Laboratory Director Back From Pacific Test Stations

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29900, 14 August 1962, Page 12

Laboratory Director Back From Pacific Test Stations

Natives in the Pacific islands near the testing grounds for nuclear explosions took a very strong and active interest in the results of the sampling of radioactive fall-out, but because they were kept well informed of the results, they did not appear to have any resent- | ment that tests were being i carried out, said Mr G. E. 1 Roth, director of the Dominion X-ray and Radium Laboratory, yesterday. Mr Roth has just returned from a visit to the testing stations used by New Zealand to monitor samples of fall-out and radioactivity from the nuclear tests recently conducted by the United States. He has been collecting and redistributing equipment used in the sampling. He said that the islanders were apprehensive when the tests were first started but that largely had been dispelled by informative radio broadcasts. It was what they did not know that they feared most, said Mr Roth. The level of radioactivity in the islands had not shown an appreciable increase after the tests. Samples taken of food and rainwater from the

islands where monitoring equipment had been set up showed that the level of radioactivity was slightly less than 2 per cent, of the level which the International Commission of Radioactivity Protection considered safe. Mr Roth said that the monitoring carried out at the Pacific islands could not be used to indicate a pattern for any possible fall-out on New Zealand. He explained that wind currents, the height at which the nuclear bomb was exploded and the power of the bomb all had a bearing on the extent and range of the fall-out. Thus, the amount of radioactivity which might be found at one of the Pacific islands would not give an indication of what might occur

in New Zealand from the same test. In the five months that New Zealand scientists and their assistants had taken samples from the Pacific islands, 678 food samples had been taken, 311 air samples and 90 rainwater samples. Mr Roth said native medical assistants on the various islands had proved of great value in helping collect samples. Without their help the full-scale monitoring could not have succeeded. With the cessation of tests, the monitoring would be carried out still, but on a reduced scale, he said. Whereas before samples were collected daily from about 20 islands, now it would revert to a weekly basis and from a lesser number of islands.