FALL-OUT-CAN MAN SURVIVE?
Amrine, Michael
FALL-OUT-Can Man Survive? by MICHAEL AMRINE THE Presidential election of 1956 may be remembered in history for dealing with the largest question before the house of man: whether possible atomic...
...Critics of this idea say we and they are already in a position to do this—saturation once saturated, there's no more saturation, then...
...Beyond that time is another terror-point, when not only the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union have such weapons, but when a fourth or a fifth or a sixth country gets such weapons...
...it slowly comes down...
...However, they do not absolutely foreclose the possibility of damage being done in ways we do not yet understand...
...This is exactly where the doctors and the politicians are having their crucial midnight consultation over the nervous body of mankind...
...We could sign such an agreement knowing the inspection machinery would not by its very nature upset political affairs...
...This is the rub...
...Humanity has a right to know the whole truth—not yet told—about the largest thing man has ever done...
...The facts involve clouds so large they push through the stratosphere, and particles so small they are billions of times thinner than a razor blade...
...But the strontium 90 produced by fission is a potential menace to mankind for two main reasons...
...Of course gravity is the force which pulls them down...
...The half-life concept can be applied to any process in which something diminishes steadily in proportion to its volume...
...Yet the test issue and the facts of radioactive fall-out were so confused in the campaign that even the most impartial observers admitted bewilderment...
...they are also radioactive...
...For example, a lump of radioactive carbon will remain half as strong as now when 5,000 years have passed, and 10,000 years from now it will still be 25 per cent of 'its starting strength...
...The strontium 90 in our bodies has a half-life of 28 years and this means it will be with us substantially as long as we live...
...The Eisenhower Administration's spokesmen have made much of the fact that the fall-out radiation was termed a small danger, compared with that arising from other "normal" hazards such as medical and dental X-rays...
...others are relatively less dangerous because their time in the body is short...
...If the weapons race and tests continue, the human race will come to a psychological point of extreme danger when the upper air is virtually saturated...
...A margin of safety is that if a gene is hit it is likely to be rendered sterile...
...Their point is that you do not really say "safe" if you say "as safe as you are in your auto...
...But it happens not to be vitamins...
...Not less but much more must be heard of the idea on which our President said last fall he had no more to say...
...But the immediate effects are not the only hazard...
...Yes, say the critics, but you can't speak for the Russians...
...Ground forces would be needed only if one were physically to enforce the ban on tests...
...Admiral Strauss said new bombs resulting in "minimum widespread fallout hazard . . . make it possible to localize to an extent not heretofore appreciated, the fall-out effect . . . thus the current series of tests has produced much of importance not only from a military point of view but from a humanitarian aspect . . . we are convinced that mass hazard from fall-out is not a necessary complement to the use of large nuclear weapons...
...Some of the campaign confusion came from the nature of such facts as are clearly known...
...By the time such an invisible but easily detectable i cloud gets over New York two days later, it may have spread out to a width of three hundred miles...
...if calcium is short, more strontium will be taken up by plants and animals, and find its way into people...
...Various mechanical or blast energy is set loose, in shock waves which can shake brick buildings into a heap of broken dominoes...
...If there are no more tests, the crest of strontium showers will be reached in 1975—and nothing within man's power can now make it less, although of course we can make it more...
...Each particle meanders minutely as only the smallest molecules can, and probably 10 per cent of it comes down in a year...
...The whole globe is now engulfed by a thin but an even and "hot" dust cloud...
...Slowly this dust settles in tiny eddies and collisions...
...Men would have no quarrel over who would take ships through the canal...
...it is, in fact, a particular hell-child, strontium 90...
...The heart of the test agreement proposals is the extreme fineness and certainty of the detection machinery...
...Fall-out not only pollutes the physical air, but the nature of it poisons the political air...
...Very simply, fission products are the kind of atoms you have left when fission has split larger atoms...
