Leukemia Leveling

Have any of the "blood cancer" diseases lumped under the general heading of leukemia increased as the result of fallout from nuclear explosions? Some scientists claim to have found evidence for this charge. Not so, says an exhaustive report from the National Cancer Institute : at most ages among the white population, the increase in the leukemia death rate has slowed down, and at some ages the rate has actually declined. (Among nonwhites the increase is continuing, for no known reason.)

Far from foreseeing a further increase in leukemia from anything (meaning nuclear power) that has developed in the last 15 years, Epidemiologists Alexander G. Gilliam and William A. Walter declare in Public Health Reports: present trends "provide no support whatsoever" for such a pessimistic view. On the contrary, they say, the data suggest that exposure to whatever causes operate to produce leukemia (which nobody knows) has leveled off or actually decreased.

By contrast, there was a disturbing report about danger from an object hitherto generally considered harmless: the wristwatch. Drs. Grafton D. Chase and Arthur Osol of Philadelphia's College of Pharmacy and Science tested 20 watches with luminous dials, found that some put out five to ten milliroentgens an hour one inch from their shining little faces. This, they say in Science, is several times greater than the natural background radiation from cosmic rays and the earth's crust, more than 100 times that received from bomb-test fallout to date.

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