Radiobiological Studies with Tradescantia at Nuclear Test Detonations

American Society of Naturalists, 1954. Reprinted from The American Naturalist, Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 841, July-August, 1954. Wraps. Format is approximately 7 inches by 10 inches. Two staples on left side. Stamp and in notations on front cover. Stamped name of Donald J. Kimeldorf on front cover! Pages 215-224. Figures. Literature Cited. This is the text of a talk given before a Symposium at Boston in December, 1953, sponsored by the American Society of Naturalists and the Genetics Society of America. Alan D. Conger earned his bachelor’s and doctorate degrees in biology at Harvard University. Conger enlisted in the Army the day after seeing the attack on Pearl Harbor and served in the Weather Service . He became a researcher for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee after getting out of the Army. Conger went on to work at the University of Florida, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He also headed the Radiation Research Society and edited several major journals. Kimeldorf was a major scientific leader. His book with Ed Hunt entitled "Ionizing radiation: Neural function and behavior" is a thorough description of the physiological and behavioral effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. The flowering plant Tradescantia has been used (up to that time) at two nuclear test operations as an experimental organism for the biological effect of the ionizing radiations emitted. Blast and thermal effects of the test device have been excluded and are not considered in these experiments. Previous to the earlier of the two operations, there were several uncertainties about what test radiation would do to living tissue. The unique circumstances of test radiation--which is emitted at very high intensity, consists of a mixtures of gamma, Beta, neutrons, and x radiations, and is distributed over a very wide range of energies--were the reasons for the genuine uncertainties about how much tissue damage would be caused by test radiation. The questions amounted to asking if the relative biological efficiency of test radiations is the same as these radiations when they were delivered by the usual laboratory sources. The intention of the tests was to estimate biologically the test radiation dose on the basis of chromosomal breakage in Tradescantia, and to compare this biological estimate with, among other things, the physical measurements made simultaneously. When the yield of aberrations from the test irradiation had been measured, it was a simple matter to solve for the single unknown, test dose, on the basis of the values for aberration-dose relation from the control experiments; these are called 'biologically estimated dose." This article also contains information on Dose measurements inside airplanes flown through atomic clouds. It was concluded that nuclear test detonation radiation had not produced any new or novel effects; that Tradescantia had shown, as far as the gamma-ray and airplane experiments were concerned, that physical instruments will serve as accurate measurers of biological dose and that Tradescantia has functioned as a dosimeter with an average accuracy of 10-15 per cent. Condition: Good.

Keywords: Nuclear Test, Test Detonations, Nuclear Detonations, Tradescantia, Biologically Estimated Dose, Test Radiation Dose, Chromosomal Aberrations, Hard X-Rays, Fast Neutrons, Ionization Chambers

[Book #82378]

Price: $65.00

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