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20 Radioactive Dangers We All Face |
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Our 'New Studies' page provides an overview of recently published scientific studies relating to the health impacts of atomic testing fallout.
The study's title, abstract and link (to the study, when available) are provided. We've added our own analysis, written in layperson's terms, and links to webpages on this site providing more information on the topics.
A study of residual Cesium 137 contamination in southwestern Utah soil following the nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950's and 1960's
By R. Blair Bentley, Oregon State University
Copyright
date April 28, 2008
ABSTRACT: The Nevada Test Site
(NTS) was the location for at least 100 above ground Nuclear Weapons
tests during the 1950's and early 1960's. Radioactive fallout from
these tests spread to many areas north and west of the NTS.
According to estimates from the NCI and DOE, Washington County, Utah
was one of the areas which received some of the highest levels of
radioactive contamination from Nuclear Fallout. Cesium 137, a
byproduct of Nuclear Fission was one of the nuclides deposited
during this fallout period. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years
and relatively high photon energy so it is easily detected and
theoretically would still be present in the soil if it was
originally deposited there. A study was conducted using soil samples
from the Washington County area to determine if Cesium 137 still
exists in the area in detectable amounts. 102 soil samples were
collected and analyzed. Only one of the 102 soil samples did not
have detectable amounts of Cesium contained within it. Several of
the samples contained levels substantially higher than earlier
estimates would have predicted. This leads us to conclude that doses
to the public from the testing could also have been higher than
earlier thought. The area immediately around the community of
Enterprise Utah contained the highest contamination readings of the
locations we researched. Iron County, Northeast of St George, also
had surprisingly high readings considering that the studies we
researched stated that Iron County's contamination density was
estimated to be lower than most of the areas in Washington County.
Link
to thesis in PDF form: Click here
ANALYSIS: A recent graduate study found that Cesium-137, a 'marker' of fallout from Nevada atomic testing, still exists throughout all areas of Southwestern Utah and that no region was found to be without at least some contamination. The author found that St. George, Utah, may have not received the highest level of fallout in Utah as most believe. Instead, Iron County, the county to the north, may have been worse hit. The author believes that doses to the public from Nevada Test Site testing fallout also could have been higher than earlier thought based on government estimates. Moreover, the author concludes that in the past - perhaps around the 1970s - levels of radioactive Cesium in (public) soils - prior to nuclear decay and erosion - may have surpassed current EPA standards. (That means that using our current EPA standards, the soils were then unsafe for human use. Why weren't people warned?)
It's important to consider the fact the above graduate study didn't include assessments of dozens of other long-lived radioisotopes that are still detectable in Utah soils, such as Strontium-90, Cobalt-60, etc.... Although the author found that current Cesium-137 levels are under EPA thresholds, what about the combined effects of all radioisotopes still lingering in Utah soils? Is that sum total of lingering fallout below current EPA thresholds? Did that sum total in recent decades exceed maximum public radiation standards? The graduate study also illustrates a rarely-made point that St. George perhaps should not have the distinction of being the worst-hit (or only hard-hit) area from NTS testing fallout. That distinction might belong to someplace in Iron County, Utah. (We won't know until more comprehensive studies are initiated.)
Further to this point, there are 'hot spots' all over the United States that received high amounts of fallout. In some areas, the fallout-radioisotopes have since decayed to safe levels, but damage was done and downwinders are paying the price with their health. In other areas, the fallout is still toxic but the dangers are still not known by the public. The website of 'Downwinders United' describes 24 areas across America that were hardest hit by NTS fallout. So, we should be asking not only if St. George is still 'hot,' but also if Myhometown, USA, is still radioactive! Read more on our RECA page about past, ongoing and sabotaged radiation-health studies, and their impact on public health policymaking.
Listen to the free 30-minute audio-documentary: The Dragon That Slew St. George (real audio stream) produced by Wayne Brittenden
But is this the whole story?
Are soils - and their radioactive ingredients - in the arid regions of the Southwest being lofted to an extent that should worry us?
A 2003 scientific paper titled 'Resuspension: Decadal Monitoring Time Series of the Anthropogenic Radioactivity Deposition in Japan' in the Journal of Radiation Research documents the authors' quest to find out why, in the 1990s (and through the present), levels of Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 in sampled Japanese soils weren't decreasing, as expected from their decay half-lives and decreasing fallout from the stratosphere. They were flat-lining. Meaning, something was adding Cs137 and Sr90 (and plutonium) to Japan's soils! They found that this 'anthropogenic radioactivity' (meaning 'manmade' radioactivity) wasn't primarily coming from the stratosphere, nor the oceans, nor nuclear power plants. They found it was coming from 'reservoirs' on the ground: '...resuspension is the major factor in radioactivity deposition...suspended soil dust (surface soil particles) is the source of anthropogenic radionuclides in ambient air.'
