reprinted with permission from
No Immediate Danger, Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, by
Dr Rosalie Bertell
The Book Publishing Company -- Summertown, Tennessee 38483
ISBN 0-913990-25-2
pages 15-63.
Karl Z. Morgan, `Suggested Reduction of Permissible
Exposure to Plutonium and Other Transuranium Elements', American
Industrial Hygiene Association Journal, August 1975, pp. 567-75.
N. Kochupillai, I. C. Verma, et al., 'Down's Syndrome and
Related Abnormalities in the Area of High Background Radiation in
Coastal Kerala', Nature, 262: 60, 1976.
P. M. E. Sheehan and I. B. Hillary, `An Unusual Cluster of
Down's Syndrome, Born to Past Students of an Irish Boarding School',
British Medical Journal, vol 287, 12 November 1983. Also
Letters and Author's reply, British Medical Journal, vol
288, 14 January 1984.
Carl J. Johnson, `Cancer Incidence in an Area of Radioactive
Fallout Downwind from the Nevada Test Site', Journal of the
American Medical Association, vol 251, no. 2, 13 January 1984.
Karl Z. Morgan, `Risk of Cancer from Low Level Exposure to
Ionizing Radiation', American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Washington, DC, 17 February 1978.
A. M. Stewart, `Delayed Effects of A-Bomb Radiation: A Review
of Recent Mortality Rates and Risk Estimates for Five-year Survivors',
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol 36, no. 2,
June 1982, pp. 80-6.
R. Bertell, Letter to the Interagency Task Force on Low-Level
Ionizing Radiation (director F. Peter Libassi); published in
Public Comments on the Work Group Reports, US Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, June 1979.
S. Macht and P. Lawrence, `National Survey of Congenital
Malformations Resulting from Exposure to Roentgen Radiation',
American Journal of Roentgenology, 76, 1955, pp. 442-66.
Recommended by pioneer researchers A. Mutscheller and R. M. Sievert
in 1925. Recommended for international use by the forerunner of the
International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in
1934. Used in most countries until 1950.
Recommended by ICRP, April 1956 and US NCRP, 8 January 1957, for
total body exposure. This allows for 5 rem per year combined dose from
sources external to the body, ingested or inhaled sources. This
standard is used in most countries of the world today.
See op cit., note 12, pp. 96 and 123. British, Canadian
and American nuclear physicists met in Chalk River, Canada in September
1949 and at Buckland House, UK in August 1950 to agree on radiation-dose
levels for workers. Their recommendations were accepted by ICRP.
ICRP Publication 2, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1959. See also
Statistics Needed for Determining the Effects of Environment on
Health, US DHEW Publication no. (HRA) 77-1459 (1977).
For information on past and present nuclear tests in Nevada
contact: Citizen's Call, 1321 East 400 South. Salt Lake City, Utah
84102, USA. Official reports on nuclear tests in Nevada are available
from the US Department of Energy which operates the test
site: Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 to
December 1983. NVO-209 (REV.4), January 1984.
`Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation', UN Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, Report to the General
Assembly, nos. 90-91, 1977.
For ongoing information on atomic veterans contact: International
Association of Atomic Veterans, 236 Massachusetts Avenue. N.E., Suite 306,
Washington, DC 20002, USA (tel: 202-543-7711).
Personal correspondence to the author from Karl Z. Morgan, first
Chairperson of the Committee on Internal Exposures, ICRP and director
of the health physics programme at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and
Neely Professor, School of Nuclear Engineering, Georgia Institute of
Technology.