Attachment 1 January 18, 1995 transcript classified as "secret" of the Biophysics Conference held in Washington, DC United States Atomic Energy Commission Division of Biology and Medicine In the Matter of: Biophysics Conference Place - Washington, DC Date - January 18, 1995 Pages 1-196 Anderson Reporting Company Official Reporters (illegible) Ninth Street, NW Washington 4, DC 1 United States Atomic Energy Commission 2 Division of Biology and Medicine 3 4 Biophysics Conference 5 6 Room 1201, T-3 Building 7 Washington, DC 8 Tuesday, January 18, 1995 9 10 The Biophysics Conference convened at 9:00 a.m. with the following in attendance: 11 Forest Western, AEC 12 John Bugher, AEC 13 R.A. Dudley, AEC 14 H. Wechsler, USWB 15 Lester Machta, USWB 16 William W. Kellogg, Rand Corp. 17 Jerald E. Hill, Rand Corp. 18 A.E. Brandt, AEC, NYOO 19 Roy E. Albert, AEC 20 N.S. Hall, AEC 21 N.D. Greenberg, Lt. Col., AEC 22 Gordon Dunning, AEC 23 Walter D. Claus, AEC 24 Kenneth W. Erickson, Sandia-(illegible) 25 Edward A. Martell, U. of Chicago Edward S. Gilfillen, Jr., Oro, Jhu Rox D. Maxwell, AFSWP Harold H. Mitchell, M.D., AFSWP Ronald G. Menzel, USDA Victor J. Kilmer, USDA Sterling Hendricks, USDA Kermit H. Larson, AEP,UCLA W.F. Libby, AEC H.L. Volchok, Lamont Geo, OBS J. Lawrence Kulp, Lamont /Observatory George A. Helford, AEC Ira B. Whitney, AEC John H. Harley, AEC Lyle T. Alexander, USDA Merril Eisenbud, AEC 1 1 Proceedings 2 Dr. Bugher: We will come to order, please. 3 We are a little late, and I notice the clock is four 4 minutes slow anyway. 5 The conference here as before is a classified 6 conference. I will assume that no one who is present is 7 not cleared for restricted data. I also will ask Dr. Dudley 8 to make sure that we have circulated a sheet of paper for 9 each one to sign his name and his affiliation so that we 10 have an incontrovertible record of attendance. There seem 11 to be more people in the room than the list of names I have. 12 So the conference seems to have grown somewhat from the small 13 working one that we first had in mind. 14 This rather reflects the expanded interest in 15 the subject, I think, insomuch as at the time we met last 16 here we were concerned with planning in part for the 17 securing of the maximum amount of data that we could get 18 from the Castle operation. 19 We now have the possibility of hearing from 20 various people how ell those plans worked out and how we 21 stand with reference to the problem as a whole. We are all 22 aware that the whole problem implied in Gabriel-Sunshine 23 had increased in its consequences and certainly in public 24 interest since we last met. The events of this Spring during 25 the Castle series were such as to bring very dramatically 2 1 to the public attention the fundamental character of the 2 things with which we are dealing and the necessity for 3 precise knowledge and good prediction. 4 The picture we had two years ago of being able to 5 continue in a reasonable measured pace with respect to 6 problems i n environmental contamination has obviously not 7 been possible to maintain. That is, events have overtaken us, 8 and we must of necessity put on an unaccelerated program here 9 as an expression of the fact that weapons have taken an 10 enormous leap in energy release during the intervening time. 11 We are, however, in some aspects in a gratifying 12 situation. It is always much more satisfying scientifically 13 to know what one is talking about, and if you think back 14 over the past years you will realize that at the time of 15 the last conference, particularly, we had data from which 16 to talk rather than speculation. We hope that during 17 the day this situation will be even more satisfactory to you. 18 We have a great deal of factual material. We have 19 obvious need for a great deal more. But nonetheless we are 20 able, I think, now to speak quantitatively of many of these 21 factors in environment and base our future planning on what 22 is fairly clearly lacking in a quantitative sense. 23 I think it is perhaps not pertinent at the moment 24 to go too much into these problems, but I think if you keep 25 in mind during the day that the many very important things 3 1 which remain to be determined are very fundamental -- 2 such matters as the rate with which such elements as 3 strontium 90 mix into the whole environment, both the 4 inanimate and the biologic environment, the rate at which 5 such material may reach equilibrium in nature is something 6 that we have not yet determined, but it is very fundamental to 7 the whole problem. 8 The ultimate implication biologically of these 9 problems of environmental contamination have not been assessed. 10 You will have noted the great upsurge of comments by 11 geneticists, for example, which range all the way from one 12 of extreme apprehension at the one end, to almost equally 13 extreme disregard of the whole subject on the other. The thing 14 that is wrong is that they are all talking largely from a 15 basis of opinion rather than conclusion. 16 I met with a group of geneticists not long ago and 17 told them that they had to regard themselves now as a branch 18 of science which had grown up, and they had to accept certain 19 responsibilities, and realize that they could not with 20 complete intellectual stability, if you want to call it that, 21 or freedom, perhaps, indulge in all sorts of speculation 22 based on nothing at all particularly except a desire to be 23 dramatic. They have now a social responsibility which they 24 must recognize and that we would be very grateful for 25 scientific conclusions based on good data. We would be less 4 1 grateful for pure opinion based on nothing at all. But 2 nonetheless, we will continue, I think, to be subjected to 3 a great many pressures which spring from serious concern, 4 even though the individual concerned may not be in full 5 possession of good facts. 