The Unmentionable Subject

The most recent H-bomb test (by the Russians) was made in Siberia about three months ago, but the fallout of fear and worry that the H-bomb tests have caused has by no means died away. Like the menacing byproducts of the explosions, concern has spread around the world.

A short, unexcited paper presented to the French Academy of Sciences has provoked a storm of foreboding in the French press and public. Written by physicist Charles-Noel Martin and sponsored by the Nobel Prizewinning Prince Louis de Broglie, it is entitled "On the Cumulative Effects of Thermonuclear [Hydrogen] Explosions on the Surface of the Globe."

"In the past two years," wrote Martin, "there have been about ten H-bomb explosions, each of them equivalent to from 1,000 to 2,500 A-bombs of the type used at Hiroshima. Their effects are on a scale involving an appreciable fraction of the planet. Certain effects on the atmosphere may upset the natural conditions to which life has become adapted."

Global Effects. An H-bomb, said Martin, does the following things:

1) It forms vast amounts of nitric acid out of atmospheric oxygen, nitrogen and moisture. There may be enough of it to acidify the rain over large areas, with adverse effects on vegetation.

2) When exploded on the ground, an H-bomb throws into the air something like one billion tons of pulverized material. Floating for years in the upper atmosphere, the dust may cut the strength of sunlight. It may act as condensation nuclei, stimulating rainfall, and thereby changing the pattern of the winds. Such modifications of climate will not neces sarily be good.

3) Neutrons from an H-bomb turn atmospheric nitrogen into large amounts of radioactive carbon-14, whose half-life is 5,600 years. Absorbed by plants, it eventually enters the tissues of animals and humans. Results: unpredictable.

4) An H-bomb raises appreciably the general level of the earth's radioactivity. Even a slight increase is likely to have important genetic effects. Experimental reasons for fearing this outcome, said Martin, are well established.

Martin, a theoretical physicist, did not check his calculations experimentally, but he explained how it might be done by simple tests, and he invited other scientists to make the observations. Thus far, no scientist, French or foreign, has communicated to him any findings on the global effects of the H-bombs that have been exploded. This is not because the scientists are not interested, says Martin, or because they do not agree with him. He claims that many of them are privately on his side, but cannot support him publicly. He is sure that the world's weather bureaus, for instance, have been told by their governments to keep out of hydrogen discussions. The best he has got so far is a carefully worded joint statement by Henri Longchambon, France's Under Secretary of State for Scientific

Research, and Francis Perrin, High Commissioner of Atomic Energy. Said they: "The dangers that can result from a multiplicity of atomic-bomb explosions--particularly H-bombs--are real."

Official Silence. In every country, in fact, H-information is hard to get. If U.S. scientists are making independent observations, they do not report them publicly. Official bodies prefer to sidestep the question. Last week, for instance. Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard F. Libby, one of the leading authorities on disseminated radioactivity, addressed a conference of mayors at Washington. He went into detail about the lingering effects (not serious) of old-style fission bombs. Only once did he mention H-bombs--more than 1,000 times as powerful--and then only in passing.

The U.S. Weather Bureau keeps mum too. It recently distributed a reassuring statement about the weather effects (negligible) of atomic explosions. Significantly, the bureau specified that it was discussing only the old-style fission bombs, especially those exploded in Nevada. It did not mention H-bombs at all.

Physicist Martin, who is pro-American, is not making Communist propaganda. But he may be an alarmist, and U.S. officials may be concealing nothing when they refuse to discuss the aftereffects of H-bombs. But their silence has not reassured U.S. physicists who know at least a part of the truth. In the latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an editorial entitled "People Must Know" hits hard at the information blackout. One consequence: Civil Defense authorities, lacking knowledge of H-bomb effects, cannot make realistic plans for an atomic war.

Even more serious, says the Bulletin, "is the potentially fateful danger of long-range damage to the hereditary endowment of the human race . . . caused by exposure of whole nations or continents to a weak but widely distributed and persistent radioactivity. It is difficult to think of a subject of greater importance for the whole of mankind . . . Pertinent information . . . should not be kept classified. The Atomic Energy Commission owes it to mankind to disseminate [it] as widely as possible to stimulate its open discussion ... To permit mankind to stumble . . . onto a course of action which may end in a slow but irreparable decay of the human race constitutes the gravest moral responsibility any man or group of men can conceivably take upon themselves."

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