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From International Socialist Review, Vol.18 No.3, Summer 1957, p.83.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
“Two ‘killer’ clams analyzed at the US Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory showed an astonishing talent for concentrating cobalt,” reports the June Scientific American. “The clams had been taken from one of the Marshall Islands in a nuclear-weapons test area as samples for tests of residual radioactivity. They proved to have substantial amounts of radioactive cobalt 60, although the bomb could not have produced more than a trace amount in the area (cobalt 60 is not a product of nuclear fission). Apparently the clams had accumulated their Co-60 from the water during the two years since the test.
“The Navy scientists emphasized the enormous concentrating capacity the clam must have to accumulate cobalt 60 ‘from an environment which to all intents and purposes was infinitely dilute.’ One clam contained one third of a microcurie of the isotope; the other had one tenth of a microcurie. The danger level for man is considered to be about three microcuries of cobalt 60.
“The Navy scientists wondered whether this talent was an exclusive property of killer clams. They tried putting clams from San Francisco Bay into water containing a little cobalt and found that these clams also collect the element.”
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