6 I see I am down here for purpose, scope and goals 7 of conference. They are the same as before, of course. To 8 re-examine what we have learned during these past months 9 since the last conference, to try and put all of this material 10 in perspective, to see how nearly we can come to answering 11 some of the essential questions of Gabriel-Sunshine. 12 In this conference the problem of strontium 90 13 is of special emphasis, and to lay out what more is needed 14 in the immediate future. I think you will be pleased part 15 of the time and you will be disturbed part of the time during 16 the day at our present status. We have gone a long way in the 17 last two years, and we are faced with some problems of major 18 character for which at the moment we do not have adequate data 19 and yet it is most important that those data be accumulated -- 20 some of them -- within the very near future. We do not, 21 I think, expect to lay before you a completely satisfactory 22 situation. There is a certain sense of urgency which will 23 come out during the day in some of these aspects. 24 I think we will consider those to be my opening 25 remarks for whatever they are worth, and get to some remarks 5 1 of more specific substance. We are fortunate in having 2 Dr. Libby with us, on the Commission now, and while his time 3 is not wholly his own, as is true with most people around 4 here, he has been able to get away from other things 5 and spend at least part of the day with us. 6 I would like to turn the floor over to Dr. Libby 7 now for his comments on our program. 8 Commissioner Libby: Thank you, John. 9 I am sure that the importance of the Sunshine Project 10 is obvious to all of you, but to keep the record straight, 11 I would like to say that there is no effort which the AEC 12 is engaged in which to my mind is more important than this 13 project. 14 I would like to remark a little bit about the data 15 as obtained so far. There are great gaps in them. I think 16 we can feel quite proud that we have as much as we have 17 but there are very great gaps in the data, and it should be 18 our prime objective to fill those holes. I don't think I 19 need to tell you what these gaps are. They are probably 20 obvious to all of us. Again to keep the record straight I 21 will mention the most important of these. 22 By far the most important is human smaples. We. 23 have been reduced to essentially zero level on the human 24 samples. I don't know how to get them, but I do say that 25 it is a matter of prime importance to grt them and particularly 6 1 in the young age group. It is clear, I think, from the 2 data and from the systematic of the biosphere that adults 3 are not of much interest in that adults are not expected to 4 pick up strontium 90 or to have picked it up, and though we 5 should from time to time check with adult materials, adult 6 materials will not in general serve our purposes. 7 We were fortunate, as you know to obtain a large 8 number of still born babies as material. This supply, 9 however, has now been cut off also, and shows no signs, I 10 think, of being rejuvenated. These were not perfect samples. 11 These materials undoubtedly reflected the metabolic pool 12 of the mother, and were therefore low in their assay. As you 13 recall, they ran about 1/6000th of tolerance, so we might 14 suppose that equilibrium humans -- if we can define this 15 being as one who has been raised and has lived his whole 16 life on the strontium 90 contaminated calcium which we measure 17 in the milk shed samples, in the soil samples and the calf 18 bone samples -- the equilibrium human I should imagine would 19 be about as contaminated as the calf bones. 20 This is not too comforting because the calf bones 21 run about -- I have forgotten the number -- 1/300th of 22 tolerance. 1/300ths of tolerance on the calf bones at least 23 would seen to me to mean that one to three year old children 24 would have the same tolerance if we could get the samples. 25 We have never had such a sample. we have never had a single 7 1 individual in this range. We have had certain pool samples 2 consisting of operative materials of rather small amount. 3 There is a dangerous thing to watch here. When you get a 4 small sample of bone, the error of measurement may be 5 too large to make the sample of any use. 6 We must also watch in operative materials to be sure 7 that they are significant. I don't know that you would 8 expect a forearm would differ from the whole body ash or not. 9 DR. BUGHER: That is one of the things to be 10 determined,l think. 11 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: We must be careful. 12 So human samples are of prime importance and if 13 if anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they 14 will really be serving their country. 15 I see another gap which is very serious, and that 16 is in the ocean. We tried at Chicago to measure ocean water 17 and were never able to do it. We didn't try hard enough. I 18 am sure it can be done. It has not been done to my knowledge 19 So we ought to work on the ocean. 20 In some other connections a colleague of mine 21 and I at the University of Chicago just before I came down 22 here, obtained a most interesting result, namely, that the 23 oceans mixed to a depth of 100 meters in a period of 18 24 years on a world wide basis. The evidence for this might 25 interest you. 8 1 The cosmic ray tritium content of surface ocean 2 water is on fifth of the content of the ocean rain. The 3 lifetime of tritium is 18 years. You figure this out and 4 it means one hundred meters is the equivalent mixing depth 5 for dilution of rain by seawater in 18 years. 