Army falsified nuclear test records — physicist

Press, 27 March 1979, Page 9

Army falsified nuclear test records — physicist

NZPA PhiladelphiaAmerican Government - lawyers will this week resume questioning a physicist : who has charged that the United States Army falsified records concerning how much radiation thousands of soldiers were exposed to during a 1955 atomic-bomb test in the Nevada Desert. Dr Ernest Sternglass, director of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh, is to give evidence in the Federal District Court in Philadelphia in a lawsuit brought by several former servicemen. Tbe'servicemen want the Government immediately to warn all military men and their/ offspring of the actual dangers of exposure to radiation.

The lawsuit was brought, on behalf-of more than 100,000 servicemen stationed at Camp Desert Rock, Nevada, since 1951, who witnessed some or all of the atmospheric tests, and for their past, present, and future spouses. The suit alleges that unless a clear-cut warning i: made there could be untolc suffering by thousands oi people, and future gen erations. The warning is viewed a; a move toward the establishment of culpability and dam ages for any victims of radi ation-related diseases. In evidence last week, D Sternglass said he conclude after studying recently d< classified Government report land maps that troops wil

messing the nuclear blast were exposed to 320 rents of radiation, equivalent to 320,000 diagnostic X-rays. A rem is the dosage of an ionizing radiation that will cause that same biological ?ffect as one roentgen of X-ray of gamma-ray dosage. Dr Sternglass also said hat the biological effects of plutonium had been underjstimated by as much as one million times. Dr Sternglass said maps ;howed the radioactive duat tovered men in trenches, xmtrary to what he termed ’raudulent documenta >resented before the United hates Senate in 1957 which aid the fall-out had missed he troops.