Atomic Bomb Radiation Dose Estimation at ABCC; Technical Report 23-71

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan: Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, Japanese National Institute of Health of The Ministry of Health and Welfare, 1971. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Very good. [4], 41, [3] pages, plus covers. Text is in English and Japanese. Figures. Tables. Formulae. References. Seymour Jablon has been described as a legendary foundation and cornerstone of the ABCC/RERF. Seymour Jablon was born June 2, 1918, in New York, and died April 9, 2012. He completed a bachelor's degree at the College of the City of New York in 1939. He earned a Master's in mathematics and mathematical statistics from Columbia University in 1941. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 until 1946 when he became a statistician for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jablon taught mathematics briefly at Rutgers before taking a job with the National Research Council in Washington, D.C., in 1948. He joined the ABCC in 1955 and was Chief of the Department of Statistics at the ABCC from 1960 to 1963, and 1968 to 1971. He was the associate director at the Medical Follow-up Agency at the National Research Council from 1963 to 1968 and then again from 1971 to 1977. The methods of A-bomb radiation dose estimation employed at ABCC are described. The purpose of this report was to discuss a variety of aspects of dosimetry. The estimated radiation dose is the essential independent variable in ABCC analyses directed at investigation of radiation effects. Since the availability of the t65 dosimetry systems in 1968, estimated doses have been used increasingly. Analyses have not only explored the existence of dose-effects, but have asked further questions about established effects In the earliest period after the bombings, the medical conditions of the survivors and the environmental radioactive levels were intensively investigated by scientists from Japanese universities, the United States (US)-Japan Joint Commission, and others. In 1947, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) was established in Hiroshima by the US National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, and another laboratory of ABCC was opened in Nagasaki in 1948. In the same year, a branch of the Japanese National Institute of Health of the Ministry of Health and Welfare was opened in the facility of ABCC, so that ABCC was positioned as a cooperative research agency by the two nations. Funds were provided to the ABCC by the US Atomic Energy Commission, the Japanese National Institute of Health, and the US Public Health Service. In the early 1970s, the US Public Health Service was replaced by the US National Cancer Institute, US National Heart and Lung Institute, and US Environmental Protection Agency. In 1975, ABCC was reorganized to the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) under Japanese civil law. All ABCC research activities were carried on by RERF. In 1955, the Francis Committee, an ad hoc committee to evaluate ABCC research programs, recommended a "unified central program" with defined exposure classes (i.e., proximal and distal exposed and non-exposed) and a fixed population base for the program.