
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 13, 1990                   TAG: 9004131041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

NASA DISCOUNTS FEAR OF KILLER TOMATOES

Tomato seeds distributed to schoolchildren were exposed to cosmic radiation during six years in space that could produce poisonous fruit, it was reported today. But a NASA scientist called the report "unfounded and unreasonable."

"There is no validity that this presents a hazard to school children," said William Kinard, chief scientist for the Long Duration Exposure Facility, which carried the seeds as one of 57 experiments.

An unsigned memorandum from a NASA contractor described the danger as "remote," according to the Los Angeles Times, which obtained a copy of the memo.

But the memo said the research director at Park Seed Co., which gave NASA the seeds, "seemed to favor against" eating the tomatoes.

The Times said the memo was written by Nelson Ehrlich, associate director of the aerospace education services program at Oklahoma State University, which oversees NASA's school programs.

"There is a remote possibility that radiation-caused mutations could cause the plants to produce toxic fruit," the memo said. Radiation levels in space are higher than those on Earth.

No such warning was included in written materials sent to 180,000 teachers involved in the experiment designed to give 4 million students the chance to study the effects of space exposure on living tissue.

Kinard, who is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said that no tomatoes have been grown from the seeds, which were brought back to Earth in January when the LDEF was retrieved from orbit by the space shuttle Columbia.

"To think that from this very, very small sample we have in space that something strange is happening is just unfounded and unreasonable," he said.

by CNB