...It is when we are young that the body most needs to pull available calcium out of our food—lettuce, fish, and milk...
...There is much argument over how difficult it would be to set a line in size, over which bombs would not be tested...
...All these energy phases are immediate, comparable to a light turned on and off, or a dynamite charge which blasts a mountain side...
...The radiation life of elements is measured in "half-lives...
...H-bombs, like A-bombs, give off enormous radiation at the instant of explosion, contaminating the sea or the land and the atmosphere...
...Perhaps we should start off with a few staggering simplicities, to set out a few old facts as a frame for the new...
...Dr...
...The world will be too dangerous for trust...
...As late as the Egyptian campaigu of World War II, even the numb conscience of the Twentieth Century was shocked by the report that General Rommel in retreat was poisoning desert wells...
...it is not a necessary complement, but the question is whether under present uncontrolled conditions we and the Russians and other countries coming along will not soon go over the "permissible level...
...A persuasive consideration for banning tests rests upon the fact that an international agreement could be su-pervised without sending ground inspectors into any foreign country...
...The National Academy of Sciences appointed a special committee to study this matter, and its basic conclusion was that present amounts of fall-out radiation do not now constitute a hazard...
...It is hard for an H-bomb to be set off distant from the surface of the globe, since its size doesn't give it much room between our surface world and the beginning of the stratosphere eight miles up...
...The genes especially are so susceptible to radiation that there is found to be no "threshold effect" whatever as to the amount required for damage...
...The temperature at which water boils is a sort of threshold...
...Then any tyrant Samson, in the mood Hitler reached in the bunkers of bombed Berlin, could bring down the columns of civilization in a crash, and end all human life...
...Other critics point out that the Atomic Energy Commission for years based all bomb data on the Model T A-bomb, all the while making plans for the super-bomb...
...The cow's bio-chemistry department can't tell it from calcium...
...The test-ban opponents also say, correctly, that few things in the world are as precisely measurable as radiation, so that we can always know what is upstairs waiting to come down...
...In response to criticism, the AEC apparently invented and its chairman, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, announced, a "humanitarian" bomb...
...This is not quite a rationale for throwing out your radium dial watch or being afraid to fold your hands in your lap when you are wearing it...
...A friend of mine says his checking account has a half-life of a day...
...It is particularly alive in Asia, where thousands of human beings have died of atomic bombing, and some have been injured by "peacetime" atomic testing...
...A half-life is the time it takes for a radioactive element to burn out, to dim down one-half of the way to "darkness...
...So will strontium, hot or cold...
...A Nasser...
...In dealing with anything of a half-life of a single day, a couple of weeks brings you to a very small figure...
...The fall-out effect from H-bombs is the first truly world-wide thing man has done...
...The test issue remains alive, here and in the United States and around the world...
...Like rocks in a mountain pass, these atomic particles can be most damaging if they fall on us...
...Most fission products are highly radioactive, many are long-lived...
...Our bodies constantly take in new atoms and slough off the old, not only through excretion but through respiration and the normal wear and tear of life...
...Libby's own past announcements have said that in some parts of Wales the amount of strontium 90 relative to calcium was 50 times greater than the average because calcium is that much scarcer in those areas...
...As most mothers know, adults do not need as much calcium as children...
...The ardent proponents of further tests—those who shriek against unilateral action and are lukewarm even to an agreement banning super-tests—have many arguments...
...So the deadly dust falls evenly now, upon all the living and the dead...
...Some of this energy comes off as light or heat, so much that an H-bomb can burn or blind people many miles away...
...Anyway, we say we know that in a bomb explosion a relatively small amount of matter is turned suddenly into energy...
...atoms rendered unstable, loosely-arranged, liable at any time to let go of their loose "boulders...
...So it falls on open meadows and turns up in your daily milk...
...When the stratosphere is laden with poison and the ground honeycombed with hidden rocket-launching sites tuhich can not be bombed out, it may be impossible, perhaps, for all the good faith in the world on the part of 99 per cent of humanity to gain assurance that somewhere one per cent is not willing and prepared to bring the whole temple down...