6 This has important consequences for fission product dis- 7 posal in that what we thought was an infinite sink if 8 this result is right. Maybe this result is wrong. You call 9 examine those data if you will from that point of view. If 10 this result is right, we can expect that the soluble fission 11 products will be retained in the top 100 meters of seawater 12 essentially indefinitely. 13 What is happening to strontium in this respect. 14 Strontium is not soluble. It is not very soluble. The 15 question whether the strontium is there or not I think is one 16 of some importance and some interest. It is probable 17 that the fish, since they live in this top 100 meters, will 18 come to a level of strontium 90 essentially I suppose the 19 as this top 1OO meters of soluble calcium. So I think it is 20 an important objective to check the strontium 90 content of 21 seawater, and compare it with the strontium 90 content of 22 fish living in the sea. 23 One can easily show that if this 100 meters is 24 right. Seafood is always going to be pretty low. It is even 25 going to be a difficult measurement to make. This affords 9 1 a wonderful opportunity to integrate the total strontium 2 fallout, and we should do it for this reason as well as 3 assurance that our general understanding of the whole 4 strontium 90 problem is correct. 5 One other gap of less importance is in the sampling 6 of air. I think you probably noticed as you have looked at 7 the data there is some system and sense in the soil data in 8 that if you integrate to the center of the earth, so to speak 9 -- that is, integrate down a foot or so -- there is not as 10 large a variation from spot to spot as there is if you take 11 top one inch. In other words, if you take soil samples and 12 take all the strontium 90 contained in them, then there is 13 a regularity in this integrated total strontium 90 fallout 14 as recorded in the soils which indicates that soil sampling 15 in itself affords the opportunity to measure the total 16 strontium 90 fallout. 17 In additional chance to check on this is by 18 measuring the strontium 00 content of rain, which, of course, 19 is the means by which the bulk of the strontium 90 gets in 20 the soil. If you take the rain data that are available, 21 you will find that these numbers are not too unreasonable. 22 Presumably there is in the atmosphere some place 23 a storehouse of strontium 90 which makes it possible that 24 the rain be contaminated by strontium 90 months after any 25 bomb test. There is only one place for this, and 10 1 above the tropopause. So high atmospheric sampling is of 2 extreme importance, and you gentlemen in New York have done 3 a very good work on that. I think more needs to be done. 4 I am not sure that we know the right methods. I think there 5 is no doubt that this is an extremely important objective. 6 What are we aiming at? We are aiming at an equation 7 which shows us that everything checks. We should have the 8 storage time of strontium 90 In the stratosphere. We should 9 have the strontium 90 content of the stratosphere. We 10 should settle that rain is the mechanism by which strontium 11 90 is carried down, once it gets below thee tropopause. 12 I am sure that this is it, but his need to be proven. 13 We should show that all of these things check. 14 What are those things? The content of strontium 15 90 in the sea, the content of strontium 90 in sea rain, 16 the content of strontium 90 in land level, in high level 17 atmospherics, and in ordinary air, as recorded by air filters 18 plus the frequency with which the air is washed down by rain. 19 When these things are all measured and checked, I am 20 confident they will fit together. 21 Then we can say without doubt that we know what 22 we are talking about when we say there is so much strontium 23 90 in the atmosphere, and so much has fallen. In other words 24 what we are aiming at is a complete worldwide assay for 25 strontium 90, not only in the biosphere, but in the 11 1 lithosphere itself. We must have the whole world assay 2 for strontium 90 with the objective of finding out its effect 3 on human life. 4 These are also all the gaps I see. I think that there 5 probably are some more, but I think these are the major ones. 6 I don't know how to snatch bodies. In the original study 7 on the Sunshine at Rand in the summer of 1953, we hired an 8 expensive law firm to look up the law of body snatching. 9 This compendium is available to you. It is not very 10 encouraging. It shows you how very difficult it is going to 11 be to do it legally. We may be able to help -- I speak now of 12 the Commission -- in that we hope to downgrade the Sunshine 13 classification. At last the existence of the project I hope 14 we will get away with revealing. Whether this is going to 15 help in the body snatching problem, I don't know. I think it 16 will. It is a delicate problem in public relations, obviously. 17 I don't know. This is a major objective. 18 There are certain points in the data which are 19 intriguing to me. I guess you notice that calf that Dr. 20 Martell measured which was 18 sunshine units. Was there any- 21 thing extraordinary about that calf? 22 DR. ALEXANDER: It is in a higher rainfall area in 22 Wales. The three calves from the east side of Britain in the 23 low rainfall area are rather consistent, and down a third or 24 so. 25 12 1 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: It is very Interesting to see 2 that you can explain that. Perhaps it follows from that 3 there are palliative measures. Last summer in Berkeley 4 I took a week off and worked on the problem of purifying milk. 5 We took milk and loaded it with strontium isotope and 6 calcium isotope for tracer and removed the alkaline earths 7 with ion exchange resin, first by using a column, and then by 8 just stirring the powder. Stirring the powder worked very 9 well. It was possible to remove the calcium and strontium 10 from the milk essentially completely, by adding, I would say, 11 a couple of tablespoonfuls of rosin to a pint of milk. 12 I guess it was less than that. Maybe half a pint of milk -- 13 and stir it and lot it settle. 