Tracerlab processed biological samples from the nuclear tests in Nevada and the Pacific. They were flown in Alameda Naval Air Station and trucked into Tracerlab in Richmond. Tracerlab was the principle contractor to create the Radiological Mobile Laboratory used at the Atomic Tests. They built devices used in radiation work including devices used in nuclear power plants as well as selling radio-isotopes where they bombarded elements to change their atomic number. All this was right down the street from the CDPH building and within range of the EPA Region 9 lab and UC Berkeley Richmond Campus. It is the Eberline building.
In this map, Berkeley Scientific is the building on the left at 2200 Wright Avenue and Tracerlab is the building immediately to its right, next to the CVS and the complex on the right is the California Department of Public Health.
In 1960 the US Naval Radiological Defense Lab developed 2655 Radiation Measuring Film Badges for Treasure Island and 12,688 for the US Naval Radiological Defense Lab at Hunters Point Shipyard along with 889 for Hunters Point Shipyard separate from the Defense Lab. These badges are dosimeters that measure how much radiation a person was exposed to during a period of time and they were collected from all over the Bay Area to be developed and analyzed at the Defense Lab for the year of 1960.
This document is a who’s who of radiological exposure just for one year at the US Navy’s Radiological Defense Laboratory and I highly recommend it as reading material to give you a look into the radiation experiments they conducted on the shipyard (including building numbers) and all throughout the Bay Area, including downtown San Francisco!
The presence of radiation badges means each time a human being was exposed to radiation over the course of an experiment or regular monitoring of radiation exposure on site. A very frequent and robust radiological contaminations were taking place at the Shipyard and Treasure Island in 1960.
Camp Parks in Dublin CA was the field station for the Lab where they conducted radiological tests on the base while military personnel worked and lived on the base. These experiments included using the gymnasium to rain down radioactive isotopes to determine its effects on roof structures and that gymnasium was then “cleaned up” and was used by the Navy and then the Air Force when they took over the base and as recently as last year by private entities before it was torn down. Stanford Research did a lot of radiological work at Camp Parks and it is clear they had many nuclear accidents reported in this report from 1960.
They did this for other locations listed below:
Dosimeter films developed at the USNRDL 1960
NRDL
Film Processed
Totals
Laboratory personnel
7684
Laboratory visitors
1619
Environmental monitoring
471
Calibration film
900
Special films for Nucleonics Div.
109
Special films for Bio-Med Div.
5
Special films for Health Physics Div.
3
RadCon Team film (controls)
11
Special test exposures
163
Camp Parks Personnel and visitors
1361
Camp Parks Environmental monitoring
362
12688
Subtotal
Outside Activities
San Francisco Naval Shipyard
889
Treasure Island Inspector of Navy Material
523
Treasure Island Radiac Maintenance School and Dispensary
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