Letters Sent to Dr. Frank E. Hoecker, January 22, 1946

January 22, 1946 Dr. Frank E. Hoecker, The University of Kansas, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Lawrence, Kansas Dear Dr. Hoecker: We are quite pleased to learn from your letter of January 17th that you intend to do research in connection with the metabolism of radium. This is a program which, if you will recall, we have contended for some time required considerable work in order to definitely determine the actual effects of radium or precise data on elimination and, if at all possible, some indication at least as to what magnitude of a dose constitutes a tolerance amount of radium. We realize, of course, that this is a fairly large program to undertake but we would be glad to cooperate with you in any way possible and we will be particularly pleased to receive from you results on the tests conducted. With reference to the two milligram source of radium chloride, we will be very glad to prepare such a material for you. As you probably realize, all of our radium is purchased as a bromide and it will be necessary for us to convert a small portion of this to a chloride, but we can doubtless do this within a few days time. Under the circumstances, we will be willing to do this for practically the cost of having a technician do this work and would be very glad, therefore, to supply this radium to you at a price of $30.00 per milligram. not Whether we would have exactly two milligrams or not, we can/ determine, but we can assure you that without our going to the trouble of waiting for two weeks or a month to make the measurements that the material supplied to you will be reasonably close to two milligrams. With regard to the question of the outcome of our studies with Dr. Flinn and Dr. Hess in connection with the relation between breath radon concentration and rate of exhalation, we have to date been unable to draw any definite conclusions. We have tabulated all our results and have submitted a copy to Dr. Greenburg for additional study. If you would be interested in a copy of these measurements, we would be glad to prepare a tabulation for you. It is our belief that a much closer control on sampling would have to be instituted in order to establish any definite relationship between the two factors. We have recently been working with Dr. Hess on a method for determining the amount of radium in the body by direct gamma ray measurement making use of the very delicate measuring equipment used by Dr. Hess. The information collected to date is rather meager and no very definite conclusions can be drawn. We will be conducting additional experiments probably within the next eight or ten weeks and hope, at that time, to accumulate sufficient additional data to provide information which lends itself to a reasonable