Low‐level contamination

The newest subcommittee of the National Academy of Sciences‐National Research Council Committee on Nuclear Science met on January 30 to hear reports on studies of low‐level radioactive contamination. The group is called the Subcommittee on Low Level Contamination of Materials and Reagents. It is concerned with contamination which is too slight to be a significant biological hazard but which can interfere with scientific measurements in such diverse fields as medical diagnosis and biochemical tracer studies, archaeological and geological dating, hydrology and oceanography, fallout and radioactive waste detection and monitoring, meteorite and space probe studies, industrial tracer experiments, and other measurements requiring the use of low‐background, high‐sensitivity radiation detectors. Its primary aim is to encourage and facilitate the production and dissemination of information on the extent of such contamination and on methods of evaluating as well as of controlling or avoiding it.