An introduction toClass Presentation byJohn MIS 2321.docx

An introduction to
Class Presentation by
John
MIS 2321 - Spring 2019
Hello and welcome to An Introduction to Hadoop
Data Everywhere
“Every two days now we create as much information as we did
from the dawn of civilization up until 2003”
Eric Schmidt
then CEO of Google
Aug 4, 2010
Read this quote. That data is something like 4 exabytes.
The Hadoop Project
Originally based on papers published by Google in 2003 and
2004
Hadoop started in 2006 at Yahoo!Top level Apache Foundation
project Large, active user base, user groups Very active
development, strong development team

One way to do that analysis is through Hadoop
Who Uses Hadoop?
Rackspace for log processing. Netflix for recommendations.
LinkedIn for social graph. SU for page recommendations.
Hadoop Components
Storage
Self-healing
high-bandwidth
clustered storage
Processing
Fault-tolerant
distributed
processing
HDFS
MapReduce
HDFS cluster/healing. MapReduce
HDFS Basics
HDFS is a filesystem written in Java Sits on top of a native
filesystemProvides redundant storage for massive amounts of
dataUse cheap(ish), unreliable computers

Let’s talk about HDFS
HDFS DataData is split into blocks and stored on multiple
nodes in the clusterEach block is usually 64 MB or 128 MB
(conf)Each block is replicated multiple times (conf)Replicas
stored on different data nodesLarge files, 100 MB+
What is MapReduce?
MapReduce is a method for distributing a task across multiple
nodes
Automatic parallelization and distributionEach node processes
data stored on that node (processing goes to the data, unlike
Databases where data is brought to the query engine)
The purpose of this assignment is to apply, analyze, and
synthesize some major course themes in the context of new
information. Please place your paper as a single Word file.
The phrase “Relevant course resources” refers to the assigned
book, articles, videos, lecture notes, and ICAs; citing them as
footnotes or in-text parenthetical citations is fine (in other
words, you need not include a separate bibliography for course
resources). You need not consult any other sources beyond what
is specified below, but if you do want to incorporate external
sources, you must cite them fully.
Part 1: 150 points, 500-600 words:
Read the following two editorials on de-extinction by two
longstanding leading players in the U.S. environmental
movement, Stewart Brand and Paul Ehrlich (along with his

partner, Anne Ehrlich).1 Describe your own personal response
to this contentious issue, and include supporting evidence from
these editorials as well as at least 2 other relevant course
resources to make your case.
· Stewart Brand, “The Case for De-Extinction: Why We Should
Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth,” Yale E360, Jan. 13, 2014,
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_for_de-
extinction_why_we_should_bring_back_the_woolly_mammoth
· Paul Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, “The Case Against De-
Extinction: It’s a Fascinating but Dumb Idea,” Yale E360, Jan.
13, 2014, https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_de-
extinction_its_a_fascinating_but_dumb_idea
Some points to ponder that might help inform your response:
1. How does each editorial connect back to topics related to the
history of ecological science and its predecessor, natural
history?
2. Which aspects of each argument make the most sense to you,
and the least?
3. Why do Brand and the Ehrlichs have such opposing views on
the economic, ethical, and ecological feasibility of de-
extinction? What are their shared values, and what kind of
compromise agreement (if any) might they be able to develop?
4. How might some of the historical actors we’ve encountered,
such as Aldo Leopold, William Hornaday, Charles Townsend,
and Rachel Carson, react to today’s de-extinction debate?
5. How does the current de-extinction debate relate to the larger
question of the appropriate role of scientists in environmental
politics and policy-making?

Part 2: 100 points, 300-400 words:
Choose one of the following recent Yale Environment 360
articles, and drawing upon 2-3 relevant course resources,
discuss how it links to historical events we have addressed and
what you consider to be the most interesting
points/issues/questions it raises, especially in relation to major
themes of the course.
· John M. DeCicco, “After Years of Green Promises,
Automakers Renege on Emissions Standards,” Yale E360, June
7, 2018, https://e360.yale.edu/features/after-years-of-green-
promises-us-automakers-renege-on-emissions-standards
· Jessica Leber, “Species Sleuths: Amateur Naturalists Spark a
New Wave of Discovery,” Yale E360, March 12, 2019,
https://e360.yale.edu/features/field-sleuths-the-amateur-
naturalists-who-are-discovering-new-species
· Jim Robins, “Native Knowledge: What Ecologists are
Learning from Indigenous People,” Yale E360, April 26, 2018,
https://e360.yale.edu/features/native-knowledge-what-
ecologists-are-learning-from-indigenous-people
· Todd Stern, “How to Shift Public Attitudes and Win the
Global Climate Battle,” Yale E360, Oct. 25, 2018,
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-essential-front-in-the-climate-
battle-altering-public-attitudes
· Chloe Williams, “From Canadian Coal Mines, Toxic Pollution
that Knows No Borders,” Yale E360, April 1, 2019,
https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-canadian-coal-mines-toxic-

pollution-that-knows-no-borders
NOTE:
1. I uploaded 9 chapters from our book “Nature’s Ghosts by
Mark V. Barrow, JR” and articles we have addressed in this
course.
2. Try to be SPECIFIC, because the instructor is really struct
with this.
3. Citations are very important. Cite everything you use for this
paper to avoid plagiarism.

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The Genius of Earth Day
Author(s): ADAM ROME
Source: Environmental History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (APRIL 2010),
pp. 194-205
Published by: Forest History Society and American Society for
Environmental History
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ADAM ROME
the genius of
EARTH DAY
ABSTRACT
In spring 1970, millions of people took part in thousands of
Earth Day teach-ins,
protests, and celebrations across the United States. Yet we know
remarkably
little about those events. We also have not thought enough
about the significance
of the first Earth Day. Earth Day 1970 was not just an
unprecedented demon
stration of public support for environmental protection. Earth
Day was a
massive mobilizing effort: In many ways, Earth Day nurtured
the first green
generation.
FVE COME TO BELIEVE that the first Earth Day is the most
famous little-known
event in modern U.S. history. Historians routinely use Earth
Day to symbolize
the maturing of the environmental movement. Yet we know
remarkably little
about what happened in 1970. We also haven't thought enough
about why
Earth Day mattered.1

The basic facts are startling. The first Earth Day was bigger by
far than any
civil-rights march or antiwar demonstration or woman's
liberation protest in
the 1960s. Earth Day was not just one event, and-despite the
name-Earth
Day did not happen only on April 22, 1970. In many places, the
events lasted
a week. A more accurate name would be Earth Spring, since
some events were
held in late March and early April. About fifteen hundred
colleges held Earth
Day teach-ins. So did roughly ten thousand schools. Earth Day
activities also
? 2010 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on
behalf of the American
Society for Environmental History and the Forest History
Society. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
Adam Rome, "The Genius of Earth Day," Environmental History
15 (April 2010): 194-205.
doi:10.1093/envhis/emq036
Advance Access publication on May 11, 2010
2015 16:10:47 PM
THE GENIUS OF EARTH DAY | 195

took place in churches and temples, in city parks, and in front
of corporate and
government offices. Millions of Americans took part.
The huge turnout was a dramatic demonstration of public
support for the
environmental cause. But Earth Day did much more than focus
attention on
environmental problems. The event inspired the formation of
lobbying
groups, recycling centers, and environmental-studies programs.
Earth Day
also turned thousands of participants into committed
environmentalists.
Why was Earth Day so powerful a catalyst? The time was right.
Earth Day was
part of the great surge of reform in the 1960s. Many
environmental problems
also were getting worse. But why was Earth Day so effective in
mobilizing
the optimism and anger of the moment?
Tens of thousands of people spoke at Earth Day events, and the
involvement
of so many speakers was a stunning achievement. Earth Day
radically increased
the number of participants in public discussion of
environmental issues. In
1970, the nation had few renowned experts in the field. Yet

Earth Day proved
that many more people had something to say about the
environmental crisis.
Though the exact number of speakers is impossible to
determine, 35,000 is a
conservative estimate.
The speakers were quite diverse. From anthropologists to
zoologists, pro
fessors were the biggest group. Students-from junior high
schoolers to gradu
ate students-spoke too. Bureaucrats from every level of
government probably
were second to professors in the speaking ranks. The U.S.
Department of the
Interior alone provided more than one thousand speakers.
Politicians often
were headliners. Congress took the day off so that members
could speak
around the country, and roughly two-thirds did. Several
governors gave major
Earth Day addresses. Thousands of state legislators and local
officials also
spoke. Activists were part of many Earth Day programs. Some
were involved
in national organizations-the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife
Federation,
the Audubon Society, the Izaak Walton League, or the
Wilderness Society.
Most were active in local groups, from Stamp Out Smog in Los
Angeles to

Help Eliminate Pollution in Houston. Many members of the
League of Women
Voters took part as well. Architects, doctors, engineers, and
other professionals
whose work involved them in environmental issues were among
the speakers.
Though only a handful of Fortune 500 executives addressed
Earth Day
crowds, many local business leaders offered their perspective.
So did some
union members. Religious leaders gave sermons as well as
speeches-the
National Council of Churches encouraged members to devote
the Sunday
before Earth Day to the environment. Artists, writers,
musicians, and celebrities
spoke. The roster of speakers also included countercultural
gurus, leftists old
and new, community organizers, feminists, and civil-rights
leaders.
To journalists eager to sound suitably skeptical, all the talk was
something
to mock. The oratory, one wrote, was "as thick as smog at rush
hour." Another
concluded that "Earth Day drew the kind of nearly unanimous
blather usually
2015 16:10:47 PM

