“Mounting Danger” From Fallout

Press, Volume C, Issue 29620, 16 September 1961, Page 11

“Mounting Danger” From Fallout

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, September 15. The Soviet Union’s current series of nuclear tests were today reported to be threatening the world with the worst fallout peril on record. The “Washington Post” quoted scientific evidence of a “mounting danger to mankind’s future” from the atmospheric blasts.

The newspaper said poisonous radioactive debris would eventually be scattered over the earth with the most of the deadly rain falling in the (northern) spring of 1962.

At the same time, United States Weather Bureau scientists in Washington said that about half of the low-altitude fallout from the Soviet tests would have reached earth within the next month. But whatever debris had drifted to high altitudes—into the stratosphere above 40.000 feet—would not begin to come down until late in the (northern) - ' winter. The “Washington Post” said that food stocks in the northern hemisphere could be affected “above maximum permissable levels” if the Communists went through with plans to test the superbombs ' It said that the Soviet Union had fired its tenth atomic explosion in the latest series "amid growing indications that the Soviet tests would pollute the world’s atmosphere beyond levels of fallout recorded after any previous series of tests.”

The newspaper said: “Tbe mounting danger to, mankind's future this time comes ironically from a nation that once was foremost in propagandising the dangers of atomic testing.

“It also comes in the midst of an eloquent silence from many other nations whose peoples resorted to strong condemnation and street demonstrations against atomic testing in the past.”