17 March 1962
Dear Dr. Wiesner:
In answer to the telephone call yesterday from Dr. James Hartgering of your office I am sending some information.
The difference between the numbers (400,000 etc.) in my New York Times unpublished manuscript and those in my letter to you of 27 February (55,000 etc.), aside from the factor 4 for megatonnage, is largely a factor 1.5 corresponding to the increase from 67 million (Crow) to 100 million births per year. I seem, however, also to have made an error of some sort, giving an additional factor 1.2.
In my New York Times manuscript I was sticking closely to official figures; I used 0.1 as the 30-year steady-state dose for continued testing at 30 MT/yr, 50:50 fission-fusion, ground-bursts. In my book No More War! I used 0.3 r. I shall use 0.3 r in the calculations in this letter, because I think it is closer to the truth. This becomes 1.5 r for airbursts.
Also, I shall average my 10% and Totter, Zelle, and Hollister’s 100% estimate of damage by C14 in the gene DNA, and use the factor 1.5 to correct for this effect. The integrated C14 gonadal ß-ray exposure for 30 MT 50:50 ground-burst is 0.0127 r. With the factor 1.55 this becomes 0.0197 r, or 0.59 r for 30 years. Also, I think the factor 1/3 that I used in my C14 paper corresponding to 2/3 of the C14 being trapped in particles of local fallout should be deleted. I have concluded that the particles would dissolve in a few decades or centuries, and that all the C14 would go into the pool. Hence I use 3 x 0.59 = 1.77 r for 30 years, for C14 from 30 MT 50:50, whether ground-burst or air burst.
As suggested by Crow (told me by Dr. Hartgering), I shall ignore Crow’s second category. His first, A, is gross physical or mental defect, with number 4000 for 100 Billion births, 0.1 r. The second, C, is embryonic and neonatal deaths, with number 35,000 for 0.1 r. I shall also take the Russells' results into consideration by dividing Crow's values by 2 (not 4, because they need verification), and use ao = 2000 and Co = 17500 in all calculations.
As to effective population for C14, my 1958 estimate of 3 x Crow would be 333 million births per year. In the following I give both 100 and 300 million births per year for C14, with 100 million (present value) for fission products in every case.
Sincerely,
Linus Pauling
March
17, 1962