196 I ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY 15 (APRIL 2010)
given only to the flag-or to motherhood, before motherhood ran
afoul of the
population explosion." But the knowing dismissals were too
glib.
Earth Day was not the Fourth of July. The issues were too new-
and too
contentious-to provide a well-stocked larder of platitudes. Yes,
everyone was
against pollution, but the most basic questions about the
environment were
far from settled. In fact, there was a lot to talk about. A year
after Earth Day,
Barry Commoner wrote about the multiple explanations for
environmental pro
blems in 1970. Was the root cause of the environmental crisis
population
growth, religion, capitalism, technology, affluence, or human
nature? The list
of potential solutions was similarly long. Though some of the
Earth Day talk
was just rhetoric, most of the speakers genuinely hoped to
contribute to an
unprecedented debate about environmental issues.
The experience of speaking on Earth Day deepened the
commitment of

many speakers. Some had never before given a speech about
environmental
issues. What did they really think? As they pondered that
question, they often
concluded that the stakes were higher than they had realized.
Experienced
speakers also were stretched by the occasion. Often, they faced
a bigger and
more diverse audience than any they had addressed before. They
had to go
beyond their expertise-to ponder new issues and articulate new
ideas. Many
felt compelled to adopt a new tone. Some spoke more
intimately, while others
found a more prophetic voice. Either way, they were
acknowledging that the
issues really mattered.
The planning for Earth Day also involved thousands of people.
Often, their
involvement was intense and life-changing. Yet historians have
told only part of
the story of the Earth Day organizing effort.
Earth Day was the great achievement of Senator Gaylord Nelson
of
Wisconsin. The more I think about that, the more remarkable
the story
seems. Nelson was in his 50s, balding, a pillar of the
establishment-yet he
launched a mass protest. He found a way to join the power of
the capital with
the energy of the grassroots.

Nelson already had worked on environmental issues for more
than a decade.
He had championed the conservation cause while serving as
governor in the
early 1960s, and he had proposed legislation in the Senate to
ban DDT and non
biodegradeable detergents, preserve wild rivers, and clean up
the Great Lakes.
But he found few allies. What could lead the government to act,
boldly and deci
sively, to protect the environment? Reading about the history of
antiwar
teach-ins in August 1969, Nelson imagined that the teach-ins
might be a
model for environmentalists. The antiwar teach-ins had been
empowering.
They pushed students and faculty to think more clearly, and
then to act. An
environmental teach-in, Nelson thought, would be even more
likely to
empower people.
But could a senator organize a nationwide teach-in? Nelson
sought advice
about how to approach that task from a veteran Democratic
Party operative,
Fred Dutton, and Nelson took many of Dutton's suggestions. But
he rejected

2015 16:10:47 PM
Dutton's recommendation that the teach-in be a top-down event.
Nelson under
stood that the teach-in could not be an extension of his will.
Though he con
ceived the idea, he was not a helicopter parent: He did not
hover, trying to
direct every movement on the ground below. Instead, he
allowed others to
take ownership of the teach-in. That critical decision enabled
Earth Day to
engage the energies of thousands of people.
Nelson announced his plans for the teach-in in September 1969,
and his
staff publicized the idea through the fall. The teach-in quickly
caught fire.
"The phone was just ringing and ringing," recalled Nelson staff
member John
Heritage. "I was working 16 hours a day, and I worked those
hours for
months." In November, Nelson set up a separate entity to help
organize the
event. With seed money from a variety of sources, including the

United Auto
Workers and the Conservation Foundation, the office of
Environmental
Teach-in Inc. opened in December. To head the operation,
Nelson hired a
Harvard law student enrolled in a joint master's program in
public policy,
Denis Hayes, and Hayes quickly assembled a small staff of
young activists.
The teach-in staff all believed that young people could change
the direction
of the nation. Hayes joined a passion for the land with a sense
of justice. While
serving as student-body president at Stanford, he had castigated
the university
trustees for hiring a president with a questionable record on
race. He considered
the environmental cause and the antiwar movement to be facets
of a larger
struggle for Life, and he drew much of his inspiration as Earth
Day coordinator
from the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium. The other key members of
the staff all were
veterans of sixties campaigns. Arturo Sandoval was a Chicano
activist in
New Mexico, Barbara Reid worked for Robert Kennedy in 1968,
Sam Love was
a civil-rights organizer in Mississippi, Andy Garling founded a
medical
students-for-peace group in Boston, and Steve Cotton worked
for a biracial,

not-for-profit newspaper in the South. The oldest staff member,
28-year-old
Bryce Hamilton, served in the Peace Corps in the early 1960s.
Five members of the staff were organizers. One focused on
schools, and four
were regional coordinators. The original idea was that the
national staff would
help local organizers by providing ideas and contacts. But the
flow of infor
mation quickly reversed. In many communities, organizers
already were at
work before the national office opened. With each week of
publicity, more
people became involved around the country, and the national
office became
less a center of organizing than a clearinghouse for the media-
the quickest
place to find out what people were planning in Biloxi, Dubuque,
Hartford,
San Antonio, and Walla Walla.
Some of the local organizers were housewives. Often, they saw
environmental
activism as a natural extension of their work as mothers and
homemakers. The
organizing effort also relied on young professionals-doctors,
landscape archi
tects, lawyers, and urban planners, among others. In Cleveland,
Earth Week
was largely the work of one member of the mayor's staff. At the

other
extreme, Earth Week in Philadelphia was planned by a steering
committee
2015 16:10:47 PM
that secured a huge donation from the Chamber of Commerce
and hired a project
director, a 30-something lawyer and city planner with
experience in media. The
steering committee included an advertising guru who made
several hip televi
sion ads. One had a businessman explaining why he hoped Earth
Week would
flop. Another had a fish complaining about his health-"Oy, don't
ask!" A third
depicted an island in Philadelphia that was so polluted that only
one man
lived there. "This was brought to you by the Earth Week
Committee," the tag
line said. "They feel that maybe there's a message here."
Graduate students in the sciences often led the way at
universities. Some of

the undergraduate organizers were leaders in student
government, some were
campus activists, and some had become concerned about the
environmental
crisis through course work. In schools, teachers sometimes took
the initiative,
but students also formed groups to organize Earth Day events.
The school
groups often had classic 1960s acronyms. State College,
Pennsylvania, had
SLOP (Student League Opposing Pollution); Schenectady, New
York, had YUK
(Youth Uncovering Crud); and Cloquet, Minnesota, had SCARE
(Students
Concerned about a Ravaged Environment). The organizers in
some schools
were lefty students who thought that Earth Day would be a cool
new way to chal
lenge the establishment. But many high-school organizers were
science or
nature kids.
The involvement of so many people at the grassroots was
critical. Earth Day
was superb leadership training. In weeks or months of planning,
the local orga
nizers were tested repeatedly. What counted as an
environmental issue? Was the
goal to advance an agenda or to involve as many people as
possible? Would the

emphasis be on education, activism, or media spectacle? What
relationship
would the Earth Day effort have to other social movements, if
any? Should
the program feature local speakers or outsiders? Were any
sources of funding
off limits? Almost every question was potentially divisive. Yet
the experience
gave thousands of people a chance to develop the skills,
contacts, and sense
of mission that provided a foundation for future activism.
Though I can't offer more than anecdotal evidence, I'm
impressed by how
many of the local organizers I've tracked down still are involved
in the environ
mental cause. They defend rivers, promote green building,
administer
environmental-protection agencies, do research on alternative
transportation,
host eco programs on radio and television, and much more.
Some already
were environmentalists before Earth Day, but many were not:
Earth Day was
a profound source of inspiration.
This may seem abstract. Let me give one example to suggest the
character of
the grassroots effort-the University of Michigan teach-in on the
environment,
March 11-15.1 don't claim that the Michigan event was typical.

The teach-in was
the Big 10 champ, and perhaps the best in the nation! Yet the
organizers of
countless smaller and less prominent events had similar
experiences.
The organizing committee at first was only six graduate
students in the School
of Natural Resources. In October 1969, a planning meeting drew
350 people,
2015 16:10:47 PM
and more than 1,000 eventually helped to make the teach-in
happen. The plan
ning was not all peace and love. The campus black-power
organization threa
tened a boycott because the organizers were not devoting
enough attention
to the problems of the ghetto, while members of Students for a
Democratic
Society mocked the "not-so-liberal liberalism" of the featured
speakers. But
the event blossomed. The two-day teach-in became five days,
with more than