14 I don't know whether this is conceivable as an 15 economic method of the purification of the milk, but I think 16 it is something that should be followed up. Milk is the main 17 way in which strontium gets into use, and I think it certainly 18 should be followed up. 19 The questions are, is this thing cheap enough and 20 is the milk still nutritive. Of course, you would enviously 21 have to fortify it with calcium afterwards, but have some 22 other essential values been removed in this treatment. 22 The whole problem of palliative measures which I 23 think nobody on Sunshine has had any time to give any thought 24 to really, if it be true that soils rich in calcium produce 13 1 particularly safe food, this is not an unimportant 2 observation. I must say it certainly seems reasonable. 3 DR. ALEXANDER: Dr. Harley will have some data to 4 present today on the lowest place we know in the United States 5 down at Tipton. I went down there this fall and picked 6 an improved pasture, compared with this native range, and it 7 is reflected both in the vegetation and bones of the animals. DR. KULP: Concerning this human material we have 9 excellent sources in three places for human material. They 10 are entirely measurable. 11 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: How big were they? 12 DR. KULP: Two to 20 grams. 13 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: But these more adults. 14 DR. KULP: The examples we are getting will cover 15 the entire range. 16 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: The only ones that are of 17 interest are the young ones. Is this true? 18 DR. BUGHER: No. 19 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: Why are adults interesting? 20 There is no strontium in them. 21 DR. KULP: There is some strontium in the 30 year 22 olds. It cuts off at about 40. 23 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: Really? How many Sunshine units? 24 DR. KULP: . 1, . 2 . 25 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: That is very frightening. 14 1 is your error? 2 DR. KULP: .02. 3 DR. MARTELL: We just completed measuring for 4 calcium adult samples and those assayed .001, plus or minus 5 .001, and they are essentially dead now. There might be some 6 basic reason for this, but the adult samples do not took 7 Interesting to us. 8 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: Let us bear down on this point 9 a bit. It certainly seems reasonable that the calcium in 10 adults is pro-atomic. Isn't this reasonable? 11 DR. BUGHER: Mostly. 12 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: Therefore, it will have to 13 be lower than youngsters. 14 DR. KULP: I certainly would not debate this. 15 What ere the ages of these? 16 MR. MARTELL: These are in the ages above 20. 17 DR. KULP: Do you know exactly the age? 18 DR. MARTELL: I have lot received the full detail. 19 DR. KULP: This is very important. 20 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: You can got it today? 21 DR. KULP: We have 20 to 30 samples completed now 22 ranging from 70 down and they are indeed dead at 40, and then 23 they pick up. It happens those are the earliest to get. Up 24 to new we have Cotton down to 30, and they increase at 30, 25 and at 30 we have three samples that are .2. 15 1 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: What part of the body is this? 2 DR. KULP: These were ribs. 3 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: Is there any reason that ribs 4 would interchange calcium faster? 5 DR. BUGHER: The difficulty there is we haven't 6 yet any good analysis of different locations in the same 7 individual. That remains to be done. Whether or not the 8 ribs constitute a fair sample of the whole body pool I really 9 don't know, but that is something to be demonstrated. 10 DR. KULP: The main point I wanted to bring up now 11 was not to get into a detailed discussion of the date, but 12 to emphasize that we have the channels in these places where 13 we are getting everything. We have three or four other leads 14 where we could get complete age range samples from different 15 other geographic localities. These three are Vancouver, 16 Houston and New York. We could easily get them from Puerto 17 Rico and other places. We can get virtually every one that 18 dies in this range. 19 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: These are operative materials? 20 DR. KULP: No. This is all deaths between one and 21 thirty. 22 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: That is wonderful. 23 DR. KULP: We have 20 coming from Vancouver and 20 24 from Houston in this range that have already been taken. So 25 the channel is there, and the samples are flowing in. 16 1 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: This is fine, larry. 2 Maybe you can reveal your technique to the other groups. 3 DR. WESCHLER: May I make a comment about the slow 4 rate of mixing in the ocean? I am very puzzled by that. 5 Just from energy considerations, it seems as if the mixing 6 should be much more rapid. For example, knowing how much 7 solar radiation falls, and how much it sends back 8 in space in rough numbers, and knowing also the very small 9 seasonal range of temperature at the sea surface, it seems 10 that if the net heat which is given must be mixed through a 11 layer at least 100 meters thick in the order of days,certainly 12 within a year. 13 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: It mixes air incidentally, 14 but it doesn't go beyond. 15 DR. WESCHLER: I thought you said 18 years. 