Rep. Gunn McKay’s announcement that a House subcommittee will conduct a “full-scale” investigation into radiation and nuclear fallout health dangers to Utah and Nevada is reassuring. The congressman said Rep. Robert Eckhardt, D-Tex., chairman of the House commerce oversight and investigation subcommittee, would schedule hearings in Washington, Utah, and Nevada on (1) the effects of radiation, and (2) on reports that the Atomic Energy Commission tried to cover up information about the hazards of atomic bomb fallout. These additional recent developments have helped to put focus on the radiation problem: – Yesterday, a preliminary report by an Inter-Agency Task Force on Ionizing Radiation was released in Washington. The report – a preliminary draft of one that will go to President Carter later this year – recommended that several groups, including persons in Utah downwind from the Nevada nuclear test site, he closely monitored. – About two weeks ago Gov. Scott Matheson released state and U.S. documents indicating that fallout from Nevada nuclear tests was at least a contributing factor in the deaths of 4,200 Utah sheep in 1953. The same documents indicated the government resisted a thorough investigation of the cause of the sheep deaths. – A report, pulicized about the same time, gave results of a study by Dr. Joseph L. Lyon, codirector of the Utah Cancer Registry. His findings strengthened suspicions that fallout from the Nevada tests more than 20 years ago contributed to the deaths of leukemia victims in Southern Utah. – Rep. McKay referred to a public health service document which shows that thyroid cancer cases in Utah increased during the years of above-ground atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert. The study, by Edward Weiss, showed that the number of thyroid cancer cases was more than twice the national average in Utah during the same years the southern part of the state experienced a doubling in the number of childhood leukemia deaths. Weiss, a researcher for the Public Health Service, conducted a preliminary study in 1967 of thyroid cancers among young peos ple in Utah. He found that in the last five years of the nuclean testing program – from 1958 to 1962 – the number of thyroid cases in Utah was 129 percent of the national average. It is important to Utahns that all the facts are brought out in the investigation. The government study released yesterday tended to downplay any government liability, saying there was not enough evidence to conclude that radiation is the sole cause of cancer in people who contract the disease after exposure to low; level radioactivity. Hundreds of damage suits asking millions of dollars in damage have been filed by cancer victims and their families. Secy. Joseph Califano of the Health, Education and Welfare Department said the job of proving a link between the radiation and their cancer is “still insurmountable.” Obviously there’s a big job to accomplish in ferreting out the information on the effects of nuclear fallout on humans. The task is made more difficult by the lapse of time and by the alleged reluctance of some government agencies to release detailed and specific information. It is hoped that the Eckhardt committee will get to the bottom of things and come up with a mass of facts that will establish insofar as possible, the true facts. Meantime, it would seem wise for the Utah Legislature to approve a $100,000 budget request made by the governor for the state’s own study. A version of the bill has cleared the Senate and now goes before the House. A state probe along with the federal one might serve to protect the state interests, so to speak, and share with the federal probers significant facts obtained. No stone should be left unturned in the effort to be fair, objective, and all-inclusive in the research.