: Atoms Nature and Man: Man-made Radioactivity in the Environment by Hines Neal O - Nuclear energy

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INTRODUCTION 1 SOME PRELIMINARY IDEAS 2 A VIEW IN PERSPECTIVE, 1946-1963 8 THE ATOM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES 20 ENVIRONMENTS--SINGULAR, YET PARTS OF A WHOLE 29 PROBLEMS AND PROJECTS 41 WHERE ARE WE NOW? 52 SUGGESTED REFERENCES 55

United States Atomic Energy Commission Division of Technical Information Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-61322 1966

ATOMS, NATURE, and MAN Man-made Radioactivity in the Environment

INTRODUCTION

Mankind, increasingly crowding the earth, modifies the earthly environment in uncounted subtle and unpredictable ways, too rarely to the benefit of either earth or man. In this century it has become critically important that we comprehend more precisely than ever before the biological mechanisms and balances of our environment and that we learn to detect changes and to understand what they imply.

The release of atomic energy added a new dimension to the possibility of environmental change. In man's first experiments with atomic energy, he added small but perceptible amounts of radioactivity to the earth's natural total; as the Atomic Age matures, he inevitably will add more. But, in the course of his experiments, man has come to realize that environmental and biological studies, which now are necessary because of the use of atomic energy, may help solve not only the problems atomic energy creates but also the larger problem of how to manage wisely the world's limited natural resources.

This booklet describes the environmental investigations that have been conducted with the aid of the atom since the first atomic detonation near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1945. The earth's mysteries, however, are not easily unlocked, and investigations of our environment with atomic tools have only begun. The story thus is one of beginnings--but of beginnings that point the way, it is hoped, to a new understanding of the world in the atomic future.

SOME PRELIMINARY IDEAS

Biologists are interested in every kind of living thing. When they study organisms in relation to atomic radiations, they enter the field of radiobiology, which really is not a science in itself but merely a branch of the larger interest in biology. Biologists find that atomic energy has significance both in the study of individual organisms and in studies of organisms in their natural communities and habitats.

Radioactivity introduced into any community may be "taken up" by the biological system, becoming subject to cycling in food chains or to accumulation in plant or animal tissues. The presence of radioactivity permits study of the workings of a system as large as an ocean, perhaps, or of one no larger than a tree. And in each case it thus may be possible to observe how the cycles of organic renewal are related to the larger systems of life on earth.

The Single Environment

The environment in which we live is recognizable as a single complex, composed of many subenvironments--land, oceans, atmosphere, and the space beyond our envelope of air. The deer in the forest, the lizard in the desert burrow, and the peavine in the meadow are different kinds of organisms living in situations that are seemingly unalike. Each creature is part of its environment and a contributor to it, but it also is part of the total biosphere. All creatures are linked to each other, however remotely, in their dependence on limited environments that together form the whole of nature.

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