16 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: I am sorry. What I meant is 17 this. The rain falls and it mixes immediately, but it 18 doesn't go beyond. 19 DR. WESCHLER: 100 meters. 20 MR. EISENBUD: We have data to support that. 21 COMMISSIONER LIBBY: It is stratification. The 22 only thing we have added to it, Dr. Wechsler, is the time. 23 The oceanographers have long known about this stratification 24 that they didn't have the time. Maybe we haven't got it, but 25 that is what our data indicate -- 18 years. We have 17 1 that is a very interesting point. The argument hangs 2 together qualitatively. I am not suggesting that it is 3 quantitative. 4 DR. CLAUS: In order not to put the squeeze on 5 Dr. Kulp's preparation, will you make it a point to bring 6 this up this afternoon in the discussion of the possible 7 future program as being something which might be looked at 8 very seriously in continuing studies on the whereabouts of 9 materials? 10 Dr. Kulp. 11 DR. KULP I would like to separate my remarks 12 into a few comments on technique development during the past 13 year, a summary of some of our results which I think are 14 sufficiently now that many of you have not seen them -- in 15 fact, some of the critical points have come up only in the 16 last two months with some of the samples that have been 17 measured -- and finally just a word or two about our 18 present intentions for the immediate future. 19 Regarding technique, we have worked along with 20 this low level beta counter which was described in detail 21 in our last annual report. It has proven very simple 22 in operation and very reproducible and we now have a routine 23 background of 2.40 plus or minus .01 reproducible from week 24 to week and day to day. 25 This enables us to take relatively small samples 78 1 and as long as we can allow accounting time of at least 2 a day we can do with fair precision down to samples of one 3 gram or two. 4 Obviously you would like to get smaller than this, 5 but with human examples, this is it. 6 Secondly, with technique, we have recently 7 developed a change in our chemical procedure which we thin 8 is a significant improvement. This may be of interest only 9 to a very few of you here, but I think a word is worthwhile. 10 Those of us who have been running those bone and cheese 11 samples and milk samples have been aware that the calcium 12 phosphate milking, the yttrium phosphate milking is quite 13 a messy step. You have to run it hot. You have to control 14 the pill. You have to filter and the temperature and pH changes. 15 It is common with this milking to wind up with a very 16 dirty looking precipitate. This does not make a large 17 difference, but it is not the kind of thing you like. 18 Within the last six months we have ben able to 19 develop a procedure in which we first precipitate the 20 calcium strontium at a pH below one, then we ignite this to 21 calcium oxide, and take it up to calcium chloride, and we have a 22 a simple clean solution. There are no problems after that. 23 All you have to add is the yttrium carrier, raise the pH to 24 8 or 9, and then take this back to solution, and finally 25 precipitate. It is a nice coarse granulate oxylate for 79 1 counting. That seems to have been a worthwhile improvement. 2 Regarding the data, our main emphasis this year 3 has been on human samples. We have set up the following 4 stations for complete sampling. We have a center at 5 Vancouver, at Houston and New York. While the samples are 6 just coming in now, at least the younger samples -- when we 7 first asked for samples, we got the easiest ones which are 8 people over 60 years of age -- I think it would be worthwhile 9 to recount very briefly what these results show. 10 At the present time from the new York City area we 11 have age range, let us say, greater than 70 years, several 12 samples, all less than .01. Within the experimental area, 13 some of the experiments you can say less than .03. 14 DR. CLAUS: These are Sunshine units? 15 DR. KULP: Yes. In the age bracket of 60, we 16 have six or eight samples, and this is less than .01 or .02 17 depending on size of sample. 18 In the 50 range, we have four or five in this 19 report, and several others in the mill, and that is also 20 less than .01 and .02. 21 Then we get down in the forties, an the lowest 22 one we have that is less than .01 is .043. We have a 43 23 year old male there. 24 Then from the new York City area we have a 37 year 25 old male at .04. These people died in 1954. 34 year old 80 1 female, 0.7. This is a plus or minus .01, and the second 2 plus or minus .02. 3 We have a 32 year old male, .021 plus or minus .04. 4 We have a 31 year old male, .020, plus or minus .08. 5 Then we have an interesting pair of a mother 6 that died in childbirth, and the offspring, a 42 week old 7 fetus. The mother was 29 years old, gave .20 plus or minus 8 .05; the child, 42 weeks, gave .65 plus or minus .19, a 9 very small sample. 10 Down in Houston they don't have all these rules. 11 They claim that they can get virtually and they intend to 12 get virtually every death in the age range we are interested 13 in that occurs in the City of houston. They have a lot of 14 poverty cases and so on. They have at least one or two of 15 this kind of pair per month, which is an interesting thing 16 to look at. So we intend to get this. So far this is the 17 New York story. This involves a total of maybe 30 measurements. 18 We have now told our people in the medical school 19 to cut off here and only send us one or two in the forties 20 every once in a while. They are now concentrating and they 21 are gong to fill out between 40 and one. We have a good 22 guarantee in the next two months of at least 20 in that range. 