...This kind of fall-out is bad enough...
...Other places have less extreme but quite real calcium shortages...
...There is no such threshold for damaging a gene by radiation...
...Nonetheless, there is nothing theoretical about this finding: one bit of radioactive energy from a radium dial, from an atomic bomb, from a power plant, from any suitable source, if it makes one glancing hit against one gene, equals one damaged gene, perhaps a shattered and twisted gene...
...The Pentagon and AEC put out a steady line that right now we Americans are interested in small "tactical" bombs anyway, and also—in bombs for defense...
...While it is likely every reader of these lines has some strontium 90 in his very bones, his children may soon have relatively ten times as much in proportion to normal calcium...
...Once a month he deposits his money and the account is radiant...
...There is no minimum...
...It might also be mentioned that some such mutations are beneficial, but the overwhelming majority of radiation changes are harmful...
...And even the close-in fall-out—from one to thirty miles, say—may cause the next war to be fought in a fiendish fog...
...There still may be some sense of elemental danger and elementary decency in man which will appear when fall-out facts are faced...
...Some heavy rocks are usually blown up the side of the crater, where they may remain perilously poised until moved...
...The conscience of countless individuals suggests an answer without waiting for a "rationale...
...What is the rationale for a ban or moratorium on testing...
...they fall and land in a somewhat random pattern...
...The British Medical Council has warned that the MPC for the growing tissues of children should be far less than for adults, and believes adults' MPC should be one-tenth of the "occupational" MPC...
...Agreeing not to dust each other's continents with potential doom could provide a little purer atmosphere in international relations...
...Now it is doing something comparable when it makes all calculations on the basis of present rates of bomb-testing, when actually the rate of testing continues to rise...
...Apparently there is a category of bombs whose effects may be considered local, if not, as Admiral Strauss puts it, humanitarian...
...The fire ball of an H-bomb may be miles in diameter...
...Aside from conscience, the basic argument for a moratorium on super weapon tests is that it is in the national interest of all nations...
...Rain does an amazing job of washing the air...
...Some of the energy comes off as neutron radiation, and is dissipated almost instantly...
...But the dust doesn't stay there...
...otherwise there would be far more radiation-induced mutations...
...Perhaps just around the corner is the continent-sized bomb...
...but their fall is still an echo of the first blast...
...No man would...
...This might be compared to the potent but latent energy we find left over in those rock-blasting operations where dynamite is used...
...It is probably falling on your front lawn this minute...
...Only when it is over the threshold is the characteristic ef-lect caused...
...But beyond the ordinary bombs come those measured in megatons_ that means millions of tons...
...This means that when it falls from the sky in rain it is picked up by plants in a normal manner, and when it is taken into the body it travels in a normal way to the same anatomical places as calcium...
...by MICHAEL AMRINE THE Presidential election of 1956 may be remembered in history for dealing with the largest question before the house of man: whether possible atomic wars could be averted by some political measures, perhaps starting with a ban on weapons tests...
...As iodine in the body goes to the thyroid, or iron to the blood, strontium goes to the bone, and stays there...
...Several years ago his television series, "Atomic Report," won Variety's award as the "best public service program of the year...
...The miners of the Urals and the constituents of Senator Knowland would have no sense that their privacy was being invaded...
...No election will settle Asian or European concern over the major powers' giant weapons...
...His vague-sounding argument would be that he did not know exactly what the loss oi a tree here and there meant, but perhaps the sum total would affect the natural balance of land, crops, and water in a way men could not foresee...
...Is the strontium 90 now in the atmosphere or likely to get into your teeth a negligible amount...
...It will stay there an estimated average time of ten years— some comes down somewhere every day...
...Then, like calcium—and like plu-tonium and radium—strontium is what is known as a "bone-seeker...