125 activities. To raise environmental consciousness in the
community, house
wives hosted teas and businessmen sponsored lunches. High-
school students
urged consumers at Ann Arbor grocery stores to boycott
pesticides. On
campus, a guerrilla theater troupe put a 1959 Ford sedan on trial
for crimes
against the environment. At a "scream-out," participants
debated whether the
environment would deflect attention from the Vietnam war, the
civil-rights
struggle, and the movement for woman's liberation. One
workshop provided a
Republican take on the environmental crisis, while another
offered a socialist
perspective. Technical sessions focused on everything from the
future of the
Great Lakes to the role of engineers in preventing pollution.
The headliners
included three U.S. senators, Friends of the Earth founder David
Brower, consu
mer activist Ralph Nader, United Auto Workers president
Walter Reuther, enter
tainers Arthur Godfrey and Eddie Albert, several noted
scientists, the chief
executives of Dow Chemical and Consolidated Edison, and
Richard Hatcher,
one of the nation's first black mayors. The cast of "Hair" opened

the teach-in
by singing "The Age of Aquarius." The kickoff drew 14,000
people, and total
attendance topped 50,000. The week's activities received
national and even
international attention. A television crew came from Japan. The
teach-in was
the subject of a documentary shown on network television just
before Earth
Day. The New York Time*, Bu*ine*A Week, and Science ran
feature stories.
Syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft wrote about the event.
The four principal organizers of the Michigan event all have
vivid memories.
In different ways, all continued to work on environmental
issues. John Turner is
a striking example of someone whose life was changed by Earth
Day organizing.
He grew up in a conservative ranching family in Wyoming, and
he was working
toward a PhD in wildlife ecology. He might have gone back to
the ranch or
become a professor. Instead, the Earth Day experience
convinced him to
enter politics. "I was challenged daily," he recalled. "I was
targeted as a suppor
ter of Nixon, a lackey, a Republican." The attacks shook him
but ultimately gave
him new resolve. He became convinced of the need for leaders
who were level

headed and practical, not bomb-throwers. He ran successfully
for the Wyoming
legislature. In nineteen years as a state representative and
senator, he was a for
ceful advocate for environmental protection. He then served as
director of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under Bush I, president of the
Conservation
Foundation in the Clinton years, and assistant secretary of state
for global
environmental issues under Bush II.
For the other three organizers-Doug Scott, David Allan, and Art
Hanson-the
teach-in had subtler effects. Scott had written a thesis on the
legislative history
2015 16:10:47 PM
of the Wilderness Act and worked as a lobbyist in Washington,
and the teach-in
expanded his network: He now is a grassroots organizer for the
Campaign for
America's Wilderness. Allan became a professor of stream
ecology. The
teach-in pushed him to do more policy-oriented research, not
just the straight

science he did in graduate school. Hanson also earned a PhD,
but he became
more of an academic entrepreneur, and he recently retired as
director of an
international institute on sustainable development. "For me, the
most impor
tant legacy was a sense of empowerment," Hanson told me.
"When I went to
Michigan, I saw myself as someone basically oriented to the
sciences, but the
teach-in gave me the sense that if you really wanted to do
something, you
could. Just go ahead and do it."
Multiply that can-do spirit by twenty thousand-maybe more-and
you get a
powerful movement.
Not just over the years, but right away.
Many of the Earth Day organizing groups did not break up.
Some cam
paigned for environmental legislation. Especially in university
towns, the
Earth Day organizing effort sometimes led to the establishment
of ecology
centers, often funded by recycling programs-at the time,
recycling was not a
responsibility of government. Some of the college and high-
school groups

pressed for changes in the curriculum.
The national Earth Day staff also used the network of
organizers to create a
new kind of environmental lobby. That was important, in ways
scholars have not
appreciated. Though a number of environmental organizations
were decades old
in 1970, the older groups were wary of lobbying, because
lobbying might jeopar
dize the tax-deductibility of donations. The Wilderness Society
struggled with
that issue during the campaign for passage of the Wilderness
Act. Even more
famously, the Sierra Club went too far in its anti-dam
campaigns in the
1960s, and the club's loss of its status as a charitable and
educational organiz
ation was one reason why the board fired David Brower. When
the Earth Day
staff decided to stay in business after April 22, however, they
announced that
their group-Environmental Action-would be a lobbying
organization. They
soon became a force in Congress. "We worked our tails off to
turn the energy
of Earth Day into legislative success," said Barbara Reid.
Because they had a
Rolodex with activists in every state, they could marshal letters,
phone calls,
and office visits to every representative and senator, and they
did. The lobbying

of Environmental Action was critical in the passage of the 1970
Clean Air Act.
Environmental Action also was important in the stunning defeat
of the super
sonic transport in 1971.
In addition to lobbying, Environmental Action targeted anti
environmentalist members of Congress in the elections of 1970,
1972, and
1974. Each year, the group announced a "Dirty Dozen,"
provided information
about the environmental voting records of the 12 incumbents to
their
opponents, and mobilized the Environmental Action network to
help in each
campaign. In 1970, seven of the Dirty Dozen were defeated-two
Democrats
2015 16:10:47 PM
and five Republicans. One lost in a primary by just one hundred
votes. In 1972,
four of the targeted incumbents lost, including a twelve-term
representative
who headed the powerful House Interior committee. Eight more
were defeated

in 1974. That year, Environmental Action sent a handful of staff
members into
the field, but otherwise the group's only power was its huge
Earth Day list of
local organizers.
Reflecting on the power of numbers, I see one more important
facet of Earth
Day. Media coverage was unprecedented. Because Gaylord
Nelson announced
his plan six months before April 22, the media had a lot of time
to gear up,
and they did: Earth Day became a "peg," in news parlance, for
thousands of
stories about environmental issues. The peg was sturdy for
several reasons.
The environment was a relatively fresh subject, and the news
business
thrives on the new: As Todd Gitlin argues, what's old is done.
The environment
also was a cause with potentially wide appeal.
Magazine after magazine published special issues on the
environment in
the months before Earth Day. By the end of February, a typical
barbershop or
beauty parlor or doctor's office would have at least three or four
magazines
with cover stories about the environmental crisis. Time,
Newsweek, Fortune,
Look, Life, women's magazines-you could take your pick. Even
Sports

Illustrated had a cover story on the subject.
Newspapers gave great play to the environment as well. Before
1970, only a
handful of papers had environmental reporters. Gladwin Hill of
the New York
Times was one. Robert Cahn of the Christian Science Monitor
was another.
Betty Klaric of the Cleveland Press was a third. Earth Day
inspired more
papers to assign reporters to the environmental beat. Many big-
city papers pub
lished special sections on the environment in April. In some
places, the plan
ning of Earth Day events also became news. Cleveland is
perhaps the best
example. "Betty Klaric was key," recalled the organizer of Earth
Week there.
"Every time we blew our noses, she wrote about it!"
The television coverage also was extraordinary. Though the
networks did not
do much early in 1970, all broadcast something special in April.
National
Educational Television-the precursor of PBS-devoted all of its
programming
on April 22 to Earth Day. Even Sesame Street and Mister
Rogers
Neighborhood were about the environment. That was
unprecedented. To

promote the day's programming, network affiliates took out ads
in many news
papers, from the New York Times to the Penn State Collegian.
On NBC, the
"Today Show" focused on the environment for the entire week
of April 20-24.
Its ten hours of broadcasts were remarkably free of fluff-a
teach-in with a stun
ning array of guests, from Margaret Mead to Barry Commoner,
the scientist
Time magazine called "the Paul Revere of ecology." The
broadcasts then
appeared as a paperback with commentary by Frank Herbert,
author of the
science-fiction classic Dune. ABC had three prime-time
environmental specials
during the week of Earth Day. In addition, the network devoted
its Sunday
"Issues and Answers" program to the subject on April 12 and
19. CBS, which
2015 16:10:47 PM
already ran a periodic feature on the environment on its evening
news, devoted

an hour to Earth Day on the night of April 22. Many local
affiliates broadcast
multi-part eco-shows. So did a number of regional networks.
The importance of Earth Day in drawing attention to
environmental issues
went beyond the news media, because book publishers
capitalized on the mass
excitement by releasing dozens of eco titles. Several of the eco-
books were
paperback originals rushed into print to coincide with Earth
Day. Pocket
Books published Ecotactics, the Sierra Club's handbook for
environmental acti
vists, in April 1970. The most successful of the paperback
originals, The
Environmental Handbook, appeared three months earlier.
Commissioned by
David Brower and published as a Ballantine / Friends of the
Earth book, The
Environmental Handbook had advertising that tied the book to
"the first
national teach-in on the environment," and it sold more than a
million copies
before the end of April. That's astounding.
But numbers alone can't explain the power of Earth Day. To
understand why
Earth Day was so powerful a catalyst, you need to look closely
at the events
themselves. What happened on Earth Day often was part of a
story that

started well before April 22 and continued long after. In some
cases, Earth
Day changed the dynamic of those stories. Birmingham,
Alabama, is a great
example.
That may seem odd. Birmingham in the 1960s was notorious as
a place of
civil-rights strife, and Alabama was a poor state, backward in
many ways. The
environmental movement was weakest in the South. The
southern organizer
for Environmental Action scraped and scraped to come up with
events to
boast about, while the other organizers scrambled to keep up
with all the
activity in their regions. But the South was not a desert for
environmentalists.
The South was more like a dismal swamp, slow-going but not
impassable!
Hundreds of southern communities celebrated Earth Day. The
celebrations
there often were simpler and more muted than in the northeast
and Midwest,
but they still could matter, as the story of Birmingham shows:
Birmingham cele
brated Right to Live Week, which culminated in a powerful
Earth Day.
The city's Earth Day events were organized by a recently
formed group of

young professionals and students, the Greater Birmingham
Alliance to Stop
Pollution. The group-usually called GASP-hoped especially to
gain support
for strong action against air pollution. Birmingham was one of
the few indus
trial cities in Alabama, and the sky there often was brown. The
city was
second only to Gary, Indiana, in the national rankings for worst
air quality.
Like Gary, Birmingham was a steel town. The city also
depended on coal. U.S.
Steel-South was the city's most prominent employer, and
Alabama Power
was the state's most powerful corporation.
In 1969, the state had approved an Air Pollution Control Act
that GASP con
sidered "a license to pollute."
GASP was not the first environmental organization in
Birmingham. In
addition to a local chapter of the Audubon Society, Birmingham
was home to
2015 16:10:47 PM

the Alabama Conservancy, founded in 1967. In its first years,
however, the con
servancy's top priority was a campaign to establish a wilderness
area in the
Bankhead National Forest. GASP also was not the only group
concerned
about the city's air quality. The local tuberculosis association
long had
sought to dramatize the health hazards of air pollution, with
help from a com
mittee of the county medical society. The founders of the
conservancy and the
head of the TB association encouraged the GASP activists. "We
were mentored,"
one recalled. But GASP went well beyond anything that anyone
had done before.
The boldness of GASP came from the two doctors who led the
group
Marshall Brewer and Randy Cope. Neither were Alabama
natives. They had
come to Birmingham to work at the rapidly expanding
university medical
center, and they brought new ideas. That was critical. As a
GASP member
from a long-established Birmingham family explained,
Alabamans grew up
"knowing that dirty skies meant people were working, and clear
skies meant
people were out of work." But Brewer and Cope did not share

the local habit
of deference to industry. They argued that clean air was a right.
Brewer also
had a broad environmental vision. He was not just interested in
wilderness pres
ervation or public health. "We have incurred a huge debt to
nature," he told the
Birmingham News, "a debt which must be paid off if we are to
survive-and the
time for an accounting is drawing to a close."
The Right to Live schedule was a mix of club, college, and
community events.
Cope kicked off the week with a talk to a women's club about
the sham of the
1969 anti-pollution law. GASP appealed to religious leaders to
devote the
Sunday before Earth Day to the environmental crisis. "Our duty
to protect
what God has given us is of utmost importance today," Brewer
said. "The
advent of new technologies without equal environmental
advances places us
in the same situation as in Jeremiah's time, when God chastised
the people
for spoiling the land. Isn't it time for us to think about our
future and the
future of others by protecting God's precious gifts?" Several
colleges held
teach-ins during the week, and the speakers included a local
doctor and a