They deduced resuspension from 'large-scale meteorological dust events' (winds and storm activity) in arid areas of East Asia are lifting-up legacy nuclear fallout into the air, where, presumably, it would travel hundreds or thousands of miles . They note 'Hence, resuspension (surface soil dust suspension) must be a universal process injecting detectable amounts of anthropogenic radioactivity into the ambient air.' Although the authors may be correct in general that 'health effects to the individual member....are insignificant at the current level found' from these resuspension processes, what about dust resuspension from nuclear test sites like Maralinga in Australia and the Nevada Test Site? Certainly, plutonium dust from Area 13 of the NTS, an unremediated site from a notorious plutonium-239 dispersal experiment, is injecting plutonium into the U.S. air supply continuously! Plutonium from the NTS gets regularly resuspended during high-winds and storm activity, and floats downwind to other states and even beyond the U.S. borders. It was this reason that this website's author moved away from Southern Utah in 2006 - over fear of the radioactive-particle-carrying winds from the worst contaminated areas: NTS test-site areas and local fallout hotspots.
From 'Why would the Public Ever Believe Me' (countercurrents.org, Oct. 10, 2008)
"The danger, friends, is the region's public health enemy number 1, the Nevada Test Site. Allow me to remind you: the Nevada Test Site is still prepped for resumption of nuclear testing and there are those in the Defense Department who want (yes, want) to do more - to resume - testing. Then there are the horribly contaminated soils at the Test Site, the subcritical tests that have been the culprit for nations going-nuclear, the people downwind who have been horribly poisoned but never fully compensated, the public health effects that were never properly studied, and the winds.
Oh, those fearful winds.
I wish I will never have to breathe in the air from a harsh wind in Utah and Nevada ever again.Why? I wish to tell you that there is no danger from all of 'that'. I wish I wouldn't have to tell you what is in that air.
... I believe that, above all other issues, there is one that is the most important: downwind from the test site, the soil is toxic, the water is toxic, the air is toxic. That is why I am afraid of the winds. That is why I moved away from Utah. Will people believe me? Why should they believe me when only one person says ‘There is danger’?
Meanwhile the winds are blowing. And I will keep writing."
Consider, for a moment, that the nuclear test sites in Australia - Emu and Maralinga - were physically blocked off, prior to clean-up (remediation), by a 100-mile radius security zone. If the same sized-radius were blocked off around the Nevada Test Site, it would force the evacuation of Las Vegas:
Below are some lofting scenarios specific to Cs137 in Utah:
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If 10 square kilometers of soils in St. George are lofted each year due to winds and construction, and the soils contain about 10,000 pCi/m2, then 100,000,000 picoCuries will be lofted per year. Assuming in the more dense population that only 1 of 20,000 radionuclide particles are inhaled, then 5,000 picoCuries are inhaled in St. George. The EPA gives a lifetime excess total cancer risk per pCi of Cs137 inhaled as 0.00000000119. So, there would be 0.00006 extra cancer risk, or 0.9 extra cancers per year in a population of 150,000.
The above risk calculations could be exacerbated by the fact that soils containing Cesium-137 can be ingested when adhering to food, hands, mouthing objects (cigarettes), etc...that ends up in our bodies. The EPA risk factors are 4 times higher for soil ingestion (and also food ingestion) of Cs137 than inhalation.
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Let's examine the case of a severe wildfire in Southern Utah, like the Milford Flat Fire, or high wind conditions that resuspend 100% of the Cesium-137 in soils for 100 square kilometers containing 1,826 Bq/m2 (the highest reading in Bentley's study). That concentration can also be written as 49,302 picoCuries/square meter. If 100 square kilometers of contaminated Utah soils are disturbed in a one year period, then 4,930,200,000 picoCuries will be lofted. If we assume that, as was roughly the case with worldwide nuclear testing fallout, only 1 of 2,000,000 radionuclide particles become actually inhaled by a human, then we can reduce this number to 2,465 picoCuries of Cs137 inhaled by people in Utah and other states. The EPA gives a lifetime excess total cancer risk per pCi of Cs137 inhaled as 0.00000000119. So, there would be 0.0000029 extra cancers per person in a population, or 5.8 extra cancers in a population of 2 million downwinders.
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The EPA gives a lifetime excess total cancer risk for external Cs137 exposure of 0.00000255 per pCi per gram of soil (per year). Bentley's worst case sample contained 18.22 Bq per 600 mL or 492 pCi per 600 mL. If 1 cubic centimeter of soil weighs 1.3 grams, and 1 cubic centimeter equals 0.001 Liters, then 1 Liter of soil weighs 1,300 grams. For the worst case sample of 492 pCi, that breaks down to 0.63 pCi/g, which would be the units needed to use the EPA cancer risk 'slope factor.' Living on top of this contaminated soil (emitting gamma rays) would result in a 0.0016% per person cancer risk.
