放射性尘降、健康风险评估与美国核禁试政策

Epistemic Frictions:Radioactive fallout,health risk assessments,and the Eisenhower administration’s nuclear-test ban policy,1954—1958

1954年美国热核武器试验成功,放射性尘降的世界性扩散随之成为难以回避的问题。本文在全球放射性污染背景下重审了艾森豪威尔政府的核禁试政策。关于全球尘降危害及其对核禁试辩论的影响,公众的话语不断变化,为解释这一点,本文聚焦于认知的交锋,力图展示各种专家机构是如何从不同角度考虑放射性尘降的生物效应,评估其科学上的不确定性与道德上的模糊性,以及由此造成的各科学顾问委员会内部和之间的分歧是如何加剧了这场争论,从而影响了艾森豪威尔政府的核禁试政策,该政策导致了1958年的核试验暂停。

The successful test of a US thermonuclear weapon in 1954 raised a compelling question as to the worldwide dispersion of radioactive fallout.This article reexamines the Eisenhower administration’s test-ban policy in the context of global radioactive contamination.To explain the shifting public discourse of the global fallout hazards and its impact on the test-ban debate,the article focuses on epistemic frictions,seeking to demonstrate how a variety of expert bodies evaluated scientific uncertainty and moral ambiguity concerning the biological effects of fallout from different sets of concerns,and how the resulting incongruence both within and between the scientific advisory committees fueled the fallout controversy and affected the Eisenhower administration’s test-ban policy leading toward the test moratorium in 1958.