Interview with DR. Samuel Shoup

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1. Early days of operations office and of health aspects Reorganizations - Health and Safety Division Herman Roth headed Joe Lyndbaud in safety 2. They were involved in health aspects of K-25, Y-12, X-10, Paducah, Portsmouth, Mallincrodkt, Fernald 3. Also 1 0 0 + university contracts in Southeast 4. Admiral Strauss and Milton Eisenhower go to Puerto Rico - enamored of it and decided to develop training for Latin America Constructing the center near San Juan and the one at Myaguez 5. HPS and Industrial Hygiene Fellowship programs Also close association with Health Physics, Biology and Environmental Sciences Divisions of ORNL 6 . Start of Ecology program - first in a National Lab [not Talked of eventually looking at uranium workers [Mancuso study went to ORAU, so in a sense it did eventually, Computer data for K-25 at Carbide Who would know where uranium data are? - Charles Sullivan, former medical director at Y-12; Gin0 Zinole, present medical 8 . Uranium toxicology work at Y-12

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not be doing biological research." 9. Not much I.M. research a t Clinton Labs? Answer was but the book gives quite a little 10. A mention of the co-carcinogenesis program with NIH

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Oak Ridge Kati on alL a borat aries STANNARD : For many years,Dr. Shoup was located in the building for headquarters f o r the Atomic Energy Commission, Oak Ridge Operations office, known as "The Castle." In fact, he spent probably as long there as anybody thatI know. but he seem tr) come in fi il rly regularly. just a little bit some of the things he remembers particularly about internal emitter work in the early days. He i s now theoretically retired, internal emitter work. Bur when I came here in June 1950 and start cd work for AEC and Oak Ridge Operations, we had a division that at that time was called the "Research in Medicine" Division. Well, Newell, Idon ' t seem t o remember very much about had a physician in the division who was an occupational medical decided that he could get along without a medical man because there were plenty of medical people out a t Carbide anyway. the name ofthe division was changed t o the "Research and Development" Division. So I worked i n the Research and Development Division as chief of the biology branch and then the ' successive p z rts of AEC i n which names were chznged and one thing and another. one time I had the Health Protection people in the biology branch. industrial hygiene and nucl ez r safety and health physics. The director of that time was succeeded by another director who So he disappeared, and

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time our industrial safety people were all in t ne engineering division because Mr. Sapi rie, the manager then,felt that the industrial safety people should be in engineering and chat the reactor j a fsc y people should be in the reactor divisi oll. Lime roved along until finally some committee of DBM came down. the organization and decided, “ Well, what w ought t o have is a safety division to be equal or the eqult’alext of safety divisions in other operations 0ffices”because the division of operational safety at that time had b.tcn formed i n \:askingcon with Nathan Woodruff as its director. SO w e had to reorganize ourselves all over again. left and became zpart of the new safer)‘ dil - ision.lie recommended, Dr. Roth and I recommended that Joe Lyn:har? head up the safety division. So Joe became head of the safety division. And he had started working for me originally as a health physicist. Now, by golly, h e ’ s an assistant manager. JgSt goes to show how things The health protection people who were with me We were involved in nearly every tk,bg rh at vent on in those days i n the way of health, K25, Y12, X10, and a t Paduka, i n Portsmouth, and a t Mallincrodkt inSt. Louis, and a t Fernald i n Cincinnati. So we kept busy in addition to the fact that we acted as sort of administrators for the150Or SO university contracts of AEC inthe southern schools from Texas t o Virginia and from Kentucky t o Puerto Rico. I well remember also when we formed the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center.32 : was at the time when

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ORAU,which then vas called the Oak Ridge In sti cure of Xuclear Studies (ORIKS), decided t o have a symposium i n San Juan for Latin America. Admiral Strauss vent down co give a talk.He cz r ried with him Plilton Eisenhower. The two of them became so enamored with Puerto Rico that rhey dz cide d,well,the AEC should set up a training program in Puerto Rico for Latin America. So what happened -das - .- -- that tlie Puerto Rican people came up t o Oak Ridge. They took the short courses and also learned how to teach the short courses and went back to the University of Puerto Rico and started giving those courses,primarily the one in physics and one i n health physics there in the physics departmenr. \;hat happened after that was the commission bought some land, and they already had some land given t o them, and builtl a structure in Ria pieter as near the new medical canter that was being built and one a t Myaguez where the University of Puerto Rico Col lege o f Engineering and Mechanical Arts was located. Center was maintained in those two locations. being involved in the health physics fellowship program and the industrial hygiene fellowship programs as asort of as it in on behalf of Oak Ridge Operations on the board meetings and things to clearances and everything under the sun that you would think of.I had a close association with the health physics division a t Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Biology Division and So fora long time, the Puerto Rico Nuclear Then I remember, too, O f course,we got involved with problems with respect