Catholic priest from one of the area's steel communities. For the
closing
activities-a morning meeting of the Downtown Action
Committee and an
evening rally at the Municipal Auditorium-the outside speakers
all were
federal officials.
The closing rally was moving, especially a speech about
pollution and health
by Dr. A. H. Russakoff, a longtime activist. As the Birmingham
News reported,
Russakoff's activism had often sparked controversy but had won
him "a wide
following among young people and adults concerned about the
environment."
He received a standing ovation at the start of his talk, and again
at the end.
"I have received many accolades in my life," Russakoff told the
audience,
"but this is something I will remember the rest of my life."
The climax of Right to Live Week came earlier on Earth Day,
however, when
Brewer addressed the Downtown Action Committee. The
invitation list included
college presidents, high-school principals, labor leaders,
Chamber of Commerce
2015 16:10:47 PM

officials, politicians, and presidents of civic and service
organizations. Several
hundred people attended, and Brewer challenged them to act.
"We have two
choices," he said. "We can spend, pollute and be as merry as we
can or we
can listen to what the experts and young people all over the
country are
saying today. You people right here in this room have the power
to make the
necessary changes if you want to." Brewer cited studies that
blamed polluted
air for an alarming rise of respiratory disease. He drew on the
work of economist
Kenneth Boulding to argue for a new kind of economic
thinking. Because the
earth was like the Apollo capsules, with a limited amount of air
and water,
industry needed to help build a conservation-oriented
"spaceship economy"
rather than a "devil-may care 'cowboy economy.'" The first step
was "strong,
uniform legislation to control pollution so that all industries can
include this
in their budgets and mark it off as a cost of production and still

compete effec
tively." Brewer called on Birmingham's business leaders to
allow the political
candidates they supported "to vote their consciences" and
repudiate the 1969
law "which is not only worse than no law at all but an affront to
the people
of Alabama." Brewer received a "tremendous ovation." The
mayor proclaimed
that GASP had made "the most aggressive assault on a problem"
in decades.
Of course, the applause did not lead immediately to reform. The
editorial
position of the Birmingham News made clear that many
obstacles remained.
The paper covered the Right to Live events in detail, and the
editorial page
offered qualified support for critics of the 1969 pollution law.
When city offi
cials refused to allow a GASP representative to speak at a high-
school forum
on pollution, the newspaper argued that people needed to "hear
all views,"
not just U.S. Steel's argument that the 1969 measure would "get
the job done
if we give it a chance." During Right to Live Week, two
editorial cartoons
mocked legislators for opposing sin and supporting motherhood
while
ducking the hard issues, including pollution. The paper also
editorialized in

support of a statewide effort by the Coordinating Committee for
an Improved
Environment to force every candidate for state office to take a
stand on the pol
lution issue before the May primary. But on Earth Day, the
editors warned
against emotionalism in dealing with air pollution. "Before the
issue of the
environment is settled," they wrote, "the representatives of the
taxpayers and
wage earners will have to make some hard choices in weighing
the public's
interest in clean air against its interest in technological advance
and industrial
productivity. The choices may be very hard: What, for example,
if the demand
for clean air threatens a community with the loss of an industry
reluctant or
unable to meet pollution standards?"
GASP kept at it. Members spoke to dozens of groups, especially
students and
women's clubs. The GASP speakers did not shy from working-
class audiences. "I
especially remember talking to garden clubs in the steel
district," one recalled.
"The women were terrified about the environmental movement,
because of the
fear that their husbands would lose their jobs. It was hard to
talk with them."

2015 16:10:47 PM
They felt "that an industry that had put bread and butter on the
table couldn't be
bad." Yet "some of the women came around."
In addition to grassroots organizing in Birmingham, GASP
lobbied the leg
islature to pass a tough anti-pollution law. Several women in the
group used
their Christmas card list as a Rolodex to recruit activists.
Because 18- to
21-year-olds were about to gain the vote, GASP sent busloads
of students to
the capitol with a simple message: We are upset about pollution,
and we will
vote against you in the next election if you don't show that you
are upset too.
The lobbying worked. The 1971 legislature approved a Clean
Air Act that reme
died many of the shortcomings of the 1969 measure.
Few Earth Day events were as focused on a single issue as Right
to Live
Week. But the story of Birmingham still speaks to the genius of
Earth Day.
Right to Live Week did not come and go, like a comet. The

event had lasting
consequences.
The same was true in many communities. Earth Day was not just
"a demon
stration of public will," as Gaylord Nelson liked to say. Earth
Day also was not
just about education. The event was a massive mobilizing effort.
Many partici
pants became more committed to the cause. By giving tens of
thousands of
speakers and organizers a chance to make a difference, Earth
Day nurtured a
generation of activists, and more.
Adam Rome, associate professor of history at Pennsylvania
State University, is
finishing a book about Garth Day to be published by Hill and
Wang. His first
book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and
the Rise of
American Environmentalism, won the Organization of American
Historians'
Frederick Jackson Turner Award.
NOTE
I have spoken about Earth Day at four universities, and I am
grateful to my
hosts: Gregg Mitman and Bill Cronon (Wisconsin), Nancy
Shoemaker
(Connecticut), Steven Epstein (Kansas), and Brian Balogh

(Virginia). I also
thank LeAnne Stuver of Menorah Park Center for Senior Living
in
Beachwood, Ohio, where I gave four talks about Earth Day as a
scholar on
campus in 2008.1 learned much from the questions at each
workshop and talk.
1. The short discussions of Earth Day in histories of the
environmental movement rely
on material from a few newspapers, weekly magazines, and
network news broad
casts. This essay derives from a soon-to-be-finished book about
Earth Day. In
addition to coverage in thirty-five metropolitan newspapers, I
have drawn extensively
on a subscription database, NewspaperArchive.com, that
includes hundreds of news
papers from small and medium-sized communities. The Gaylord
Nelson papers at the
Wisconsin Historical Society were a rich source. I also have
interviewed more than
fifty organizers of Earth Day events, and several of my
interviewees gave me
access to private archives. My book will provide complete
documentation.

2015 16:10:47 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. [194]p. 195p. 196p. 197p. 198p. 199p. 200p. 201p.
202p. 203p. 204p. 205Issue Table of ContentsEnvironmental
History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (APRIL 2010), pp. i-iv, 191-368Front
MatterEditorial [pp. 191-193]The Genius of Earth Day [pp. 194-
205]American Arcadia: Mount Auburn Cemetery and the
Nineteenth-Century Landscape Tradition [pp. 206-
235]Imprisoned Nature: Toward an Environmental History of
the World War II Japanese American Incarceration [pp. 236-
267]Ecologies of Beef: Eighteenth-Century Epizootics and the
Environmental History of Early Modern Europe [pp. 268-
287]Sustainability and the Western Civilization Curriculum:
Reflections on Cross-pollinating the Humanities and
Environmental History [pp. 288-304]InterviewJ. Donald Hughes
[pp. 305-318]GalleryON "WHERE THE SEA USED TO BE"
[pp. 319-323]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 324-
325]Review: untitled [pp. 325-328]Review: untitled [pp. 328-
341]Review: untitled [pp. 341-342]BIBLIOSCOPE: AN
ARCHIVAL GUIDE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY [pp. 343-368]Back
Matter
Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists
and Nuclear Technology
Author(s): Rachel Rothschild
Source: Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences , Vol. 43, No.

