|
20 Radioactive Dangers We All Face |
|
|
|
In the report, the NAS asserted as their main conclusion the finding from a 1997 National Cancer Institute report that found the U.S. population's dose of Iodine-131 covered a wider geographic distribution than was understood when RECA was established in 1990. The NAS report concluded that persons living outside current RECA boundaries during nuclear testing 'could have received as high or higher thyroid doses' as those within the RECA boundaries.
As for expanding RECA geographically, the NAS did not recommend adding any specific region but only that the boundaries should be expanded. Their conclusion that RECA's current boundaries were inadequate and ought to be expanded to include all U.S. states and territories was based on their conclusion that fallout reached all U.S. counties.
As for changes to eligibility, the NAS recommended a complete overhaul. They suggested that eligibility on who gets payments should not be based any longer on where you lived (and if you contracted a suspected fallout-disease during a specific time-frame), but if you can prove your disease is linked to fallout. They advocated a scientific-based compensation scheme that would employ a probability model. The NAS noted that such a model has been used in other types of compensation programs.
As for being a waste of time....Since the NAS was forced to "base its conclusions on the results of best available scientific information" and the 'best science' included only a few studies on the fallout-health link, a few of which had somewhat inconsistent observations, the NAS's study was a waste of time. The NAS simply regurgitated the basic tenet of science back to concerned downwinders: that if there is no evidence linking X to Y, then there is no link.
The NAS recommended in its report for more science studies. But they also did something that most downwinders will never understand or forgive them for: they actually advised that Congress implement a science-based compensation scheme.
The NAS suggested a scheme in which every American can apply for aid if they can prove a high probability of radiation, regardless of where they lived. But the NAS clearly noted that the probability was low. Really low. They asserted that "in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout is a substantial contributing cause of cancer in downwinders" and that, if you excluded Iodine-131, fallout was "the same magnitude or less" than natural background radiation (solar radiation and sources like radon).
As you can guess, the NAS, under this no-harm no-foul conclusion, suggests that RECA expansion would "result in few successful claims" for compensation and that it was unlikely that even persons with thyroid cancer would qualify: "...it is unlikely that a very large number of individuals with cancer, even thyroid cancer, would be newly eligible for compensation. "
The NAS also felt that even persons currently eligible for compensation had a 'generally low' risk of radiation induced diseases, a statement that sent shock-waves into communities of downwinders who may be currently eligible and fear their rights will be stripped away.
More studies, a problem?
The NAS, noting the lack of studies into the fallout-cancer link, suggested that government health agencies complete dose estimates for "all significant radionuclides" in fallout to at-risk population groups, not just for Iodine-131, and have that data reflected in a dose calculator similar to one that exists for I-131 to determine doses to key organs. They also suggested that impacts from global fallout (testing by Russia, China, etc...) and exposure from underground tests that resulted in atmospheric releases should be considered in RECA. The NAS also recommended improved education and communication about the risks of fallout.
Although the NAS recommended more studies into fallout (there are over 125 radioisotopes found in fallout, only 1 has been studied with regards to its relation to cancer), the federal government has not been looking into it. The National Cancer Institute, for instance, took 14 years to complete a study determining a link between thyroid cancer and Iodine-131. The results were known as early as 1989, compiled in a final draft report by 1993 but the report was held from the public for four additional years until 1997. In that time, the NCI never made an attempt to broaden the scope of its study to include the health impacts from exposure to other fallout isotopes (other than Iodine-131), especially the ones that are much longer-lived and present in our living environment. Those include Cesium 137 and Strontium 90, both common 1950's and 1960's fallout elements found in our food and water supplies that have only decayed to about 25% of their original radioactivity. As another example of how the government has dropped the ball on health studies, in 1998, the Centers for Disease Control began a long-term study into the health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest. They began tracking the thyroid conditions of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada in 1965 but in 2005 the government pulled the plug on the long-term study before it was complete, citing financial considerations. The lead researcher on the study told the Deseret News, 'The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens."