Note, however, that Cs137 settles into the soil over time, at a mean depth of 3 cm, so the dose might be 2-3 times lower due to it being slightly buried. Note that Cizdziel (see 'The Attic Study' below) tested a soil sample (S4) taken from St. George, Utah, that measured 1.73 pCi/g for Cs137(37 06.23'N, 113 32.77' W, top 1cm), which is 2.74 times higher than the highest value in Bentley's study (0.63 pCi/g). Decay-correcting this value for the ten years the passed between the studies (1997 to 2007), we have 1.37 pCi/g (for year 2007) - this is 2.17 times higher than Bentley's highest Cs137 value in Utah in roughly same year.
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Close-up of St. George:
View a
snap-shot of the soil-sampling Google map that we re-created from Bentley's study
The
numbers next to each peg in the map below illustrates the amount of Becquerels
per container; the container had a volume capacity of 600 milliLiters; each
value needs to be multiplied by 100 to roughly estimate the levels of radiation
in Becquerels per meter squared, a common measure of deposition
density. Multiply each Becquerel unit by 27 to convert to PicoCuries
(or 2,700 to get pCi/m2).
What about the Golden Triangle, the
three major U.S.
National Parks spanning Utah and Arizona, including Bryce Canyon National
Park, Grand
Canyon and Zion National Park? Are they contaminated? The three parks form a large
imaginary triangle that, within its borders, contained some of the worst
'legacy' radioactive fallout from U.S. nuclear testing at the Nevada Test
Site. All three parks are located in three respective counties that
are among only two-dozen counties in
the U.S. where residents are eligible under the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act for one-time payments for nuclear testing fallout radiation poisoning-induced
diseases and/or cancer or death. Some of the Nevada fallout is still in the
soil at dangerous levels - these are called 'hotspots ' - and fallout occasionally gets resuspended into the
air (during high winds, fires etc...) from soils in this 'triangle' and also
from 'plutonium dispersal experiment' sites at the Nevada Test Site that aren't
cleaned up. These plutonium particles are regularly injected into the air
in Nevada and Utah and beyond. The combined annual tourist
tally for the three parks is about 9 million, and if most people stay 3 days
then the average 'resident population' is 75,000. The numbers in the above
analyses for impacts from regularly-suspended Cesium-137 tainted dust for St.
George applies to Golden Triangle tourists: so, every two years one of the
visitors to these parks will contract cancer from Cesium-137 in
regularly-suspended dust. What we should also consider is that
cancers may be caused from radioactive gases that continually seep from the
underground test areas of the Nevada Test Site, including Krypton-85 and
Tritium, among others, that float over the Golden Triangle and also the
plutonium from the test site.
The Attic Study In
1998, James Cizdziel of University of Nevada - Reno - completed his graduate
thesis titled 'Plutonium Anomalies in Attic Dust and Soils at Locations
Surrounding the Nevada Test Site' in which he tested during 1996 and 1997 dust
in several dozen attics in houses and garages in towns in Utah and Nevada for
plutonium-239/240 and cesium-137, radionuclides associated with nuclear weapons
testing fallout. Cizdziel found that the plutonium found in the attics and
garages throughout the region had higher concentrations than the soil outside by
a factor of 1.8 for St. George, Utah, 4.8 for Las Vegas and 8.8 for Beatty,
Nevada. That means that over the decades very fine dust particles attached
to plutonium have made it through cracks and crevices and accumulated in
peoples' attics whereas most of those fine particles in the soils outside have
mostly blown away (into other peoples' backyards and attics!). The attic
in homes around the NTS, thus, had served another function - in addition to
'storing' peoples' stuff - it stored the plutonium 'fines' from decades of
wind-blown radioactive dust. (Cizdziel even found plutonium dust concentrations in attics of two Las Vegas homes built
in 1973 that were about equal to soil levels outside.) Cizdziel offered
the following explanation for this: "Thus, it is likely that, over the
years, the fine soil particles, which possess the most activity and are the most
likely to become resuspended in the high winds that often rake the desert, have
infiltrated and become trapped in the attics of homes throughout the
region. This resuspension and filtering effect seems reasonable because
one would not expect much infiltration in the short period during the passage of
the initial plume." (p.68) Cizdziel attributed the plutonium readings
in the Las Vegas homes built in the 1970s also as "a result of a
resuspension mechanism." Of
course resuspension implies a source. What is the source of the
plutonium that deposited and infiltrated Nevadans' and Utahns' attics? One
would think it originated from the plutonium-contaminated areas of the NTS.