4 (Sep., 2013), pp. 492-530
Published by: University of California Press
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hsns.2013.43.4.492
RACHEL ROTHSCHILD*
Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age:
Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology

ABSTRACT
The U.S. military first sponsored ecological research during
World War II to monitor
the release of radioactive effluent into waterways from
plutonium production. The
Atomic Energy Commission later expanded these investigations
to include studies of
radioactive fallout at the Nevada and Marshall Island test sites,
particularly after the
Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon) accident in 1954. The public
outcry against nuclear
testing from this accident, which contaminated nearby inhabited
islands with radio-
active fallout, resulted in a considerable influx of funding for
environmental science at
the Atomic Energy Commission. Many biologists who
conducted these studies on
nuclear fallout and waste for the Atomic Energy Commission
began to develop
concerns about radioactive pollution in the environment from
the long-term, cumu-
lative effects of nuclear waste disposal, the use of atomic bombs
for construction
projects, and the potential ecological devastation wrought by
nuclear war. Their new
environmental awareness prompted many Atomic Energy
Commission ecologists to
try to draw congressional attention to the dangers that nuclear

technology posed to
the environment. It also spurred reforms in the education and
training of ecologists
to meet the challenges of the atomic age through the new
subfield of ‘‘radioecology’’
as well as research into problems of environmental pollution
more broadly.
K E Y W O R D S : atomic energy, ecology, environment,
fallout, nuclear technology, pollution,
radioecology
*Program in the History of Science and Medicine, Yale
University, P. O. Box 208015, New
Haven, CT 06520-8015; [email protected]
The following abbreviations are used: AEC, Atomic Energy
Commission; BESA, Bulletin of
the Ecological Society of America; ESA, Ecological Society of
America; UCLA, University of
California, Los Angeles; UWRE, University of Washington,
Laboratory of Radiation Ecology
records, Special Collections Division, University of Washington
Libraries, Seattle, WA [Acces-
sion No. 00–065 unless otherwise noted. In other notes,
Accession no. precedes Box and Folder
as per University of Washington Radiation Ecology record’s
organizational structure.].
4 9 2 |
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 43, Number 4,
pps. 492–530. ISSN 1939-1811,
electronic ISSN 1939-182X. © 2013 by the Regents of the
University of California. All rights
reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy

or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://
www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI:
10.1525/hsns.2013.43.4.492.
��129.21.116.241 on Tue, 15 Jan 2019
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Now comes the Atomic Age, with its attendant new and
immediate pro-
blems, not to mention those that are of a long-term nature.
Problems are
multiple at every level of biological organization, and in each of
the major
areas of nuclear energy effort, ecological understandings are
important and
immensely needed. To the timid who blanch before the nobility
of bio-
chemical and molecular biological research of the past decade;
who are
debating the relative merits of various biological research
approaches; and
who are awed by the splendor of space, the excitement of
creating a primor-
dial living system, it is appropriate to suggest that ecologists
stick to their
own lasts. The last assessment of experimental results in
biology must be
ecological, and the understanding of the environment and its
working com-

plex is likely to be essential to survival.1
In 1961, John Wolfe, the Director of the Environmental
Sciences Division of
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), delivered the above
statement in
a speech entitled ‘‘Impact of Atomic Energy on the
Environment and Envi-
ronmental Science’’ to a gathering of over a hundred
‘‘radioecologists’’ from
throughout the United States. It was the first time that
ecologists held
a national meeting to discuss the current scientific knowledge
about the effects
of nuclear technology on the environment, avenues for future
research, and in
what ways ecology needed to be transformed to meet the
challenges of the new
atomic age. Prior to the modern environmental movement that
emerged in the
1960s from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, many of the
ecologists present at this
meeting recognized a threat to the environment from nuclear
technology and
hoped that ecological science could play an important role in
understanding
pollution problems.
The purpose of this paper is to understand how such a
transformation in
environmental awareness occurred among a group of ecologists
working for the
AEC during the early years of the Cold War at the University of
Washington,
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the AEC
Division of

Environmental Sciences. The biologists at the University of
Washington and
UCLA were the first to conduct ecological studies for the AEC
through both
fieldwork and laboratory investigations, and worked closely
with the AEC
Division of Environmental Sciences on the potential
environmental dangers
of nuclear technology after its formation in the late 1950s. I
argue that their
1. John Wolfe, ‘‘Impact of Atomic Energy on the Environment
and Environmental Science,’’
in Radioecology: Proceedings of the First National Symposium
on Radioecology held at Colorado State
University, Fort Collins, Colorado, September 10–15, 1961, ed.
Vincent Schultz and Alfred W.
Klement (New York: Reinhold Publishing, 1963), 1.
E N V I R O N M E N T A L A W A R E N E S S I N T H E A T
O M I C A G E | 4 9 3
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environmental concerns principally arose from their
involvement in ecological
studies of the Marshall Islands affected by the 1954 Lucky
Dragon accident and
in an environmental risk assessment for the AEC’s Project
Chariot, which

proposed to use an atomic bomb in order to create a harbor in
Alaska. This
paper will evaluate these two episodes in depth to demonstrate
how they
deepened these ecologists’ attentiveness to potential
environmental dangers
from nuclear technology. I will then examine the ways in which
these ecolo-
gists took action because of such concerns both by reaching out
to congres-
sional officials and by attempting to transform ecological
training. My analysis
will show that current scholarship on the history of ecology in
the AEC has
underestimated the existence of environmental concern among
ecologists
working for the organization and the extent to which such
concerns shaped
their activities while working for the organization.
As several historians of ecology have shown, the science of
‘‘ecology’’ has not
always been synonymous with attentiveness to potential
environmental
harms.2 This is particularly true of ecological work before
World War II and
the modern environmental movement. In fact, the attempts by a
few ecologists
to involve themselves with the conservation movement during
the interwar
period caused a rift in the professional community that resulted
in a majority
of members of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) voting
to prohibit any
ESA involvement in the protection of nature, including political
activities.3

Initially, the ecologists I examine also expressed few
reservations about environ-
mental degradation. Part of my goal in this work is thus to try to
explain the
development of interest in the environmental impacts of nuclear
technology that
occurred among a significant number of ecologists who worked
for the AEC.
The transformation of ecology into a ‘‘Cold War science’’ has
been dealt with
by a number of historians of science, but the importance of
ecologists’ environ-
mental concerns in shaping their work for the U.S. military and
AEC has been
largely undeveloped.4 As Sharon Kingsland noted in a review of
Frank Golley’s
2. Frank Egerton, ed., History of American Ecology (New York:
Arno Press, 1977); Ronald C.
Tobey, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding
School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–
1955 (Berkeley: University of California, 1981); Robert A.
Croker, Pioneer Ecologist: The Life and
Work of Victor Ernest Shelford 1877–1968 (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian, 1991); Sharon E.
Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2005).
3. The ESA’s Preservation Committee was abolished after the
vote. For a detailed account of
this incident, see Croker, Pioneer Ecologist (ref. 2), 120–45.
4. Historians Judith Johns Schloegel and Karen Rader have

drawn particular attention to the
need for further research on the environmental studies carried
out at Argonne National Laboratory.
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Ecosystem Ecology, a much deeper study is needed of
ecologists working for the
AEC, whom Golley claims welcomed the new funding and were
unperturbed by
their military connections.5 Indeed, recent work by Stephen
Bocking has argued
that ecologists working at the Oak Ridge Laboratory did not
harbor trepidations
about radiation hazards in the environment and were free to
pursue other ‘‘basic’’
research topics.6 Bocking also claims that before the late 1960s
the Joint Com-
mittee on Atomic Energy never mentioned ecological research
or environmental
issues, which this paper will show is incorrect; the committee
held hearings in
the late 1950s that explicitly addressed ecology and the
environmental impact of
nuclear technology and included testimony from the ecologists I
will discuss.7
Scholars who have looked specifically at the University of

Washington
ecologists have characterized their research as focused on how
nuclear tech-
nology could be used to obtain ecological knowledge, without
regard to the
environmental repercussions. For example, Matthew Klingle has
described
their work for the AEC as geared towards scientific
management of salmon
populations for the ‘‘improvement’’ of nature, not the
protection of it.8 Scott
Kirsch’s examination of their involvement in Project Chariot
portrays the AEC
-
For their bibliographic essay on the documentary evidence
concerning this work as well as a broader
discussion of biological sciences in the national laboratories,
see Judith Johns Schloegel and Karen
A. Rader, Ecology, Environment, and ‘‘Big Science’’: An
Annotated Bibliography of Sources on Envi-
ronmental Research at Argonne National Laboratory, 1955–1985
(Oak Ridge, TN: Office of the
Director, Argonne National Laboratory, ANL/HIST–4, 2005).
5. Sharon E. Kingsland, ‘‘Review: Ecosystem Ecology: A
Cautionary Tale,’’ Quarterly Review
of Biology 70, no. 2 (1995): 205–08.
6. This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Oak Ridge
sponsored the first training
programs for ecologists interested in studying the environmental
effects of atomic energy
beginning in 1961, which will be discussed in more detail in the
final section of the article. Though

this paper does not focus on the Oak Ridge ecologists, such
contradictions raise the question of
whether further examination of their records might complicate
the notion that they pursued their
research without regard to environmental problems from nuclear
technology. See Stephen
Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of
Contemporary Ecology (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 76, 79, 84–88.
7. Ibid., 86.
8. Matthew Klingle’s argument is persuasive regarding the
University of Washington’s work
at the Fern Lake Project on salmon fisheries, but does not
adequately capture the ecologists’
trepidations about the ecological impacts of nuclear technology.
As Klingle does not examine
their work in the Pacific and Nevada test sites in detail, this
may explain his lack of attention
to their environmental concerns. See Matthew W. Klingle,
‘‘Plying Atomic Waters: Lauren
Donaldson and the ‘Fern Lake Concept’ of Fisheries
Management,’’ Journal of the History of
Biology 31, no. 1 (1998): 1–32. Laura Bruno has also mentioned
the early role of the University of
Washington scientists in examining nuclear wastes at the
Hanford facility and radioactive fallout
in the Pacific testing grounds, but does not explore their work
in detail. See Laura A. Bruno, ‘‘The
O M I C A G E | 4 9 5
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ecologists as displaying outright disregard for the
environmental impacts of the
program.9 My examination of these ecologists, however, will
show that envi-
ronmental problems caused by nuclear technology were in fact
quite troubling
to them.
In the first section of my paper, I explore why ecologists at the
University of
Washington and UCLA were initially recruited by the U.S.
military during
World War II and their early work for the AEC at the Los
Alamos and Nevada
test sites.10 A few of these scientists expressed misgivings
about potential
ecological dangers from nuclear testing and waste disposal
during the late
1940s, but on the whole they appear to have been preoccupied
with under-
standing whether and how radioisotopes accumulated in flora
and fauna rather
than focusing on the potential for environmental harm.11 I then
show how the
1954 Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon) accident in the Pacific
Ocean opened up
new opportunities for ecological research as the AEC scrambled
to assuage the
fears of the public over radioactive fallout and created its
Division of Envi-

