Letter to W Weyzen, Subject: Two Bikini People Living on Bikini and One on Majuro Had Whole Body Gamma Spectrographic Analyses for Cesium-137 and Potassium-40 Done Group at BNL and Nyu

Page 1

BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY ASSOCIATED UNIVERSITIES, INC. Manager, Human Effects Studies At the time of the recent Congressional hearings on Bikini, several people from Bikini who were attending the hearings in Washington visited and Ataji Bales, Marshallese Congressman, also visited.) Two of the Bikini people, Mr. Leviticus, who had been living on Bikini as Health Aide, and a Mr. Noto, who had been living on Majuro, had whole body gamma spectroNYU by Dr. Cohen. The latter also did an analysis for Am-241 in his special counter. Copies of these reports with comparison with Mr. Miltenberger’s counts at Bikini in the latter part of April are enclosed. You will note that there is a discrepancy between the BNL and NYU CS-137 counts (which are in close agreement) on the one hand, and those of Miltenberger at Bikini in April. The estimated body burdens of CS-137 (MCIS were 1.62 at BNL, 1.72 at NYU and 3.3 at Bikini. Mr. Miltenberger offthe following explanation of this discrepancy. At the time of the finding of elevated counts at Bikini, the people were advised to refrain from eating complied. If so, he claims a subtraction for 10SS due to biological turnover would put his counts only 10-15% above those reported above (a reasonable difference). The agreement between the K-40 counts would tend to support this explanation. In any event, this is only one case. The finding of no detectable Am-241 (200 pCi lower limit of detection) in the skull of Mr. Leviticu and no x-ray peak for Pu–239 is encouraging. It will be interesting to see the results of radiochemical urine analyses on the people living at Bikini now in progress and to be reported aeon ~