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six H-bombs. After a tremendous political fight—documented in _ to develop measuring equipment to assure that the standards were Dan O'Neill's book, The Firecracker Boys'’—the plan was met. These five scientists were called health physicists— shelved. Another plan was developed to blast a new canal across physicists concerned about health. To this day, scientists studying Central America with atomic bombs, simply to give the US some _ the health effects of radiation call themselves health physicists. leverage in negotiating with Panama over control of the Panama X-ray specialists are called radiologists. Canal. That plan, too, was scrapped. In September 1943, the initial group of health physicists moved In 1967, an A-bomb was detonated underground in New to Clinton, Tennessee, where an enormous industrial facility was Mexico to release natural gas trapped in shale rock formations. being built to process uranium; this became known as the Oak Trapped gas was in fact released, but—as the project's engineers Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In 1944, one of the original should have been able to predict—the gas turned out to be five health physicists—Karl Z. Morgan—was named Director of radioactive, so the hole in the ground was plugged and a bronze the Health Physics Division at Oak Ridge, a position he held for laque in the desert is all that remains visible of Project 29 years until 1972 when he reached retirement age.” Gasbuggy."" Morgan played a central role in the development of the health In sum, according to New York Times physics profession and in setting radiation columnist H. Peter Metzger, the Atomic standards worldwide. The Health Physics Energy Commission wasted billions of dol- Society was organised in 1955 with Morgan ars on "crackpot schemes", all for the pur- . as its president pro tem; he then served as the jose of proving that nuclear technology is The period of society's first elected president in 1956-57. ficial and not in a ay harmful.'* H H Fi 1955 to 1977, Morgan served as editor- “The Plowshare Division may have been a atmospheric testing in-chief of the soclety’s "rofescional journal complete failure, but one lasting result of nuclear weapons Health Physics. In 1966 an International emerged from all these efforts: a powerful Radiation Protection Association was estab- culture of denial sank deep roots into the by the USA, the UK, lished, representing professionals in 30 coun- eart of scientific and industrial America. France and the USSR tries, and Karl Morgan was elected its first . . resident. RADIATION PROTECTION is a sad page in the p Most radiation standards are set by the STANDARDS history of civilised International Commission on Radiological By 1910, in addition to X-rays, the Protection (ICRP), which in 1950 grew medical community was using radioac- man. out of an earlier standards-setting tive radium extensively for therapy. group, the International X-ray and Radium was also used industrially to . . Radium Protection Committee. Karl make glow-in-the-dark watch dials, Without question, Morgan served as one of the ICRP's 13 dolls eyes, tish bait, gun sights and it was the cause of members trom 1350 to in ane other items. However, in the mid- ing that time he chaired the s 1920s, it became clear that many hundreds of thousands committee on internal doses, setting young women painting radium onto of cancer deaths. radiation standards which were then watch dials were dying. In one case adopted worldwide. It seems clear why the employer, US Radium, in West Karl Morgan is often described as "the Orange, New Jersey, insisted the Father of Health Physics". person: Tnygiese, but studle i f the EXCESSIVE X-RAY EXPOSURE personal hygiene, but studies of the - workplace concluded in 1924 and 1925 In recent years, Karl Morgan has that all workers were being exposed to excessive radiation. described and criticised the work of the ICRP. Morgan says the Thus humans learned by trial and error that alpha and gamma ICRP has suffered from two major blind spots: the Committee radiation from radium can be extremely dangerous, even in small _has never focused on harm to the public from excessive exposure quantities. to medical X-rays, and by the mid-1960s the ICRP began setting On December 2, 1942, the first human-created nuclear reactor standards for radioactivity that protected the nuclear industry began operating in a secret laboratory beneath the bleachers at rather than the public. According to Morgan (who is still an Stagg Field, University of Chicago. The purpose of this reactor | emeritus member of the ICRP), the ICRP began ignoring serious was, first, to demonstrate that nuclear fission could be achieved radiation hazards in the early 1960s. He writes:” (and controlled), and second, to manufacture plutonium for a The period of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the bomb. Dr Arthur Compton headed this Manhattan Project—the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the USSR is code name for the US effort to make an A-bomb. a sad page in the history of civilised man. Without question, At that time, the world inventory of radium totalled about two it was the cause of hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. pounds. The nuclear reactors built in Chicago, then in Clinton, Yet there was complete silence on the part of the ICRP. Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, would hold inventories During these years (1960-1965), most members of the ICRP with the radioactive equivalent of thousands of tons of radium. either worked directly with the nuclear weapons industry or Many of the radioactive elements in these nuclear reactors were indirectly received most of their funding for their research new, with unknown characteristics. from this industry. Perhaps they were reluctant to bite the Arthur Compton and his colleagues insisted that safety hand that feeds them? standards had to be developed to protect workers from the harms In the 1970s, the situation grew worse after a series of studies of radiation. Early in 1943, Compton hired a radiologist, a revealed that radiation was even more dangerous than previously chemist and three physicists to set radiation safety standards and _ believed. In 1974, Baruch Modan showed that a woman's chances The period of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the USA, the UK, France and the USSR is a sad page in the history of civilised man. Without question, it was the cause of ; NEXUS -35 hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2000