ronmental Sciences. I argue that these new research endeavors,
including the
AEC’s request for an ecological evaluation of the risks in
allowing native
populations to return to contaminated islands, generated
considerable unease
over the environmental impact of nuclear technology among
many of the
ecologists involved.
I subsequently examine the most significant conflict to emerge
between the
upper echelons of the AEC and ecologists at the University of
Washington and the
AEC Division of Environmental Science over a proposal to
‘‘peacefully’’ detonate
an atomic bomb in order to create a harbor in Alaska in
‘‘Project Chariot.’’ I argue
-
Bequest of the Nuclear Battlefield: Science, Nature, and the
Atom During the First Decade of the
Cold War,’’ HSPS 33, no. 2 (2003): 237–60.
9. Kirsch’s book is largely written from the perspective of
biologists outside the AEC. Much of
his argument about AEC ecologists is focused on John Wolfe,
whom he describes as unconcerned
about the environmental consequences from Project Chariot,
instead seeing it as a useful eco-
logical experiment. See Scott L. Kirsch, Proving Grounds:
Project Plowshare and the Unrealized
Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2005), 108, 206.

10. Their research on the movement of radioactive isotopes
through the environment
eventually led to the widespread adoption of the newly
introduced concept of an ‘‘ecosystem.’’
Angela Creager has recently drawn attention to the adoption of
the ecosystem concept by
ecologists at the University of Washington to track the effects
of effluents and radioactive wastes
from its nuclear plants. See Angela Creager, Life Atomic:
Radioisotopes in Biology and Medicine
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), 491–522.
11. Creager notes that the research undertaken in the late 1940s
was concerned with identi-
fying levels of radioactivity in the Columbia River water and
the concentration of radioactivity in
the bodies of fish, especially in the liver and kidneys, following
exposure. Ibid., 511–15.
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that their involvement in this project, in combination with risk
assessments
in the Pacific and concerns about nuclear waste, convinced
these radioecol-
ogists of the substantial dangers that nuclear waste and war
posed to the
environment and prompted them to organize a national meeting

of radio-
ecologists to address such issues. As the Project Chariot
controversy deep-
ened between 1958 and 1961, several ecologists were asked to
testify in front
of the House of Representatives, many of whose members were
also growing
increasingly wary of the AEC’s policies on the biological
effects of radiation.
The ecologists’ attempts to draw national attention to the
environmental
repercussions of nuclear waste and war during these hearings
and subse-
quently build alliances with congressional leaders intent on
regulating atomic
energy is further indication of their deepening concern over
nuclear tech-
nology. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of how ecologists
working for
the AEC hoped to transform their discipline in order to meet the
challenges
nuclear technology posed to environmental protection.
ECOLOGY IN THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION
Before the establishment of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the
creation of the
first atomic bomb, General Leslie R. Groves, who was in charge
of adminis-
tering the Manhattan Project for the U.S. military, began to
search for a site to
produce plutonium. Several characteristics were essential:
distance from heavily
populated areas, close proximity to power supplies, and
extremely cold water to
cool the reactors. Given these requirements, the Columbia

River’s opening into
the Pacific Ocean at Hanford, Washington, was selected as the
ideal location.
Winding over a thousand miles from Canada through the United
States, the
Columbia River was, and still is, one of the largest sources of
fresh water in
North America. Construction began on April 6, 1943, but
production of nuclear
material would have to wait more than a year, during which
time General
Groves and others began to consider the potential environmental
consequences
of the Hanford reactor. Groves had grown up in the Northwest
on an Army base
in Fort Lawton, Washington, and had attended the University of
Washington,
so the effect of the atomic program on a vital water resource of
the region seems
to have been personal for him.12 Most important, however, was
the need to keep
12. Officers in the Medical Section of the Manhattan District,
who were responsible for
evaluating the potential effects of radiation on human health,
also supported the formation of
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the work of the Manhattan Project a secret from the public.
Groves feared that if
controls on the levels of radioactivity in the water were not
adequate, the
surrounding community might become aware of the existence of
the secret
government plan to build an atomic bomb.13
At a high-level meeting of military personnel and scientists
involved in the
project, Groves concluded that biologists specializing in aquatic
environ-
ments needed to be recruited to monitor the conditions of the
Columbia
River. They could not be told the purpose of their work.
Stafford Warren,
the head of the Medical Section of the Manhattan project and a
faculty
member at the University of Rochester, suggested Lauren R.
Donaldson,
a forty-year-old professor of fisheries at the University of
Washington. In
August of 1943, he and a team of other biologists in his
department would
become the first group of scientists to study the environmental
impacts of
nuclear technology.14 Donaldson and three co-workers were the
only scien-
tists tasked with evaluating the effects of radioactive materials
on the envi-
ronment until 1946. Initially their work focused on irradiating
fish eggs and
adults in a laboratory, but Donaldson soon pressed Groves to
allow him to

conduct observations on the Columbia River itself.15 While it is
unclear
whether his appeals had much influence over Groves, the U.S.
military did
decide to install his assistant, Richard F. Foster, at a field
station when the
Hanford reactor began operating in 1944. The early years of
their work
focused on collecting data about the accumulation of
radioactive material
in the bodies of aquatic life forms exposed to radioactive
effluents of varying
levels along the river in conjunction with the ongoing
laboratory studies.16
While the military’s primary goal was to monitor adverse
reactions from long-
term low exposure, such as increased incidence of leukemia,
tumors, or other
genetic effects, the ecologists were also asked to screen for any
immediate effects
-
a scientific program for the Columbia reactor. Neal O. Hines,
Proving Ground: An Account of the
Radiobiological Studies in the Pacific, 1946–1961 (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1963), 7.
13. Peter Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan
Project (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1999), 289.
14. Hines, Proving Ground (ref. 12), 7–10.
15. Most of their initial research concerned the potential impact
on the economically vital

salmon of the Columbia River. The U.S. military’s stated
objective for the Columbia study was
‘‘to identify potentially significant effects of reactor effluent on
humans and aquatic life down-
stream, and to estimate the magnitude of this effect.’’ See
‘‘Columbia River Program: Objectives
of the Research,’’ UWRE, Box 6, Folder 25, Columbia River
Program.
16. ‘‘Columbia River Program,’’ n.d., UWRE, Box 1, Folder 1,
Historical Information, 1959.
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on the health of aquatic organisms and increased mortality from
the radioactive
effluent.17
The AEC took over responsibility for the work of the University
of
Washington laboratory after its creation through the Atomic
Energy Act of
1946.18 In the following year, the Division of Biology and
Medicine was
subsequently formed to oversee the biological and medical
studies that were
begun during the war, including the continuation of the

laboratory studies and
monitoring of radioactive effluents by University of Washington
ecologists.19
As the AEC prepared to launch its postwar testing program in
the Marshall
Islands, it contracted with additional biologists working under
Stafford War-
ren, now Dean of UCLA’s Medical School, to monitor the
effects of radioac-
tive fallout. They were asked to cooperate with members of the
University of
Washington Laboratory on research at the Los Alamos, New
Mexico test site
where the first nuclear bomb, Trinity, had been detonated in
1945.20 Warren
and his colleagues in the biology department assembled a field
group that
included scientific specialists of mammals, reptiles, birds,
insects, vegetation,
and soil. The team conducted investigations into the
environmental effects of
fallout from the Trinity test in August and September each year
from 1947
through 1951.21 They sampled levels of radiation at varying
distance from the
blast to determine the accumulation of fission products in soils,
flora, and fauna,
ranging from Russian thistle to cattle.22 Much of the initial
results, however,
baffled these scientists. In one animal species, the packrat, they
discovered that
17. ‘‘An Evaluation of Long-term Effects of Acute and
Intermittent Exposures of Ionizing
Radiations,’’ 16 Jun 1949, UWRE, Box 7, Folder 19, Nuclear

Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft
(NEPA) Project, 1948–1949.
18. After World War II ended, the work of the ecologists was
temporarily overseen by the
Army Corps of Engineers. All of the Manhattan District’s
contracts, facilities, and management
responsibilities were then transferred to the AEC when it began
operations in the spring of 1947.
See Hines, Proving Ground (ref. 12), 19, 79.
19. The Division of Biology and Medicine was founded in the
fall of 1947 per the recom-
mendation of the AEC’s Medical Board of Review, which had
been asked by AEC Chairman
David Lilienthal to outline a potential biomedical research
program for the agency. It reported
directly to Chairman Lilienthal. See United States Advisory
Committee on Human Radiation,
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: Final
Report (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1995), 29–30.
20. Undated document entitled ‘‘Historical,’’ UWRE, Box 1,
Folder 1, Historical Informa-
tion, 1959.
21. Kermit Larson, ‘‘Continental Close–in Fallout: Its History,
Measurement and Char-
acteristics,’’ in Schultz and Klement, eds., Radioecology:
Proceedings (ref. 1), 19.
22. Ibid., 20.
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the bones and liver showed evidence of radioactivity years after
the test, while in
other species, such as the Kangaroo rat, no detectable levels of
absorption were
observed.23 Studies on vegetation were also somewhat
inconclusive, as the
scientists struggled to differentiate between artificial
radioactive elements and
naturally occurring background radiation.24 By 1951, the team
could only con-
clude that the complexity and variations they observed were a
result of a com-
pilation of factors that included climatology, topography, soil
properties, local
food chains, and the biology and life cycles of different animal
communities. Yet
their work caused some uneasiness within the administration of
the AEC, and
that year, informal discussions within the Division of Biology
and Medicine
resulted in the creation of a specific ‘‘Radio-ecology’’ field
group in order to deal
with the ‘‘environmental biological problem.’’25
Shortly thereafter, as the U.S. increased the frequency of
nuclear tests,
ecological investigations began at the Nevada test site with a

