Word: strontium
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...speeches, pamphlets and books-some of them by eminent scientists-upgrading or downgrading the dangers of radioactive fallout to mankind, condemning or defending the testing of nuclear weapons. At the crux of the debate is the question: How perilous to man is the key element in H-bomb fallout, strontium...
...last week. Furthermore, the amount of radiation produced in humans by the fallout is "less than 1% of the maximum permissible concentration" and there is general agreement that it would take "larger concentrations, perhaps tenfold greater," to produce harmful results. Libby provided a striking example: the present dosage of strontium 90 in the bones of children is no more dangerous than the radioactive dosage a person would receive from cosmic rays if he moved "from a beach to the top of a hill a few hundred feet high...
Libby did not deny that there was risk in the tests; for example, "excessive dosages" of strontium 90 can cause bone cancer and leukemia in animals, "so we should not casually dismiss the possibility of harmful results from fallout." But the risk appears to be remote. Reason: there is no present evidence that people living at high altitudes or on land with heavy uranium deposits are more susceptible to these diseases than anyone else. In sum, the risk to man from H-bomb testing "is extremely small compared with risks which persons everywhere take as a normal part of their...
Scientists yesterday reported that veinal infusion of calcium is a promising antidote for dangerous radioactive strontium from A-bomb or H-bomb fallout. They also said that the silent clam, due to its peculiar attribute of absorbing radioactive atoms, will reveal fine fallout, which would otherwise be hard to detect...
...Each unit is one micromicrocurie (millionth of a millionth of a curie) or radioactivity owing to strontium 90 per gram of calcium...