SCIENTISTS PUZZLED

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 59, 7 September 1945, Page 7

SCIENTISTS PUZZLED

EFFECTS OF THE ATOMIC

BOMB LONDON, September 5. Scientists in London and New York examined tonight the first official Allied reports from the atom-bombed Japanese cities, says the "Daily Express." Thousands of Japanese in Hiroshima who thought they had escaped the effects of the first atom bomb are at present dying from delayed effects, and front-rank doctors and radiologists in London believe that all the symptoms described are due to special radiations which are given off at the moment when the bomb explodes. These radiations, called gamma rays, are produced when a uranium atom disintegrates. They are the same as the penetrating short-wave rays which are given off by radium and which are used in the treatment of cancer. The doctors believe that when the bomb explodes a dense shower of gamma rays travels outwards at 186,000 miles a second. If they strike a human body they pass through, but en route damage the tissues and kill parts of the skin. After a few days these begin to decay and become blue patches. The hah" falls out, but the worst effect is on the bone marrow, which, after exposure to gamma rays, cannot cope with the blood replacement. Progressive fatal anaemia follows, one of the symptoms of which is bleeding of the gums. British scientists are unable to understand how the victims had been near enough to the gamma shower, and yet were not killed by ,the blast of the bomb.