Persistent Fallout

Into a Columbia University laboratory regularly stream shipments of one of science's grimmest raw materials for study: human bones. They come from the recently dead bodies of men, women and children all over the non-Communist world, including such outskirts as Chile, South Africa and Formosa. At Columbia's Lamont Geological Observatory, in a project financed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, they go under the scrutiny of scientists who analyze the bones for strontium 90. Last week the project's three scientists, Drs. Walter R. Eckelmann, J. Laurence Kulp and Arthur R. Schulert, made their second annual report. The bones told a sobering story of increasing amounts of radioactive fallout from nuclear-weapons tests.

Strontium 90 is the most feared of all the fallout isotopes. It has a long half-life (28 years), and the human body tends to mistake it for calcium, which it resembles chemically, and to build it into bone. As it disintegrates over the years, it may cause cancer by the effect of its radiation on tender living cells.

Since their last year's report, said the scientists, the world-average content of strontium 90 in human bone has increased by about 30%. The increase in young children, whose bones are growing actively, was 50%. The highest values were found in North America, the lowest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Young children have, proportionately, ten times more strontium 90 in their bones than adults, but so far the average is only about 1/150 of the MFC (Maximum Permissible Concentration) that was recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. The amount will surely grow, say the scientists. Even if no more weapons are tested, there may be enough strontium 90 in "the stratospheric reservoir" to raise the strontium 90 in the bones of children in the Northeastern U.S. to as much as 4.3% of the MPC. If weapons testing continues at the same rate as the last few years, the average for the entire population of the Northeastern U.S. will gradually climb to about 20% of the MPC by the year 2000.

Not all people get the same amount. Some children had three times the average, and the variation in adults is seven times. Most of these figures are about city dwellers, and the scientists think that the variation in rural areas will be greater still. It is thus likely that if weapons tests continue, a good many unfortunates may come dangerously close to the Maximum Permissible Concentration--which many scientists believe has been set far too high.

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