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GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (UP) .Two teams of specialists left Grand Junction yesterday to spend the summer checking the physical condition of hundreds of uranium workers across the Colorado pla teau. The teams of state and federal health officials hope to discover what other physical dangers, the lung cancer, may be caused by over-exposure to radiation. Colorado exposure standards were drawn up last summer on the basis of work by similar teams and were later adopted by the fed eral government. Partier Examinations The Colorado Health Department launched a program of periodic checks of miners and mill hands in 1949—at that time the only pro gram in existence to determine whether there was a significant health hazard in uranium mining. Colorado’s program has since been joined by the state Bureau of Mines, the US Public Health Service, the Atomic Energy Com mission and the State of Utah. The Colorado studies are headed by P. W. Jacoe, enviromental di sease control chief of the state health department. The teams will travel over all of the Four Corners area and along the front range of the Rockies and i will be led by a doctor. They will travel on caravans of eight ve hicles each and will include two medical assistants, a laboratory technician, a case history record er, two advance men to set up schedules and a maintenance man, Important Contributions equipment to measure the radia tion in mines, and to set up safe exposure standards. He explained uranium ore con tains radium, which in decaying emits a gas called radon. The gas
Newspaper Details
Gallup Daily Independent
Gallup, New Mexico, US
Tue, Jun 04, 1957
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Winslow O.