new emphasis
on documenting fallout patterns and differences in the
production of specific
radioisotopes based on weapons type and method of detonation.
Kermit Lar-
son, a health physicist who would later direct UCLA’s
Laboratory of Nuclear
Medicine and Radiation Biology, led biological field groups on
these expedi-
tions. They included scientists from the Atomic Energy Project
at UCLA as
well as several University of Washington ecologists, who served
as consultants
to the expeditions.26 Donaldson’s laboratory also assisted the
group by con-
ducting tests of soil samples sent from the Nevada test site.27
Through these
studies, Larson and his field groups identified a number of
factors that ap-
peared important in influencing the ‘‘biological fate and
persistence’’ of radio-
active fallout.28 For instance, distance from the blast site,
differences in the
23. Ibid., 21.
24. Ibid., 20.
25. Stafford Warren to the Administrative Committee, Office of
the Chancellor, UCLA, 22
Aug 1952, UWRE, Box 7, Folder 18, Monitoring Program, Civil
Defense.
26. Dozens of scientists at UCLA assisted with this work in
addition to the University of
Washington ecologists. For a list of those who were most
involved, see Kermit Larson, Factors

Influencing the Biological Fate and Persistence of Radioactive
Fall-Out (Los Angeles: University of
California, Department and Laboratories of Nuclear Medicine
and Radiation Biology, 1959), 7–8.
Regarding the University of Washington ecologists’ work at
Nevada, see Hines, Proving Ground
(ref. 12), 126, 133.
27. Donaldson and Larson would work closely together in the
resurveys at Bikini and En-
iwetok and continued to collaborate throughout their careers.
Colonel J. B. Jartgering, Office of
the Test Director, Nevada Proving Ground to Al Seymour,
Acting Director, University of
Washington Radiobiology Laboratory, 1 Jul 1952, UWRE, Box
7, Folder 20, Nevada Tests.
28. Larson, Factors (ref. 26).
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solubility of radioisotopes, variations in leaf-surface
characteristics, and animal
grazing patterns all appeared to play a role in the persistence of
radioactive
fallout in the environment.29
Yet precisely how and when accumulation of radioactive

particles occurred
was still a mystery, and many of the biologists expressed
frustration with
evaluating the biological impact of the tests. Frank Lowman,
one of Donald-
son’s colleagues at the University of Washington who
participated in the
expeditions, is representative of this sentiment among the
AEC’s field group.
He was overwhelmed not only by the extent of the scientific
unknowns, but
also problems with the monitoring equipment. ‘‘This last test
was really an eye
opener,’’ he wrote to the Deputy Director of the laboratory, Al
Seymour.
‘‘Dangerous amounts of radioactive material, as far as
inhalation is concerned,
can be present but undetectable on an MX-5 [a radioactivity
detector] . . .
We’ve all been forced to change some of our basic assumptions
concerning
radiation hazards.’’30 For instance, Lowman found that the
MX-5 was having
trouble picking up beta radiation, which he believed to have
important bio-
logical implications. He sought to secure additional detectors
and shot his own
rabbit samples to bring back to the lab in order to examine this
problem
further.31 Seymour replied sympathetically that it sounded as if
the Nevada
field work continued to be plagued by some of the same
difficulties that
prevailed in former tests, and encouraged him to ‘‘hang
tough.’’32 Ultimately,
Lowman and others at the field sites concluded that it would be

imperative to
overhaul their methods and approach.33
The problem was that only a few studies had ever been done on
the
interactive relationship between an organism and its abiotic
environment.34
Ecological research prior to World War II focused on
succession of different
plant communities, predator-prey relationships, and population
fluctuations
in the wild. Simply coordinating research between zoologists
and botanists
29. Ibid., 32–77.
30. The MX–5 was one of the earliest meters built to detect and
measure beta and gamma
radiation. Frank Lowman to Al Seymour, 2 Jun 1952, UWRE,
Box 7, Folder 18, Monitoring
Program, Civil Defense.
31. Ibid.
32. Al Seymour to Frank Lowman, 26 May 1952, UWRE, Box 7,
Folder 18, Monitoring
33. Frank Lowman to Al Seymour, 20 May 1952, UWRE, Box 7,
Program, Civil Defense, 4. See also Larson, Factors (ref. 26),
15–17.
34. Gregg Mitman, The State of Nature: Ecology, Community,
and American Social Thought,

1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 45–
46, 65.
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appeared problematic, much less incorporating geological,
meteorological, and
chemical processes into ecological work.35 A textbook that
integrated animal
and plant ecology was not published until 1939.36 Thus, before
ecologists could
try to determine what the potential environmental effects of
radioactive mate-
rial would be, questions about the basic functioning of food
chains, life cycles,
seasonal variations, and climatology needed to be addressed.
Based in part on these realities, the ecosystem concept soon
became the
dominant organizing theoretical foundation for ecology within
the next
decade.37 Originally conceived by British ecologist Arthur
Tansley in 1935, the
‘‘ecosystem’’ was defined as a system ‘‘in the sense of
physics’’ and emphasized
the use of physical laws to describe what was happening in
nature.38 Yet little

research had been done to demonstrate precisely what a study
based on the
ecosystem concept would look like until 1950.39 That year,
already five years
after the Trinity test, the first seminal study of an ecosystem
was published by
G. Evelyn Hutchinson of Yale University.40 His influence
would come to be
felt throughout radioecology in the following decades from the
propagation of
his ideas through his students. One of particular importance is
Howard
Odum, who came to study at Yale with Hutchinson during this
period and
was strongly persuaded of the merits of his views. His brother,
Eugene Odum,
went on to revise his approach to ecology when Howard gave
him a copy of
Elements of Physical Biology in the late 1940s after studying it
with Hutchin-
son.41 The text, written in 1925 by physical chemist Alfred
Lotka, argued for
studying biological and physical environments as one single,
interactive
35. This was a major frustration of prominent ecologist Victor
Shelford. See Croker, Pioneer
Ecologist (ref. 2).
36. Frederick Clements and Victor Shelford, Bio-ecology (New
York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1939).
37. Kingsland, Evolution of American Ecology (ref. 2), 180–92.
38. This was in contrast to Frederic Clements’ organism
concept, which had guided ecological
research in the first three decades of the twentieth century. See

Arthur G. Tansley, ‘‘The Use and
Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms,’’ Ecology 16, no. 3
(1935): 284–307.
39. Hutchinson had begun calling for the use of mathematics
and a biogeochemical approach
in 1940. See Robert McIntosh, ‘‘Ecology since 1900’’ in
Egerton, ed., History of American Ecology
(ref. 2), 360.
40. G. Evelyn Hutchinson and Vaughan T. Bowen,
‘‘Limnological Studies in Connecticut—
IX. A Quantitative Radiochemical Study of the Phosphorus
Cycle in Linsley Pond,’’ Ecology 31,
no. 2 (1950): 194–203.
41. Eugene Odum had trained as an ecologist at the University
of Illinois with Victor
Shelford, who was a follower of Frederick Clements’
‘‘organism’’ model, and a collaborator with
him on early textbooks in the field. Betty Jean Craige, Eugene
Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and
Environmentalist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002),
35.
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system, and proved to be extremely influential on the Odum

brothers’ work.
Eugene was conveniently working at the University of Georgia
near the Savan-
nah River nuclear plant, one of only a handful in the country,
and almost
immediately applied for a grant to study the ecology
surrounding the reactor.42
The reaction of the AEC is suggestive of the importance the
agency then gave
to ecology. It turned down Odum’s request the first time, and
only approved it
in 1951 after he slashed his budget tenfold and used graduate
students for the
bulk of the research.43
In spite of the recruitment of ecologists to the agency through
both grants and
internal employment, several incidents reveal that from the
beginning of their
work with the AEC, many ecologists began questioning the lack
of attention to
environmental and health impacts from the release of
radioactive material.44
Frank Lowman’s experiences with Kermit Larson at the Nevada
test site are
exemplary in this regard. While initially told that the Division
of Biology and
Medicine would have the ultimate say in determining whether or
not a shot
would occur in relation to wind direction and velocity, Lowman
informed his
colleagues at the University of Washington that these
recommendations were
completely ignored by the ‘‘halfwits’’ at the command center.

