Stunted Children Were Exposed To Fall-out

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 18

Stunted Children Were Exposed To Fall-out

(N. Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, July 7. All but two of the 19 children on Rongelap Island who were less than 10 years old when a hydrogen bomb was exploded on nearby Bikini Atoll in 1954 have developed abnormal thyroid glands, reports the “New York Times” News Service. The abnormalities have been found by a medical team from Brookhaven National Laboratory at Upton, New York, which has been monitoring the health of the Marshall Islanders who were exposed to the fall-out. Nine of the children have been treated surgically. Three more, and an adult, are to be brought to the United States late this summer for study and possible surgery.

All are now being treated with thyroid extract to avert further stunting of growth. Their exposure was far less than that of the Rongelap children and preliminary results from the survey—called the Utah child study—have shown no dramatic thyroid damage. However, the analysis is statistically coniplex and the public health service is watching for possibly more subtle effects.

The dangerous component of fall-out in these cases is a radioactive form of iodine known as iodine 131. The thyroid glands of growing children pick up large amounts of iodine from milk and other foods. If part of the iodine is radioactive, it may injure the thyroid gland Early in the nuclear bomb testing programme, the danger of damage from iodine 131 was largely ignored, since it is short-lived.

Several years ago, however, it became apparent that iodine 131 became concentrated in the thyroids of children exposed to fresh fall-out and remained long enough to be harmful. An early clue, according to Dr Robert Conard, of Brookhaven, was the stunted growth of two Rongelap children.

The stunted children responded well to hormone treatment. Surgery was used to remove non-cancerous nodules on the thyroid glands.

The fall-out on Rongelap, where 64 islanders were present, was sufficiently heavy to be likened to snow. Apart from the thyroid damage, all

of the islanders are In good health, according to the Brookhaven report. The dosages to thyroids of American children from Nevada bomb tests have been analysed by Dr Arthur TampI lin, of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, of the University of California. He has concentrated on the period 1952 to 1955 when bombs were still being tested above ground. Because the iodine 131 component of fallout was. not being widely monitored at that time, he has had to base his estimates on other fall-out observations. The maximum estimates are for Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. No high accumulations are believed to have occurred east of the Mississippi except for Massachusetts, where a heavy rain followed one shot, and a similar “rain-out” in the Albany region of New York. An “out-gassing” of nuclear debris from an underground nuclear blast was reported to have produced an unusually heavy fall on Fargo, North Dakota, in July, 1957. However, Dr Tamplin says the intensity of this deposit has been questioned. The thyroid exposures aro measured in “rads”—units of absorbed radiation. Children in Utah, a short distance downwind from the test area, are believed to have sustained exposures of 120 rads, whereas the thyroid glands of those on Rongelap are estimated to have sustained from 875 to 1575 rads.

In a telephone interview. Dr Tamplin said that “outgassing” from underground explosions had probably added about 20 per cent to the exposures calculated in his study for the period through 1955.