Abstract
This essay considers the scientific, social, and political contexts of the debate over radioactive fallout. I contend that the growth of an environmental consensus in 1950s America was constrained both by the nature of the fallout debate and by the cultural climate in which it took place.
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Illustration in Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), after p. 366.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring ( New York, Fawcett Crest, 1962 ), p. 16.
Ralph Lutts, “Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout, and the Environmental Movement”, Environmental Review,9 (1985), p. 212; Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 28; Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 325; Lear, Rachel Carson,pp. 373–375 (cit. n. 2).
Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence,pp. 24, 28 (cit. n. 3).
Lear, Rachel Carson, pp. 397–427 (cit. n. 1). For an interesting analysis of Carson’s use of anti- Communist rhetoric in her critique of the pesticide industry, see Jeff Ellis, “Redefining the `Menace of Our Time’: Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner as Environmental Patriots in Cold War America”, paper presented at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting, San Francisco, 1997.
Elof Axel Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H.J. Muller (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). For a biography of Linus Pauling, see Thomas Hager, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995 ).
The NAS report was published in Science,123 (29 June 1956), pp. 1157–1164. The strontium-90 reports were published by J. Lawrence Kulp et al. in Science,125 (8 February (1957) pp. 219–225; Science,127 (7 February 1958), pp. 266–273; Science,129 (8 May 1959), pp. 1249–1255; and Science,132 (19 August 1960), pp. 449–454.
Linus Pauling, No More War! (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958); Edward Teller and Albert L. Latter, Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers, and Opportunities (New York: Criterion Books, 1958). The transcript of the televised debate was published in Daedalus,87 (December, 1958), pp. 147–163.
Lester Machta and Robert J. List, “The Global Pattern of Fallout”, in Fallout: A Study of Superbombs, Strontium-90, and Survival, John M. Fowler, ed. ( New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1960 ), pp. 26–27.
Ralph E. Lapp, “Fallout Hearings: Second Round”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 15 (1959), p. 307.
Machta and List, “The Global Pattern of Fallout”, pp. 27–29 (cit. n. 9).
See Carolyn Kopp, “The Origins of the American Scientific Debate over Fallout Hazards”, Social Studies of Science, 9 (1979), pp. 403–422.
Genetic Effects of Radiation“, Science,123 (29 June 1956), p. 1164.
Pauling, No More War!,p. 73 (cit. n. 8).
Pauling, No More War!,p. 67 (cit. n. 8).
Teller and Latter, Our Nuclear Future,pp. 130–133 (cit. n. 8).
Teller and Latter, Our Nuclear Future,p. 133 (cit. n. 8).
Problems Presented by Radioactive Fallout“, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,15 (June 1959), p 258.
J. Lawrence Kulp et al.,“Strontium-90 in Man”, Science,125 (1957), p. 219.
W.O. Caster, “From Bomb to Man” in John M. Fowler (ed.), Fallout,p. 44 (cit. n. 9).
Kulp, “Strontium-90 in Man”, pp. 221–222 (cit. n. 19).
Walter R. Eckelmann et al.,“Strontium-90 in Man, II”, Science,127(7) (1958), p. 273.
Lapp, “Fallout Hearings: Second Round”, p. 305 (cit. n. 10).
Teller and Latter, Our Nuclear Future,p. 124 (cit. n. 8).
Teller and Latter, Our Nuclear Future,p. 124 (cit. n. 8).
Pauling, No More War!,p. 105 (cit. n. 8).
Pauling, No More War!,p. 102 (cit. n. 8).
Atom Fallout… How Bad It Is… What We Can Do About It Now“, Newsweek,53 (6 April 1959), p. 35.
Robert A. Divine, Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 1–13; Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 93–94. See also the film, Atomic Café (1982).
David O. Woodbury, “Basic Facts About `Fallout”’, Reader’s Digest,73 (September, 1958), p. 51.
Woodbury, “Basic Facts About `Fallout”’, p. 55 (cit. n. 30).
Steven M. Spencer, “Fallout; The Silent Killer”, Saturday Evening Post,232 (29 August 1959), p. 87.
Spencer, “Fallout”, 89 (cit. n. 32).
Steven M Spencer, “Fallout: The Silent Killer, How Soon is Too Late?”, Saturday Evening Post,232 (5 September 1959), p. 86.