According to
Lowman, if the detonation equipment hadn’t failed on one
occasion, almost
two thousand military men would have received ten to thirty
times the tolerance
limit for radiation exposure, in addition to Mercury and Las
Vegas, Nevada
receiving a ‘‘beautiful pasting’’ of radioactive ash. ‘‘I’m sick of
the entire mess at
CP [the command center],’’ he concluded by the end of his time
in Larson’s field
group.45 Though it’s not clear whether the servicemen and
residents in nearby
locations were as at risk as Lowman describes, his account is
evidence of how
marginalized the field group ecologists may have felt at the
AEC test sites.
42. Frank Golley, an ecologist who worked with Stanley
Auerbach at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, has credited the research of the Odum brothers and
the community of ecologists
working for the AEC for the dominance of the ecosystem
concept, but he does not describe in
detail precisely how other ecologists, particularly the UCLA
and University of Washington
ecologists, became influenced by Hutchinson’s ideas. Frank B.
Golley, A History of the Ecosystem
Concept in Ecology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1996), 62–108.
43. Ibid. 51–54.
44. This is not to suggest that this was the only source of
conflict between ecologists and the
AEC. Tensions between radioecologists and the AEC also

originated over low levels of funding,
certain military protocols, and the enormity of the workload.
See Bocking, Ecologists and Envi-
ronmental Politics (ref. 6).
45. Frank Lowman to Al Seymour, 26 May 1951, UWRE, Box 7,
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Back at the University of Washington, Lowman’s colleague
Richard F.
Foster was also becoming more and more bothered by the
potential environ-
mental risks of radiation from nuclear waste. Foster was a
graduate of Donald-
son’s program before World War II and his first hire to the
Hanford project. As
noted earlier, he took over a second cooperative laboratory at
the Hanford
facility.
In the years after Hanford began operations, Foster tried to alert
his super-
iors about environmental problems that might result from the
release of radio-

active waste into the river, but met with little success.46
Frustrated by the lack
of response, he began speaking publicly about the problem of
radioactive
‘‘pollution’’ in the Columbia River, though he was careful to
acknowledge
that he was not reflecting the views of his employers.47 Despite
these efforts,
in 1951 Foster received orders from the manager of Hanford,
Herbert M.
Parker, to implement ‘‘a policy deemphasizing waste disposal’’
which Parker
had apparently ‘‘wanted all along.’’48 Foster was none too
pleased with this,
writing to Donaldson: ‘‘Presumably we are to gradually switch
over to the
more fundamental (biochemistry) type biology . . . the only
legitimate reason I
can see for doing such a thing would be an impending change in
process,
eliminating the problem [of radioactive waste] altogether. Of
course, we peons
don’t know of the reasons behind these intelligent
decisions.’’49
Foster was not the only scientist beginning to express alarm
about nuclear
waste. Around this time the ecologist Orlando Park at
Northwestern Univer-
sity received a phone call from a young physicist, Edward
Struxness, who had
recently begun work with the AEC and had once taken an
ecology course with
Park while a graduate student. Though published documents do
not reveal the

46. Richard Foster to H. A. Kornberg, 12 Jun 1953, UWRE, Box
1, Folder 12, General Electric
Company, Nucleonics Division (Hanford, WA).
47. Lauren Donaldson’s copy of a talk given by Foster is
preserved at the University of
Washington Archives. See Richard Foster, ‘‘Effects of Pollution
on Fresh Water Organisms,’’ 28
Nov 1950, UWRE, Box 1, Folder 12, General Electric Company,
Nucleonics Division (Hanford,
WA).
48. Richard Foster to Lauren Donaldson, 4 Mar 1951, UWRE,
Box 1, Folder 12, General
Electric Company, Nucleonics Division (Hanford, WA);
emphasis in original.
49. Ibid. Foster notes that ‘‘this, of course, is what H. A. K.
[Harry A. Kornberg] has wanted
all along.’’ Kornberg was originally hired by Parker around
1947 to look into the possibility of
identifying biochemical changes in blood due to radiation and
eventually took over as manager of
biology operations, a position he held for twenty years. See
Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Annual
Report for 1971 to the USAEC Division of Biology and
Medicine, Volume 1 Life Sciences, Part 2
Ecological Sciences (Richland, WA: Battelle, 1972), 8.
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details of Struxness’s concerns, it is clear that radioactive
wastes released into
surrounding water and soil at several National Laboratories
were causing some
sort of problems with nearby vegetation.50 As a result, Park
was asked to serve
as a secret consultant to the AEC on the matter of nuclear
wastes during this
period.51
Notwithstanding the rumblings from these ecologists, however,
there were
no signs that the AEC had any intention of stopping the release
of nuclear
wastes or considering whether the environmental and health
risks of atmo-
spheric testing outweighed the needs of national security and
defense.52 These
problems were certainly not unique to ecologists; across the
national labora-
tories, life scientists had to overcome an initial ambivalence
within the AEC
concerning the need for biological and medical research
support.53 While
Donaldson’s and Larson’s staffs expected to continue
monitoring the move-
ment of radioactive material at the testing sites in the Marshall
Islands and
Nevada, these trips were more often than not pulled together
with limited
funding at the last minute.54 Only as a result of a terrible
accident in the spring
of 1954 would ecology gain a greater degree of attention and

legitimacy within
the organization.
THE UNLUCKY DRAGON AND THE ‘‘NASTY FLAP’’
In March of 1954, unexpected wind shifts caused radioactive
ash from Oper-
ation Castle Bravo on Bikini Island to fall on the Fukuryu Maru
(Lucky
50. Manfred Engelmann, ‘‘Orlando Park, 1901–1969,’’ BESA
51, no. 1 (1970): 16–20. Years
later, John Wolfe would describe the discomfort he felt at
seeing rows of dead trees around the
Oak Ridge reactor and hearing a laboratory representative
describe it as due to ‘‘drought’’ while
green pines topped the more distant ridges in the area. See John
Wolfe, ‘‘Radioecology: Retro-
spection and Future,’’ in Proceedings of the Second National
Symposium on Radioecology, ed. Daniel
J. Nelson and Francis C. Evans (Ann Arbor, MI: Clearinghouse
for Federal Scientific and
Technical Information, 1969), xi.
51. David E. Reichle and W. Franklin Harris, ‘‘Resolution of
Respect,’’ BESA 85, no. 3 (2004):
91–95.
52. As Peter Westwick has argued, during the period from
1947–54, defense needs predom-
inately influenced the work of scientists working for the AEC.
See Peter J. Westwick, The
National Labs: Science in an American System, 1947–1974
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2003), 138–59.

53. Ibid., 246–52.
54. Lauren Donaldson to colleagues at the University of
Washington laboratory, 21 Mar 1953,
UWRE, Box 6, Folder 25, Columbia River Program.
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Dragon), a Japanese fishing boat in the Pacific.55 The fallout
sickened crew
members and contaminated nearby tuna fish to such a high
degree that they
were deemed unfit for human consumption.56 Widespread fear
erupted
throughout the U.S. in the following weeks and months, and
ecologists were
sent to the Marshall Islands to look for any potential damage to
surrounding
vegetation and organisms.57 By 1956, the democratic
presidential candidate,
Adlai Stevenson, became the first public official to call for a
ban on above-
ground nuclear testing.58
Ecological research, rather than aiding in this outcry, was
instead a benefi-
ciary of it. In the wake of these events, the AEC recruited more

ecologists to
join National Laboratories and increased financial support for
their research.59
As one example, Park, now having served for several years as a
secret consultant
at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, asked his former student
Stanley
Auerbach to take over a new ‘‘ecology section’’ there in late
1954.60 Less than
a year later, the chief of the biology branch of the AEC
contacted the ecologist
John Wolfe at Ohio University to come to their headquarters in
Washington,
D.C., to join the Division of Biology and Medicine for two
years.61 At the end
of his contract, the AEC took the dramatic step of creating a
specific Envi-
ronmental Sciences Division of the AEC in 1958 and named
Wolfe the found-
ing director.62 Wolfe quickly developed a close relationship
with Lauren
Donaldson and the Laboratory at the University of Washington,
and shortly
55. Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific
Community in Modern America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 382.
56. ‘‘Radioactive Fallout in the Marshall Islands,’’ Science 122,
no. 3181 (1955): 1178–79.
57. Though the Lucky Dragon accident prompted the first public
outcry against radioactive
fallout, concerns about the biological effects on radiation were
not new. Radioactive materials

were known dangers for decades before World War II because
of the growing use of x–rays and
the resulting skin burns from misuse. See Jacob Darwin
Hamblin, ‘‘‘A Dispassionate and
Objective Effort’: Negotiating the First Study on the Biological
Effects of Atomic Radiation,’’
Journal of the History of Biology 40, no. 1 (2007): 147–77.
58. Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud (Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1999), 102–04.
59. Lauren Donaldson to Al Seymour, 19 Jun 1958, UWRE, Box
2, Folder 18, U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission Division of Biology and Medicine, 1.
Donaldson notes that the workload of
the laboratory at the University of Washington was greatly
increased during the last four years,
and that the work itself had changed from monitoring to a more
‘‘qualitative’’ evaluation.
Kingsland has noted that the AEC increased funding for
ecological work after 1954 out of concern
for radioactive contamination, but does not specifically point to
the Lucky Dragon accident as
motivating this shift in AEC policy. See Kingsland, Evolution
of American Ecology (ref. 2), 192.
60. Reichle and Harris, ‘‘Resolution of Respect’’ (ref. 51).
61. George Sprugel, ‘‘John N. Wolfe, 1910–1974,’’ BESA 56,
no. 3 (1975): 16–22, 20.
62. Ibid.
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thereafter, Al Seymour decided to accept Wolfe’s offer to work
with him in his
new office in Washington, D.C.63
In addition, after the Lucky Dragon incident, ecologists were
much more
frequently sought out by the AEC to document the
environmental effects of
fallout. The AEC told Donaldson that from then on, it would
include his
laboratory and a ‘‘full blown marine program’’ for all testing in
the Pacific as
a result of ‘‘the nasty flap that took place after March 1,
1954.’’64 The work of
Donaldson’s laboratory underwent a profound transformation as
a result of
these events, with increased funding and opportunities for
ecological research.
One assignment in particular, which was a direct result of the
accident, appears
to have considerably influenced the University of Washington
ecologists’ per-
ceptions about dangers from radiation in the environment. As a
result of the
nuclear explosion, large amounts of radioactive ash had
descended over the
inhabited island of Rongelap in the archipelago. Tasked with
determining
when it would be safe for the evacuated communities to return,
the laboratory
began repeated visits to study the ecology of the island and

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