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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON College of Fisheries Laboratory of Radiation ‘Ecology Assistant Director for Measurement USAEC, Division of Biomedical and Your letter of 12 February to the Survey and Data Evaluation Group for the Eniwetok program has prompted me: to complete a letter to you that was begun upon my return from the Liver-moremeeting of 16 January. Part of the reason for procrastinating has been the!difficulty in preparing coannentsthat were both significant and objective. The responsibility of the Group,'as I understand it to be, is to make sure that the information obtained from the analyses of samples is sufficient for making a reliable prediction of the radiation dose to the Eniwetokese upon their return to Eniwetok Atoll. At th+s stage, comments can be made about two aspects of the program--planning and exebution of the field work. As the first meeting of the Group was on 16 January and at a time when a substantial part of the field program had been completed, comments about planning are no longer pertinent. However, I did gain the impression that although the field program was carefully and thoughtfully planned, the planners attempted to obtain all of the answers from the current program without benefit of field experience at Eniwetok and full recognition of what had been done previously. As a consequence, the program was over planned. The program would have benefited from a greater input by Dr. Held; Both Dr. Held and I attended the September planning meeting at Livermore and had the opportunity to comment, but Dr. Held did not participate as a speakerlalthough his name appeared on the original agenda for the meeting. In regard to the 16 January meettng, there are two principal comments: one, the discussion of "Historical Data on Radioactivity at Eniwetok Atoll" should have included the history of radiometric and radiobiological surveys at Eniwetok, Bikini and Rongelap Atolls and should not have been limited to the history of nuclear detonations; and two, the discussion of terrestrial and marine food webs was based, principally, upon thelwork of our Laboratory and hence could have been presented more effectively by our Laboratory. Comments that I have for our Group are related to the most efficient use of the research effort, time, and dollars that are available to obtain the informati needed for dose assessment, and are as follows:
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1. Food webs - It should be kecognized that the food webs are not perfectly known, but to move beyond what is bow known would require a major effort that probably is not needed for this program, at least for the gamma-emitting radionuclides. Held has described the food web relationships for gamma-emitting radionuclides in the figure, "Distkibution of Fallout Radioisotopes, Rongelap a copy of which is attached. From information obtained at Bikini and Eniwetok since 1961, there is ho reason to expect that there would be any major surprises if the 1961 Rongeliapmodel was used as the 1973 Eniwetok model. Held's work did not include analys/esfor alpha-emitting radionuclides and hence the food web studies at Runit needyspecial attention. 2. Models - The use of modelisfor quantitative estimates of the movement radionuclides through the food keb will be limited by the scanty information 3. Limits of detection - The limits of detection should be established the basis of their effects on t;heestimates of the total dose to the 4. Number of radionuclides -1Undoubtedly, there are a few radionuclides in the samples that can be identifliedby use of involved chemical procedures and/or sophisticated instruments. ~ Although a complete budget of all radionuclides present in the samples is of greatsacademic interest, such information is being obtained from Bikini and, therefor/e,for practical reasons, the decision to seek out these radionuclides should reslton their contribution to the total dose. 5. Number of samples for specific radionuclides - All samples did not need to be analyzed for all radionuclides. The information from previous analyses and the use of indicator species sihouldguide the decision about number of Samples for specific radionuclides. In regard to execution of the program, my observation based on the December trip to Eniwetok and our Laboratory's dontract with LLL is that the program has been Director, Laboratory of
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