...Chemically it is a close cousin of calcium, and for most biological processes it will double perfectly in the place of calcium...
...It is ordinarily applied to short-term exposures on the job, where persons have elected to work in an atomic laboratory, where they are warned not to take too many outside X-rays...
...So this is the case for being frightened by strontium, by fall-out, and by our own and the Russians' tests...
...But one tactical bomb, such as either we or the Russians can rig to produce extra radiation, could guarantee the end of the Suez problem for our time...
...Such a man's instinct not to make widespread changes in the face of nature without being sure of all end-results would have been justified by the Hood-drouth pattern of today...
...Their attitude is similar to that of a man in the Mississippi Valley in 1870 who might have objected to cutting down so many trees...
...The particles are very small...
...Willard F. Libby, long famous for his radiation research, in recent years has been a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, and has become its chief technical spokesman on these matters...
...At that saturation time we will all learn new meanings for the word blackmail, or the word "brink...
...So the world will be watching our further discussion of the test-ban idea...
...in a single day he has left only half of his pay...
...Uranium and plutonium bombs, like those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, send up a mushroom cloud five or six miles high...
...It spreads through the thin air all over the outside layers of our atmosphere, not just in a.band...
...That ultimate point will depend upon something unknown at present: just how much strontium will the human body accept in lieu of calcium...
...Strontium 90 is one of the most plentiful of these problem products...
...For this and for other reasons, a test-ban could be a great step towards establishing more trust between the East and West...
...Calcium builds bones and teeth...
...Some of the energy of the blasted and shattered atoms of an atomic explosion comes forth for days, for years, or thousands of years, from MICHAEL AMRINE, formerly managing editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist^ has worked closely with Harold Urey and the late Albert Einstein in the preparation of scientific materials for laymen...
...Libby is chided by his fellow-scientists for applying a standard from such a limited area to prolonged radiation, in fact, lifelong radiation coming from the sky to our bones in food we eat...
...And remember, from the geneticist's point of view, there is no permissible level, because the tiniest amount may still start a chain of faulty heredity many generations long...
...One of Adlai Stevenson's apparent campaign weaknesses was that his early nuclear statements seemed to favor the unilateral approach...
...These atomic "boulders" of course, are ludicrously tiny...
...So, even if it were raining vitamins, the size of this change in nature would give any reasonable man pause...
...The basic difference is that so much heat and blast is created that great quantities of radioactive dust are carried far above the earth, above 55,000 feet—so far, so good...
...In many physical and chemical effects, when a new force is introduced upon an object or a living thing, the force, if it starts from zero, has to build up to a "threshold...
...Humanity will reach another terror-point when both sides have intercontinental missiles that can travel 16.000 miles an hour, and comedown within five miles of a target five thousand miles away...
...this is a definition of explosion—-energy released swiftly...
...However, the Federation of American Scientists, through a private Committee on Radiation Hazards, points out that comparison with more day-to-day hazards does not imply that the dumage from bomb tests is negligible...
...Negligible to whom in what way...
...One of his main points is that in two or three decades of the present type and frequency of testing, the amount of strontium 90 in human beings might rise to only about three per cent of the Maximum Permissible Concentration (MPC...
...Strontium 90, if enough were concentrated together, could cause a cancer in a human or animal body, and since it is most likely to be in a bone, a bone tumor would be a prime possibility...
...The Geigers of the United Nations could monitor Russia, the United Stales, or any other area on earth, from stations outside the respective countries...
...If Soviet Russia gets it before we do, she could blackmail us with threats of destroying our whole country...
...Even one-tenth of an inch will bring down 90 per cent of dust particles in the rainy area...
...one line would be those bombs which thrust up beyond 40,-000 feet...
...Of course, there is probably a stronger case for unilateral action here than in the case of any other aspect of preparedness...
...There may come, at some stage of this electronic-atomic jungle, a time when it will be impossible to build any kind of international trust at all...
