Science: Plague of Iridium 192

Little Del Northway, 4, of Houston was not happy. The kids would not play with him. He ran to his mother crying, "Why are they mean to me?" Mrs. Northway was not happy either. None of her neighbors had called on her, she said, "since the men with the Geiger counters came." Her bit of Houston was still trying to adjust itself to an accident that may become commonplace in the Atomic Age.

The trouble began March 13 when H. E. Northway, Del's father and manager of the Houston plant of M. W. Kellogg Co.,...