Radiation Scientist Back After A.E.A. Job

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 13

Radiation Scientist Back After A.E.A. Job

The way radiation affects living matter has been a subject of particular interest to Mr G. E. Roth, director of the Dominion X-ray and Radium Laboratory, in three years’ work abroad. Mr Roth returned to Christchurch yesterday after being director of the Division of Isotopes in the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, his home city, which he left 25 years ago. “We see the symptoms of radiation in living things, but we wanted to see the mechanism behind these, to see the response on the subcellular level.” said Mr Roth yesterday. About 30 per cent, of the research contracts allocated by his department were directed at such studies. Money was always supplied lavishly for applied research, said Mr Roth. “But it is difficult to convince people that applied research can only be based on much more fundamental research.

“It is now part of general knowledge that there are certain observable effects from very minute amounts of radiation.” he said. “This was not so three years ago. It was not possible to observe these reactions then.” Immediate Effects

Mr Roth has also been interested in the immediate physical reactions to radiation. “Physiological effects are observable within fractions of seconds.” said Mr Roth. “For example, experiments with X-ray beams show how they immediately affect a snail's antennae. “Changes have been observed in the optic nerve. It was previously thought that there was no immediate effect on nervous tissue. Mr Roth’s main laboratory was in the basement of the former Grand Hotel, Vienna, which was converted into the agency’s headquarters. Conferences and symposia are held in the former Imperial Palace.

A second laboratory is being built about 20 miles outside Vienna and in the last few months another has been established in Monaco. “Prince Rainier has an interest in oceanography and realising the importance of the disposal of atomic wastes in the sea and the need for information about safe levels of radioactivity, he made the laboratory available.” said Mr Roth. Mr Roth, who during his

term worked in 30 countries, brings back to New Zealand what he regards as an “invaluable association and personal contacts" with other scientists who attended conferences or were lent as experts to the agency by other countries.

Yesterday he recalled the particular New Zealand actions in the atomic field which were associated with his secondment to the agency, first as a senior scientific officer and then as divisional director. “New Zealand was one of the first countries to have radiation protection legislation and treat radiation as a matter of public health concern, just as safe water supply is a matter of public health,” he said. Also, New Zealand was running a service for hospitals and other users of isotopes in medicine, industry and research ensuring the safety of their employment. Mr Roth’s appointment ended last November. Since then he has been working for the agency in Japan, the Philippines and Australia. The four-year-old International Atomic Energy Agency is concerned with the peaceful uses of atomic energy and Mr Roth was in charge of the sections dealing with isotopes in medicine, agriculture, radio-biology, medical and health physics and matters of waste disposal. Bndget

The agency has a staff of about 600 drawn from 42 countries, and runs on a regular annual budget of 6,250,000 dollars from the United Nations and about 2.000.000 dollars from voluntary contributions. Mr Roth’s own section had 25 professional workers with technicians and secretaries. Since the division was established the sum spent on research has increased from 360,000 dollars to nearly 900.000 dollars this year. But though research is an important part of the division’s functions, its major operations are directed at giving technical assistance to the 76 member countries, the arrangement of scientific meetings, scientist exchanges and other services. Mr Roth’s own staff have been involved in irrigation programmes, tracing underground water with radioactive isotopes, in the application of isotopes in agriculture with plant mutations and pest control, and in the study of waste and protections methods.