23 From houston we have about 30 samples in the 24 laboratory of which at this time -- they all arrived i the 25 last month -- at this time we have only two of them. Let us 81 1 put them down under here. We have a Houston female, 25 2 years old, of .15 plus or minus .01. We have a 30 year 3 old male, .22 plus or minus .05. This has only been run 4 once. We can reduce this error. 5 In other areas, we have a Philippine Island 30 6 year old female, .17 plus or minus .04. Of course, we 7 have inter-compared with the New York group on this India 8 sample, which I might list, .15 plus or minus .02, a 16 to 9 20 year old. We don't know the sex. 10 It seems rather clear to us that it is of more 11 than casual interest to monitor in certain metropolitan 12 centers the age range from one to 40 and get as many of 13 these samples as we can. That is our present plan. 14 To say just a word about the next few months, we 15 expect between 10 and 20 samples per month of humans in 16 the range of one to 40 from all three of these sources. 17 DR. MITCHELL: Are these ribs? 18 DR. KULP: These are ribs. In the case of Houston 19 we have gotten some leg bone because they don't have to 20 worry how the individual looks when they get through. Most 21 of the Houston stuff will be rib. But they actually did 22 take out some pieces of leg. It seems to me that by June 23 or July we should have a very good picture of the current 24 curve in these areas, and this can be monitored continuously 25 if it is desirable. 82 1 Furthermore, before coming down to this conference 2 I talked at some length with the Dean of the Columbia 3 Medical School, and he has contacts all over the world where 4 he is sure we can develop identical programs. In particular, 5 we could develop a program in Australia, South America, 6 Africa, in the Near East, and in Scandinavian countries, if 7 the conference and the people here would like to have this 8 developed. Within a matter of three or four months this could 9 be set up so we could get 10 to 20 samples a month 10 from these sites integrating all the humans if we want to 11 see what the effect of diet and locality is. That is the 12 human story. 13 Next, during the summer we had a sample of ocean 14 water, ocean rain, and both cheese and bone in Europe. The 15 European samples ranged from Hammerfest, Norway, down to 16 southern Spain, and also the Azores.The value in this is that 17 we were able to obtain a current survey of the bone and cheese 18 materials there over a rather wide latitude range 19 to see what the status was in the summer of 1954. 20 Without taking time to write these down, in brief 21 the European cheeses are running one to three Sunshine units. 22 These were taken as far north as Norway. In the few cases 23 where we have comparison by date in early 1953, it looks 24 like one Sunshine unit and the summer of 1954 it looks like 25 two Sunshine units. We are getting this sort of increase. 83 1 controlled animal samples help in that they give some kind 2 of an upper measure as to what could happen if, for 3 instance, a population was all on vegetation. In other words, 4 an upper coiling that an ordinary population won't touch. 5 These one year old lamb samples are rather valuable for that 6 reason. 7 I agree with Dr. Libby this morning if you could 8 get three, four and five year old children, that would be good, 9 because that is a little hard to come by. 10 DR. BUGHER: It should not be difficult actually. 11 Any large medical center, particularly with an 12 active pediatrics service, could have quite a large number of 13 autopsies or children who have not had log and complicated 14 illnesses that would profoundly disturb their calcium 15 metabolism. It is a question of getting he people who 16 can make such material available. 17 DR. KULP: You have to have personal interest 18 in and almost a friendly tie to develop this, because you 19 have to have the medical records. Yet you have the security 20 problem to deal with, too. I found in those cases that we 21 have been able to develop that there was enough understanding 22 and confidence so that the man did not require you to tell 23 them anything except that they realized it was something 24 confidential. They could guess, and they probably didn't 25 guess very far wrong, but they were willing to cooperate just 186 1 on the basis that this was an important thing. I think with 2 this connection through one of the top medical people who 3 is internationally known, it will not be hard at all to be 4 able to establish the sites that we should establish. 5 DR. BUGHER: I think it is pertinent to remark on the 6 classification side of it, we are hoping to get this Sunshine 7 program, the existence of it, and its objectives, declassified. 8 I thought I had it a month ago, but something slipped. 9 I hope in the next few weeks we will get that in fact into 10 the public domain. 11 There is one other device which we are exploring 12 under the new act. There is the system of L clearance, 13 whereby when the need exists, we can disclose even restricted 14 data to individuals not Q cleared, but who have had a 15 preliminary check. That may be something which could be done 16 without that individual having to fill out any forms or 17 anything of the kind. We are exploring that mechanism. We 18 have not used it, but it looks like something that might be 19 useful at this point. 20 For this purpose you are not dealing with 21 irresponsible people. You are dealing with directors of 22 hospitals and pathologists, and persons in general who have 23 an understanding of the seriousness of the project in which 24 we are engaged, and yet that don't wish to go through all the 25 labor of complete Q clearance for this sort of need. We will 187 1 be able, I hope, soon to inform you as to the machinery 2 wjich can be used for that. 3 then the other isde of it is that we have a real 4 interest in other things in bones. I sometimes got worried 5 that we don't take full advantage of our material. We are 6 interested in trace elements of all kinds for that matter. 