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Higher & Higher. It would be helpful, indeed, if the Nunamiuts could change their diet, but in the bleak Brooks Range there is almost nothing but caribou to eat, and any kind of agriculture is impossible. The Eskimos could be fed on handouts of white men's food, which would destroy their self-sufficiency and probably their health, or they could be moved elsewhere. They do not relish either prospect. Says Simon Paneak, head of the village council: "We only know how to live here." Though he remains close kin to Stone Age man, he understands the problems of radiation only too well. "It keeps getting higher and higher, and we just don't know what to do."
So far, the Nunamiut Eskimos have shown no symptoms of the serious illnesses that can come from too much radiation, but no scientist can be confident that such symptoms will not appear. In the future, though, if the U.S. and Russia stick to their recently signed agreement to stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere, the contaminated lichens of northern Alaska will gradually lose their dangerous radioactivity. The body burdens of the caribou will fall little by little. Eventually the people of Anaktuvuk Pass will be no more radioactive than any other Americans.
*Thirty-seven atomic disintegrations per second, or one-billionth of a curie.