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the Environmental Sciences division.As far as the environmental sciences division is concerned,that ' s a sorc of apet of nine because I remember v hen it got star teLl i hen ue had finished rhe old White Oak Lake stream survey,there was about Sl5,OOO left inthe budget thiit could be used for the support of some one person t o come i n and be a begin c ing ecologist in ORNL. came down from Korthwestern University.I think we had,at that time,maybe a technician aid maybe a secretary, and that started as tllu ecology section of Liie health physics division under said to have started one of the first ecological programs i n any of the national laboratories. Well, now what happens? So Stan Auerbach And Ed Str ux ness and Karl Morgan I think could be We have the environmental sciences division with a brand new building and about 150 people in it,all started back there at that time. environmental sciences division. STANNARD: Yes. One thing I ' ve often wondered about vas the medical direction from people here like Tom Lincoln and all of 'the so hard to get tne information on theuranium workers. Re've been trying for other purposes to really find out the follow up. Now you know there were many uranium workers that received enough natural uranium chat they got kidney damage. I've always had as aft spot in my he arc for the I think Stan Auerbach is really You'd think that the noma1industrial medical organization maybe taking blooci pressures

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and theyy’d follow through, and one could do an epidemiological survey of the uranium workers similar to what they ’ v e done with plutonium only with a much larger group. cance statistically.But as far as I can see,either the companies are sequestering the data or they just didn ’ t do alot of things that you would exp ecr them todo. There’d be much more sign if i - one of the r = d sons for being of the Mancuso study ? STANNARD: Well, it wasn’t uranium. But he used to always say tous, ”Now,eventually w e want to get in to something more specific with respect to people who were exposed toall sorts of noxious agents including urznium.” it now for so long since I retired that Id cn ’ t know what they ’ r e No, he was looking at it from the overall e qo sure. I ’ v e been away from doing over there now. They have an epi de mio logi st. And they ’ r e - working on the Richland records.Idon ’ t know whether they ’ ve gotten tothe Oak Ridge records ornot. The Oak Ridge.records have been -I see. Ididn ’ t know that. The big Carbide compucer center a t K25 should have on tape all of the data,exposure data, on all the employees. I think, I ’ m not sure,but I think that some of these had been segregated with respect to specific exposure. Now I know they have set aside ace cord of those who were exposed t o mercury.

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They may have some records of those who had a history of exposure to nickel carbonyl or nickel. STANNARD : Well, Tom Lincoln i s now upin New York and you won ' t get i n touch with him. Not thatI have any hope of doing a survey. But for my NCRP work, we're in the middle of trying to find out a little bit more about the history of some of the uranium workers. '&-IO took Toin Lincoln ' s place ? SHOUP : Tom Lincoln ' s place here at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was taken by a Dr. Garrett. STANNARD: Would that be where the computer is? SHOUP : No. All the computer information is at K25 inthe Carbide central big computer building. The other person,of co uz se,that might know where you might have specific uranium records would beDr.Charles Sullivan who isthe former medical director at Y12. Now the present medical dl rector at Y12is Lincoln. H e went over t o become the medicai dir.ec:or ar Y12. . STANNARD: Well,it ' s really not part of my job. I ' ve often hen puzzled thar: people like Wrighr Langham and E few others seemed t o have tremendous foresight in segregating out those few plutonium workers from 10s Alamos b u t uranium was neglected. ford group that was setup long before Mancuso came into the picture that was keeping records. Then there was the HanThey g o t permissions for autopsies and so on. Pnd yet, the large sr single group of expose es,particularly

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from the Manhatcan District days and which could be followed in the way Rob ley Evans saw the radium patients,would be the uranium workers. SHOUP : NOW, Newell, you know a: one time there was alor of emphasis placed o n ' uranium toxicology over at Y12. Ed Str ux ness was i n Y12 as a health physicist at that tine,and they start zd study on uranium inhalation. That was to br correlated with respect to employee exposure and that sort of ching. One of the things they were looking at was the question of "Whac is the real picture of your lung burdens,for example, in relation to was founded out of the general weapons budget i n Y17. division of biology and medicine in Washington heard about it, some of those characters up there started raising s and. I hate to say rh is,but this was a program that Tlii-y said the health physicists have no business doing biological work like that, so that program of inhalation study with dogs was and would know where the repo rrs are is probably Ed Str ux ness. STANNARD: Isee. Well, there was plenty of inhalation work done I see. Idon ' t think I ever saw any publications from The person that would know if there were any pub liL at ions

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SHOUP : Howard Foreman i s the one that actually correlated together, put on tape, the information that the new hanciso program eventually STANNARD : Am I right, Sam, inthe view that there was not alot of experimental work done atOak Ridge National Laboratory during the war years on internal emitters. Most ofit was a t Chicago. SHOUP : I think thac ’ s right, yes. start some internal emitter work, and he said they were doing In fact,at one time pressure was put on Hollaender t o start a program which vas a cooper a rive one with the NIH on inhalation of sonething like rare earths. They were going t o Yes, I’m-sure. That reminds m e though that they did give a dose o f external radiation and something t o be inhaled. treard anything more about that. SHOUP : That was a program i n which they were going t o study external radiation and carcinogens, a cocarcinogenesis program they called it.