“LANCET” ON BOMB TESTS

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 13

“LANCET” ON BOMB TESTS

Call For Ban

(N2. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, April 25. The medical ' journal, the "Lancet” today called on the British Government to abandon its plans for nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Referring to a statement by the atomic Scientists’ Association last week on the radiation hazards of H-bomb tests, the “Lancet” said: “Proposals for nuclear disarmament have been put before the United Nations Disarmament Subcommittee by Mr Stassen; Russia avows her eagerness to call a halt to testing; and from many sides there come signs that people and Governments realise that something must be done very quickly.” A correspondent, Mr Gordon Hyde, said today in the "British Medical Journal” that concentration of the radioactive material strontium 90 in marine life might constitute a very real danger to fish eating communities. “It is. I believe, true that certain species of zoo plankton concentrate strontium specifically,” he said. "Since these organisms constitute the staple diet of the larger marine forms used for human food, it is probable that sea-borne ftrontrum woUld'reach the human organism, and, in fish-eating communities washed by streams passing near to nuclear testing grounds, could constitute a very real danger.”