158 EHHALT 



flooding of the paddy field. It is questionable whether this rate would continue 

 for the entire year. Furthermore, Koyama equates methane production with 

 injection into the atmosphere. In the natural environment much methane is 

 consumed by methane consumers at the surface of the water or the mud, but 

 this would not occur in his experiments owing to the lack of oxygen. 



Ehhalt: Obviously, we need direct measurements of the methane production 

 over swamps. 



There is evidence that seems to support the following: it is well known that 

 the tritium content of methane in the atmosphere is unusually high and that the 

 tritium probably comes from the nuclear industry. What this means, of course, is 

 that all the reaction products of that methane should have a high tritium content 

 too. High tritium contents have also been found in formaldehyde, which seems 

 to give some support to the possibility that part of the methane finally ends up 

 in the form of formaldehyde. 



