Radiation Sickness Report Rejected

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31758, 15 August 1968, Page 1

Radiation Sickness Report Rejected

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 14. The French Counsellor in Wellington (Mr J. Benoit) said today that it was impossible for “really strong young men” to be contaminated by the French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Mr Benoit was commenting Mr Holyoake said the only on a statement made in information he had at preChristchurch by a Raiatea sent was what he had read Islander, Mr C. Brotherson, in the newspapers. Before that he saw strong young men making any substantive combecoming, “really sick.” ment, the Government would

Mr Brotherson said to the Lyttelton Rotary Club that Pacific Islanders who had worked at the bomb sites had skin peeling off and hair falling out. Mr Benoit said that ail possible measures were taken and he was quite sure that the islanders had not suffered the injuries described by Mr Brotherson. Mr Benoit quoted a French Government paper which said that there was now sufficient knowledge of the risk to enable precautions to be taken to safeguard people and protect property. “The numerous tests already conducted have made it possible to set unanimously accepted security standards and to fix the radiation exposure thresholds below which no danger exists,” he quoted the paper as saying. The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said in Parliament today that he had arranged for an inquiry to be made as a matter of urgency into an allegation that the French administration in Tahiti had declined requests by residents of Raiatea Island for a New Zealand scientist to investigate the local dangers created by nuclear testing. He was answering an urgent question by Dr A. M. Finlay (Lab., Waitakere).

need to be sure that the statement had some basis in fact.