V. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



McClendon (1923) has pointed out that goiter is most prevalent 

 in regions where there is httle iodine in the drinking water. His 

 statistics relative to the prevalence of goiter (obtained from records 

 of the drafted men in the United States Army during the World War) 

 and the iodine content of the water are given in Table 2. 



Table 2. — Relation of prevalence of goiter to the iodine content of water 



According to this division, zone 1 is confined to the Great Lakes and 

 St. Lawrence River Basins and the northwestern Pacific region. 

 From this zone of greatest prevalence, goiter gradually diminishes 

 toward the lower Mississippi Valley, where thyroid disorders are least 

 prevalent. 



McClendon and Hathaway (1923) have further stated that it would 

 take about 2,000 years for a person to drink enough Lake Superior 

 water to accumulate an amount of iodine equal to that found in the 

 thyroid of a normal adult drinking this or similar water. They 

 conclude, therefore, that there must be iodine in foods. Their 

 analyses of certain foods show that those grown in a nongoiterous 

 region contain more iodine than those from a goiterous region. 



Many ways of making up the deficiency of iodine in drinking water 

 have been proposed. Many physicians advocate the administration 

 of small doses of iodides from time to time. Kimball and Marine 

 (1917, 1918, 1920, and 1921) have successfully administered iodides 

 to 1,080 schoolgirls of Akron, Ohio. In Rochester (N. Y.) and other 

 cities small amounts of sodium iodide have been added to the 

 municipal drinking water. 



Practically all the common foods have been analyzed to determine 

 their iodine content. The presence of relatively large amounts of 

 iodine in any foods is of considerable importance, for such foods would 

 aid in the prevention of thyroid disorders in regions in which the 

 drinking water and ordinary foods are especially deficient in iodine. 

 Analyses of European fishes, moUusks, and crustaceans have indicated 

 that many of these contained much larger amounts of iodine than 

 the other common European foods. Prior to the work described in 

 this paper, very few analyses of American fishes had been made, and 

 those that had been published were determined by methods that were 

 not accurate enough to be considered of value. This work was under- 

 taken to determine the amount of iodine in the various fishes, mollusks, 

 and crustaceans commonly utilized as food in the United States. It is 

 hoped that the data obtained may be of some value in determining 

 the value of these foods in the dietary. 