Ruth and Edward Brecher, “What We Are Not Being Told About Fallout Hazards”, Redbook, 119 (September 1962), p. 50.
Brecher, “What We Are Not Being Told”, p. 106 (cit. n. 35).
Earl Ubell, “Will Radiation Harm Your Child?”, Parents’ Magazine, 35 (July, 1960 ), p. 35.
Ubell, “Will Radiation Harm Your Child?”, p. 105 (cit. n. 37).
Ubell, “Will Radiation Harm Your Child?”, p. 105 (cit. n. 37).
Radiation: 110 Babies“, Newsweek,59 (11 June 1962), p. 62.
All About A-Bombs, Fall-Out, Dangers in the Future“, U.S. News and World Report, 38 (29 April 1955 ), p. 96.
What’s Back of the `Fall-Out Scare-, U.S. News and World Report,42 (7 June, 1957), p. 25.
What Will Radioactivity Do to our Children?“, U.S. News and World Report,38 (13 May 1955), p. 78.
What Will Radioactivity Do to our Children?“, p. 72 (cit. n. 43).
What Fallout Really Means to You and your Children“, US. News and World Report,51 (13 November 1961), p. 41.
Warning“, Newsweek,44 (5 July, 1954), p. 73, and ”Can We Win a War with Russia? Yes, But-“, Newsweek,44 (5 July, 1954), p. 30.
The Atom: The Peril of Strontium-90“, Time,69 (6 May,1957), p. 24.
The Atom“, Time,78 (10 November, 1961), p. 25.
Radiation Hazards from Fallout and X rays“, Consumer Reports,23 (September, 1958), p. 484. s° Ibid.
The Milk All of Us Drink and Fallout“, Consumer Reports,24 (March 1959), p. 103.
R.H. Wasserman, “Contamination of Food by Fallout”, New York State Journal of Medicine, 60 (1 December, 1960), pp. 3857–3862; S. Garb, “Survival in a Thermonuclear War” New York State Journal of Medicine, 60 (1 December 1960), pp. 3863–3866. See also Paul Boyer, “Physicians Confront the Apocalypse: The American Medical Profession and the Threat of Nuclear War”, Journal of the American Medical Association, 253 (1985), pp. 633–643.
Deborah Levine, “Typhoid Fever and Public Health in Pittsburgh”, unpublished manuscript, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 1997.
Joel Tarr, “Changing Fuel Use Behavior and Energy Transitions: The Pittsburgh Smoke Control Movement, 1940–1950” Journal of Social History 14 (1981), pp. 561–588; Joel Tarr, “Railroad Smoke Control: The Regulation of a Mobile Pollution Source”, in Energy and Transport: Historical Perspectives on Policy Issues, George H. Daniels and Mark H. Rose, eds. ( London: Sage Publications, 1982 ), pp. 71–92.
Divine, Blowing on the Wind,pp. 267–268; Winkler, Life Under a Cloud,pp. 105–106 (both cit. n. 9).
Divine, Blowing on the Wind (cit. n. 9), p. 167.
Divine, Blowing on the Wind (cit. n. 9), p. 267.
See Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 )
Information (24 December, 1958). Initially titled Information, the name of the bulletin was changed to Nuclear Information in March 1959.
Information(24 December, 1958), (cit. n. 59).
William O. Pruitt, “High Radiation in Eskimos”, Audubon Magazine,65 (1963), pp. 284, 286.
J. Hawthorn and R.B. Duckworth, “Fallout Radioactivity in a Deer’s Antlers”, Nature, 182 (1958), p. 1294; F.R. Fosberg, “Plants and Fallout”, Nature, 183 (1959), p. 1448.
Quoted in Paul Brooks, The House of Life:: Rachel Carson at Work ( Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1972 ), pp. 243–244.
Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence (cit. n. 3), pp. 22–29.65 Eugene J. Rosi, “Mass and Attentive Opinion on Nuclear Weapons Tests and Fallout, 19541963”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (1965), pp. 280–297.
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Watkins, E.S. (2001). Radioactive Fallout and Emerging Environmentalism: Cold war Fears and Public Health Concerns, 1954–1963. In: Allen, G.E., MacLeod, R.M. (eds) Science, History and Social Activism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 228. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2956-7_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2956-7_18
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