...Strontium 90 is one of hundreds of fission products, most of which will be produced in any kind of fission, whether in bombs or power...
...How long will it be there...
...But it may not be a negligible figure, for that word depends upon your sense of values...
...Still, the alpha, beta, or gamma radiation which comes from the fragments left after fusion or fission represents a kind of settling, a return to equilibrium...
...In its natural, non-radioactive form it is perfectly harmless...
...So Federation scientists feel it is "clear" there are some areas where the normal balance of calcium-strontium is severely upset, and where animals and human beings may soon be carrying close to or more than their MPC...
...The critics say they already knew that...
...Franco...
...When we test most of the other hammers of Mars we do not do it by hitting ourselves on the head...
...Unless men learn well and act moderately, the experiment of man will end with a cloud as the shroud of the great globe itself...
...The test proponents say we are levelling off on big tests, and the accelerated pace of explosions since 1945 is not a guide for the future...
...Some radioactive elements are less dangerous to man because their radiation life is short...
...Preventive action against the strontium point of no return would be a clear step towards avoiding these other, more dangerous terror points...
...Strontium 90 is therefore going to be found behaving chemically the way that calcium does, whether it is in nature at large, or inside you and me...
...the slightest amount is dangerous...
...The spokesmen for the Federation of American Scientists and others point out that the amount taken up relates to the average concentration of calcium...
...So today, many scientists would rather not have any more strontium 90 dumped from the sky...
...There is plenty of room for argument as to whether it makes sense to stop our own super-tests, unilaterally...
...The clouds from the smaller bombs of the Russian and American tests stay in the same general latitude in which they are released, as if malevolent Mars had sprinkled voodoo dust from his fingers time after time, round one strip of the shining apple we call home...
...But there is another kind of continuing energy release, radiation-energy...
...A Peron...
...Then he writes off the big bills...
...Radiation is particularly damaging to three kinds of body tissue: the white cells of the blood, the retina of the eye, and the reproductive genes...
...The MPC itself is based upon "tolerance doses" of radiation ordinarily used in laboratories...
...it comes from H-bombs, and descends on our heads in a way different from the "old" uranium fall-out...
...Eventually it floats down to where rain, mist, or fog will meet it and sift the cloud over all the lands and waters of the earth...
...by the next day he has only half of that half, or a quarter of the original amount...
...Most people know that matter can be turned into energy (and vice versa), as Einstein first established, although perhaps few persons besides Einstein have really felt at home with the idea...
...And belatedly the U.S...
...Radiologists and geneticists have been perturbed for years over carelessness in X-ray rooms or the excessive use of X-rays on women who are pregnant or wish to become pregnant...
...government has revealed that the new bombs produce a quite different effect...
...By convection and blast much contaminated earth-dust rises towards the stratosphere and travels far and wide...
...All informed scientists, regardless of their views on disarmament or politics, say there is not enough radiation in sight from the strontium 90 in the atmosphere for this to happen to anyone from the strontium now let loose...
...The basic assumption is that we must "keep ahead...
...Calcium-hungry children would therefore pick up more strontium from their food...
...Now what do the doctors say about the present amounts of radiation an average citizen may receive in (he ordinary course of his life...
...It is estimated that about 24 million tons of fission products are now "stored" in the stratosphere...
...A pot of water can receive a lot of heat over a 24-hour period, and yet it will not boil unless at one particular time there is enough heat to push over the threshold of 212 degrees...
...From time to time the military talks of tactical bombs in war, as if they would be in quite a different dimension from the H-wars of the Sunday suplements...
...These rocks represent an unstable rearrangement in which the energy which dislocated them is likely to appear again in a new form when they slip and fall...
...The kind of radioactive fall-out which is now distributing "hot" particles over the whole world is new...
...There must be some minimum amount of trust among nations, some minimum of privacy and respect...
...This would not seem beyond the wit of man...
Vol. 21 • February 1957 • No. 2