7 So we have a potential chemical study here which is quite 8 far reaching. 9 That thing that Dr. Kulp outlined is one way of 10 getting human material. Are there any other schemes which 11 we might employ? 12 Mr. Eisenbud: If you need to do it behind a blind 13 as you might even want to do it in the event it was 14 declassified -- you would still have a potential public 15 relations problem -- the blind could be the trace elements 16 program as we have discussed. I am currently exploring with 17 a medical examiner in New York the chance of using his 18 toxilogical experiments for that. There would be a three 19 way tie. We would give them a little support. That would 20 give them the incentive of correlating everything in the New 21 York metropolitan area, and we would take a slice of it. 22 Dr. Bugher: It sounds very good. 23 Dr. Kupl: What do you think of other metropolitan 24 centers in this country? Do you think we have this covered 25 enough? It seems to me that if you have ten stations supporting 188 1 work at this level, the other seven ought to be outside 2 but I would like to know the feeling of the group. It is 3 easy enough to establish enough in this country, but it 4 seems to be that New York, Houston, and Vancouver cover it. 5 Dr. Bugher: Dietary patterns do not differ to 6 much, do they? They are essentially dairy product consuming 7 people from one side to the other. When we get into Latin 8 America, the situation is quite different. We certainly 9 should have some resources in Central America and in South 10 America, Central Africa and Europe. 11 Col Maxwell: I am sure the Armed Services could 12 give you some hepl, but I am afraid it would be too much, 13 because they are scattered. There is no pattern as far as 14 the diet is concerned. It I think it could be worked. 15 Dr. Bugher: For specimens of local population. 16 Col. Maxwell: I wounldn't be surprised, but what 17 it could be worked otherwise, too. I don't know how extensive 18 it could be. What did you find out, bob, or did you find 19 anything out? 20 Dr. Dudley: I talked with them again a few days 21 ago. They do have some contacts and they listed certain 22 places from which they thought they might be able to get bones 23 abroad, but nothing really too extensive. They tried Europe 24 before and have gooten nothing from one particular individual 25 they know in Switzerland. Another person from (illegible) is going 189 1 to Germany shortly, and if we asked him, he would see what he 2 could get there through informal contacts. They also 3 have a man on Formosa working in a native hospital where 4 they could get samples and perhaps something from the 5 Philippines. They think we ought to get material from Cairo 6 through the Navy Unit there, whatever it is called. So they 7 did have a few spots where they thought it should be possible 8 to get samples, and I think probably something more can be 9 done with that than we have yet done. Of course, we did 10 approach them last year and got nothing. 11 Dr. Kulp: I think there is a serious problem there. 12 If you don't get enough samplesin a given period of time 13 in the age groups you want, you won't get the story. You 14 have to have intensive cooperation. It involves paying an 15 assistant to get the stuff out. That is what we do. You 16 don't have to pay him alot, but it has to be on a business- 17 like basis. 18 Dr. Bugher: That is a good point. I don't think 19 that in other areas where one wants human material collected 20 you have ever been successful unless you had someone locally 21 responsible who got paid by the sample. Over the years in 22 the Rockefeller Foundation in the yellow fever studies, we got 23 tons of thousands of liver specimens all through Latin America 24 by that scheme. Of course, we lost a few agents, too, who 25 got shot or knifed, but not very many, actually. 190 1 It was a complete failure in Africa, though, for 2 interesting reasons irrelevant to this thing. You almost 3 always have to have somebody who sees some reward for himself 4 in doing the work. It is too much to ask of people that they 5 maintain a pure exalted scientific enthusiasm and are just 6 collecting samples. 7 It may be that when you talk with the people at 8 Hartwell later this month, Dr. Dudley, you may be able to shake 9 loose a human specimens from the British colonies that 10 pay. I think they will have the same sort of difficulties 11 that we have. It is probably just as much a laborious thing 12 for them. 13 Are there any further points you would like to 14 bring up now in connection with this problem of human sampling? 15 There are two things which we want to do. One is to arrive 16 at the degree at which a particular bone may represent an 17 individual skeleton, and second, an acceleration of the 18 sample collection in those various respects that we have 19 mentioned, of age, location, and type of society. 20 It is now 5:25 and if there are points we have 21 missed, now is a good time to bring them up. Walter, do you 22 have something here? 23 Dr. Claus: I might make a very short (ill). You 24 have been getting off very easy. 25 I have been so oversome by the wealth of detail 191 1 presorted as to how to go about sampling that it is a bit 2 difficult to find any guiding principles, which is really the 3 reason for holding this meeting. I think we are the ones 4 who have to eventually put the whole program into being. 5 If we tried backing away so that we don't see so 6 much trees and look a little more at the forest, I wonder 7 if this is a fair statement of what we are trying to do, 8 especially with respect to the biological sampling. 