MIT and Quaker Oats Settle Lawsuit Over Radioactive Oatmeal

BOSTON

The Quaker Oats Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have agreed to pay $1.85-million to settle a federal lawsuit over an experiment in which radioactive oatmeal was fed to boys at a state institution in the 1940s and 1950s.

Oatmeal containing radioactive iron and calcium was given to more than 100 students at the Fernald State School in Waltham, Mass., according to the class-action suit filed by 15 plaintiffs in 1995. Some of the students were mentally handicapped.

The suit said the experiments had violated the boys’ civil rights because the consent forms their parents signed did not say that the food would be radiated.

M.I.T. designed the study, and Quaker contributed a grant and the oatmeal, a company spokesman said. The experiments were used to study the way the digestive system absorbs iron and calcium, M.I.T. officials said. They said the radiation exposure was not dangerous and had caused no health problems. The plaintiffs’ lawyer could not be reached.