RADIATION DANGERS

On March 1, 1954 a thermonuclear bomb test named Bravo Shot -Operation Castle in the Marshall Islands accidentally exposed about 300 Marshall Island residents and U. S. military personnel to dangerously high levels of radioactive fallout. Unprotected by potassium iodide supplements (now available to French citizens, but not to most Americans) many of the exposed individuals, especially the children, developed thyroid tumors and other thyroid abnormalities.

These people have been studied extensively during subsequent years as summarized in "Historical Events Associated with Fallout from Bravo Shot - Operation Castle and 25 Y of Medical Findings'' by E. P. Cronkite, R. A. Conrad. and V. P. Bond, Health Physics 73, No. 1, pp 176-189 (1997).

Although some of these people suffered short-term depression of blood production, beta burns on their skin, and measurable internal contamination by fission products in addition to thyroid damage, the authors found, "Survival curves for the people exposed on Rongelap, Ailinginae, Utirik, and Rongelap unexposed people show there is no significant difference. Actually of those exposed on Rongelap and Ail-inginae, there was a slightly higher fraction alive in 1986.''

Now that America is safe from nuclear attack because most foreign arsenals of nuclear weapons are in the hands of the peace-loving leaders who burned the Russian Parliament, leveled Chechnya, and cleansed Tiananmen Square, we seem only to need potassium iodide to protect us from the odd terrorist or accident. Radiation hormesis will apparently at least cancel fallout radiation effects on lifespan.