9 What we are really looking for is the integrating effects of 10 nature in correlating the activity which finds its way into 11 man as a function of the environmental contamination. That 12 really is a rephrasing of what you said a moment ago. That I 13 think is still the basic principle. 14 Now, how do we go about this, getting the 15 integrating effect, without worrying ourselves too much about 16 the details. True, we have to do a certain amount of detailed 17 work if we want to really understand the thing. But the 18 answer to this [articular project, I think, lies in the 19 broader viewpoint, rather than a detailed viewpoint. From 20 that point of view what we really want to know is if you know 21 how much activity has fallen out on, the ground anywhere in 22 the world, how much of that finds its way into the human 23 skeleton. 24 Then we have the question, how much of this do we 25 want to do all around the world? How much do we want to do in 192 1 the United States. I think we can perhaps very properly take 2 this viewpoint, as you have now, the greatest amount of 3 activity has fallen in the United States, rather than, else- 4 where, so that from a purely political viewpoint, if we have, 5 to worry about such problems, if we can show that we are 6 not in too bad shape in the United States certainly no one can 7 worry very much or complain too much about what the situation 8 is in their own country. 9 I think for our foreign sampling again, we should 10 very carefully correlate the activity which has fallen in 11 the various countries by observing what has fallen on the soil 12 by soil analyses, and by the analyses from the gum papers 13 to convince ourselves that one or the other is truly 14 representative of our particular type of measurement. Perhaps we 15 might continue to do both of them. 16 In foreign countries, certainly we would want to 17 have a fair collection of human material representative of 18 the areas about which we know something of the fallout. 19 Whether we want to go into any detail picking up the animal 20 bones and plant material and the soil and the human material, 21 I don't know. Perhaps it might be well to do so in one or 22 two places. 23 I think from my viewpoint at the moment, I think 24 the plants are the least important. The soil, the animals, 25 and the people are the important ones. I don't think we need 193 1 to do awful lot of that around the world. Two or three 2 places ought to be sufficient, particularly if we have a good 3 knowledge of the soil contamination. I think the United 4 States we should do most of our work. We have better access 5 to material here, and we can make more detailed measurements 6 of the soil and the fallout, the plants that are growing on 7 this soil, the animals and the man. If we can show that 8 the uptake in man as a function of his environment is not too 9 serious, then we have gone an awfully long way toward 10 solving our problem. 11 It was mentioned today that maybe contamination of 12 animals will become of vital importance some time before 13 contamination of man becomes important. In other words, 14 the animals would die off, because of the fact that they 15 absorbed perhaps ten times as much as man. They would 16 disappear as a food supply before man himself is ready to 17 disappear. I am inclined to doubt that particular viewpoint, 18 but the fact remains it is well to keep in mind, I suppose, 19 and to measure animals or the contamination of the animal 20 skeleton as well as the contamination of the human skeleton. 21 Also, I believe, as has just been brought out before, 22 I got up, the United States is a fairly uniform dietary 23 pattern. It probably doesn't make an awful lot of difference 24 whether you study people in the New york area, in the Houston 25 area or whether you just gather up everything you got and 194 1 integrate them as a function of the integrated fallout 2 paatern. Those particular pastures here I think are very 3 well selected, and I am not saying that this work should not 4 be continued. But I still believe that it represents a 5 detail which is probably not necessary to answer our overall 6 project. As a scientific problem it is of interest because 7 we would like to know what the chain of migration is of 8 the activity from the soil to man. 9 I think that we can simplify our problem tremendously 10 If we cut through an awful lot of this detail. As of now, 11 as a person who has a good deal of responsibility in trying 12 to get this material together and come up with an answer to 13 this project, I would like to make a plea that we try to 14 decide exactly what it is that we need and solve that problem 15 first or at least pur more effort into that, allowing the 16 details to sort of lag along beside, if necessary. 17 Dr. Bugher: thank you, Walter. I think the 18 record which has been made will be abstracted as minutes and 19 condensed. You will send those around to the various people 20 for their corrections, will you not, bob? 21 Dr. Dudley: Yes. 22 Dr. Bugher: That willl become a document then which 23 should cover these points. We can introduce a summary into 24 the report at that time. 25 I think Walter has already summarized some of the 195 1 things. We have already stated two or three times some of 2 the other matters. So a dictated summary at this time I 3 don't think will be necessary. 4 We thank you very much for your having sat on these seats 5 all day and given us your thoughts and advice. I think 6 you find this program will continue to develop interest, 7 and also new facets of fundamental knowlegde, and in a practical 8 sense. We still need a lot more information, I think. 9 Thank you very much. 10 (Thereupon at 5:35 o'Clock p.m., the Biophysics Confernce was concluded.) 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 196