NASA Quarantines Frondel After Accident in Houston

A Harvard geology professor, along with ten other scientists and technicians, will be in quarantine with the Apollo 12 lunar astronauts until December 11, as a result of an accident at the Manned Space Center in Houston Monday night.

NASA officials decided that Clifford Frondel, professor of Minerology, may have been exposed to what they called "a biological spill" after a researcher discovered a hole in one of the protective plastic gloves used to handle lunar material.

Frondel is one of four scientists on the Preliminary Examination Team. which takes the first scientific look at rocks brought back from the moon.

No Contact

The gloves are imbedded in the sealed glass cases containing the Apollo 12 rock samples in such a way that scientists are able to examine the lunar material with out coming into contact with it.

Under current NASA policy, the moon rocks- and everybody exposed to them, including the astronauts- are kept isolated for 21 days after the rocks are removed from the lunar surface to guard against the possibility that they might carry unknown disease germs.

Andromeda Unlikely

Dr. W. William Kemmerer quarantine manager of Houston's Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where the accident occurred, said yesterday afternoon that he thought the risk of contamination from the moon rocks was "very low." but that the quarantine procedures were "necessary and rational."

Tuesday's accident was the first involving material returned by the Apollo 12 mission. During the Apollo 11 isolation period, five workers were quarantined after similar accidents.

Frondel, along with ten other researchers who had been in the examination room where the fault in the glove was discovered, is now in the laboratory's "crew reception area" with Apollo 12 crewmen Charles Conrad, Richard F. Gordon, and Alan L. Bean.

He said last night that he and the astronauts are "having a wonderful time."