H-BOMB TESTS IN PACIFIC

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28263, 29 April 1957, Page 6

H-BOMB TESTS IN PACIFIC

Britain’s Action Defended (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 28. The personal opinion that the British atom bomb tests to be soon carried out in the Pacific should go on was expressed in a sermon delivered in St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Papatoetoe, today by the Rev. lan W. Fraser. It was strange, he said, that the agitation against the tests all seemed to be directed against the British series. No reference had been made to the series being held by Russia at this very time, nor to the American series planned for later this year. Some “quite hysterical and irresponsible” statements had been made concerning the radiation danger, continued the speaker. It was true, for instance, that strontium 90 tended to encourage bone cancer if taken into the body. But, if all the strontium now in the stratosphere from previous tests were precipitated immediately the amount would be far too small to approach the amount permitted to atomic workers by the medical standards adopted. Dr. Fraser dealt in considerable detail with the genetic injury possible, but concluded that the radiation received from tests was trivial, compared with medical radiation and that from possible industrial uses.