&gt; But was that known at the time?<p>Yes. They even knew they were going to fake the results:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ieer.org&#x2F;latest&#x2F;iodnart.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ieer.org&#x2F;latest&#x2F;iodnart.html</a><p>&quot;For example, in 1953, the Public Health Service was asked to obtain milk samples in St. George, Utah, near the test site. But the service took a sample from a carton of milk purchased in a store, not from a local farm or dairy -- at a time when the majority of residents of southwest Utah obtained milk from their own cows and many others purchased milk from neighboring farms.(12)<p>According to Morgan S. Seal, a <i>fallout monitor with the Public Health Service,</i> the testing procedure was not very useful either. &quot;In the case of milk, we even treated it with perchloric acid to get rid of all the organic residue....we knew for a fact then that those oxidating techniques completely eliminated any iodine in the material that you were treating.&quot;(13)&quot;