effective control of all these sources of radiation involve national and international decisions which lie outside the scope of its work.” The report included a footnote showing that a Soviet draft proposal to have the committee call for an “immediate cessation of test explosions of nuclear weapons’* was defeated by 10 votes to three (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the United Arab Republic) with two abstentions (India and Belgium) Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada. France, Japan, Mexico. Sweden, Britain and the United States voted against the Soviet proposal. A further footnote reported rejection of an Indian draft proposal which would have had the committee declare that nuclear tests were the main source at present of a rise in the level of world-wide contamination. Brazil, France, India, Japan and the United States voted for this proposal, Argentina, Australia, Mexico, Sweden and Britain opposed it, and Belgium, Canada. Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and the Arab Republic abstained The report said that certain general conclusions emerged clearly from its studies: “Even .the smallest,amounts of radiation are liable to cause deleterious genetic, and perhaps also somatic, effects.

natural radiation and radiation from fallout involve the whole world population to a greater or less extent, whereas only a fraction of the population receive medical or occupational exposure. However, the irradiation of any groups of people, before and during the reproductive age, will contribute genetic effects to whole populations. “Because of the delay ' with which the somatic effects of radiation may appear, and with which its genetic effects may be maniI fested, the full extent of the damI age is not immediately apparent. It is, therefore, important to consider the speed with which levels of exposure could be altered by human action. It is clear that medical and occupational exposure, and the testing of nuclear weapons, can be influenced by human action, and that natural radiatiori and the fallout of radioactive material already injected into the stratosphere, cannot.” The United Nations’ scientists said present knowledge concerning long-term effects and their correlation with the amounts of

radiation received did not permit them to evaluate with any precision the possible consequence to man of exposure to low radiation levels. “Many Effects Delayed” Many effects of radiation were delayed, and often these could not be distinguished from effects of “other agents,” the committee said. “Even a slow rise in the environmental radioactivity in the world, whether from weapon tests or any other sources, might eventually cause appreciable damage to large populations before it could be definitely identified as due to irradia'tion,” the report declared. The situation required that “mankind proceed with great caution in view of a possible underestimation. ’ ’ “At the same time,” the report said, “the possibility cannot ,be excluded that our present estimate exaggerates the hazards of chronic exposure to low levels of radiation. Only further intensive research can establish the true position.” The document, said "any present attempt to' evaluate the effects of sources of radiation to which the world population is exposed can produce only tentative estimates ’ with wide margins of uncertainty.”