Thankfully, occurring predominantly outside the government sphere, studies are slowly being completed. Researchers at the Radiation and Public Health Project in 2009 will be following up with thousands of residents of St. Louis, Missouri, who donated their baby teeth in the 1950s. The privately-funded study, a follow-up to one that started a half-century ago at Washington University, seeks to determine if Strontium-90, a common fallout isotope that traveled through the grass-cow-human chain especially in areas of the Midwest, affected subjects' health later in life. Researchers are expecting to see links between Strontium-90, which is still detectable in the baby's teeth (and measurable in our intact teeth and bones), and cancer. The initial study, which found an 'early apparent link' between fallout and health problems, helped bring about the 1963 atmospheric test ban treaty.
Although the above researchers are making use of archived data in the form of gummed film paper and baby teeth, the great challenge, going forward, to researchers, whether independent or governmental, is that the body of historical fallout data is not robust enough. The number of baby teeth collected and monitoring stations available at the time of the testing may not provide enough details about how widespread exposure was, thereby affecting scientific-based understanding and the feasibility of a workable scientific-based compensation scheme. To that problem, two scientists from Texas are recommending that the government use the National Cancer Institute's Iodine-131 study to seek meaningful statistical correlations linking dozens of fallout isotopes to various cancers. The Texan team has already made compelling findings and hope the government will take their lead. More on our new studies page. However, the unreliability of the NCI studies greatly reduces the rigor and certainty of that and other NCI-based statistical analyses.
Why NAS's report is faulty
Although the NAS's recommendation for a science-based compensation scheme might be one respected by most scientists, it carries the same blatant disregard for downwinders, whether they are living, dying or dead, as RECA now does for Native Americans.
RECA requires that claims must be accompanied by proof of residency and medical history but fallout-victims in the the Navajo Nation in Arizona, for example, like their peer tribes, lack these resources. RECA doesn't allow sworn statements vouching for residency for RECA downwinder claims. So, because of an inconvenience caused by cultural differences, Navajos have been disproportionately denied payments. Through 2007, about 40 percent of Navajo RECA downwinder claims were denied and it's suspected that thousands of additional legitimate claims have not been filed largely because of the difficulty of proving residency and disease.
The sad truth is that downwinders are dying without compensation because RECA policymakers and governmental-scientific bodies are putting into place requirements that are the most impossible ones for most downwinders to meet.
It gets worse. The NAS, it turns out, also has made it hard for downwinders to meet in its hearings and meetings. Critics denounced the NAS's hearing process in 2004, when it held meetings in a few key cities for downwinders to testify. The hearings were held in a select few cities, leaving out Arizona, Salt Lake City and Idaho. And even when those areas got their meetings, they were poorly advertised. The founder of Downwinders Inc. told the Salt Lake City Weekly in 2004: "They didn’t even tell people in northern Utah about the hearings. Downwinders from there only showed up because I told them about it....They’re still not letting the advocates and the groups that represent victims know a damn thing about what’s going on."
It's not the first time the NAS came under fire for their lack of interest in public involvement. A different committee under the NAS did little to reach out to the public to solicit comments on its formal review of the government's follow-up study to the 1997 NCI report (A Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests conducted by the United States and other Nations). The announcement of the NAS review was deeply buried on the NCI's website and attracted protest from the President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research who wrote to the NAS in a letter in September 2002: 'We are particularly aggrieved and dismayed that the NAS review committee took a pro-forma and completely ineffective approach to notifying the public on an issue of obvious public health importance.'
Return to our RECA page
Idealist's public document archives: 1. In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called
Mighty Oak. learn more on our global fallout
page
This site best viewed
in Firefox
2.
1 A in NM, 10 U
(in NM, CO, AK, MS, central NV),
100+ A,
U
in Pacific, 3 A
in S. Atlantic
(A=aboveground; U=Underground)
'The
greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that
the only
victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.'
- Forgotten
Guinea Pigs Report, 1980