Rather, Cizdziel notes "the
fact that the attic dust has radiocesium/plutonium ratios that are similar (when
decay corrected) to soils collected at nearby sites in 1983 suggests that the
dust is coming from resuspension of local soils rather than from contaminated
sites on the NTS." (p.69) But
are local soils contaminated with plutonium? Of course they are:
Towns along the perimeter of the NTS may be receiving
resuspended plutonium fallout straight from the source - the NTS. One of
Cizdziel's soil samples taken at Queen City Summit (QCS), Nevada, located 25
kilometers (10 miles) northeast of the NTS, registered a high reading for
plutonium 239/240 of 0.803 picoCuries/gram (in top 3 cm of soil). (A 2003
study 'Excess plutonium in soil near the Nevada Test Site, USA' in the journal Environmental
Pollution found that a soil sample in QCS measured 1.38 pCi/g of
plutonium 239/240.) Cizdziel
noted that "there is some thirty-fold more plutonium at the site than would
be predicted by the global fallout ratio" and that over 90% of the
plutonium at Queen City Summit "could be attributed to the NTS" (p. 78).
(Cizdziel also attributes over 90% of the plutonium at Beatty - where attics had
plutonium concentrations 8 times higher than in soils outside - to wind-blown
plutonium from the NTS.) This means
that the uppermost layers of soil in towns very close to the NTS consist chiefly
of plutonium that in the recent past was blown off the NTS. 
It would stand to reason that because plutonium hasn't decayed much at all since 1998 (year of Cizdziel's study) - plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years - levels of plutonium-239 in Nevada and Utah soils are probably increasing as the plutonium 'fines' keep shifting off the NTS and from hotspots around Nevada and Utah. It would also stand to reason that if the 'fines' - plutonium-coated soil particles - are being trapped in the attics of homes in Nevada and Utah, wouldn't they also get trapped in peoples' lungs? It only takes a speck of plutonium to induce lung cancer.
Association between radioactive fallout from 1951–1962 US nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site and cancer mortality in midwestern US populations.
by Richard L. Miller and L.E. Peterson
Russian Journal of
Ecology, Vol. 39, Issue 7, pp. 495-509, December 2008
ABSTRACT:
We determined the association between radionuclide
deposition levels from nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS)
and cancer mortality rates in 513 counties of the Midwestern states
of Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. The 10-day
cumulative deposition for 54 radionuclides and 1-year cumulative
deposition for 19 radionuclides were determined with isotope ratios
based on each test and 131I levels in the 513 counties obtained from
the US National Cancer Institute’s 131I fallout study. Deposition
calculations were done for each test and each radionuclide.
Age-adjusted cancer mortality rates for 84 organ–gender
combinations for the periods 1950–1959, 1960–1969, 1970–1979,
and 1979–1995 were used. Analyses included permutation-based
randomization tests for Spearman rank correlation (adjusted for
multiple testing). Age-adjusted cancer mortality rates for
connective and soft tissue sarcoma, thymus, and female lymphosarcoma
and cancer of the colon, brain, thyroid, and uterus were
significantly correlated with total fallout and total precipitation
during 1951–1957 and 1962. 187W had the highest cumulative
deposition density at 10 days postshot (2783 MBq/m2) among the NTS
radionuclides considered. The most significant correlations were
observed for 10-day cumulative deposition density of 181W, 185W,
54Mn, 187W, 24Na, 185W, 199Au, 7Be, 60Co, and deposition density of
185W, 54Mn, 7Be, and 60Co present at 1-year with mortality for
cancers such as female connective and soft tissue sarcoma, male and
female thymus, female colon, male and female thyroid, female brain,
male multiple myeloma, female breast, and uterine cancer.
Significant correlations included isotopic forms of mutagenic metals
such as antimony, beryllium, cadmium, cobalt, cesium, manganese,
rhodium, selenium, tellurium, and tungsten. The large number of
significant correlation tests beyond expectation warrants deeper
questions related to the toxicology of fission products and induced
radionuclides, validity of kriging procedures, and new studies on
core sampling of watersheds and trees in regions assumed to receive
the greatest levels of environmental radiocontamination.
Click
title-link for more: Association
between radioactive fallout from 1951–1962 US nuclear tests at the
Nevada Test Site and cancer mortality in midwestern US populations.
ANALYSIS: This recent study, by Richard Miller and Leif Peterson, studied the correlation between deposition levels from Nevada Test Site fallout and cancer mortality rates in the Midwest. The team specifically wanted to take a first step at understanding the relationship between ‘deposition density’ of radionuclides other than Iodine-131 and cancer mortality in populated areas in the U.S. that were exposed to fallout but are located more than 800 kilometers (km) from the Nevada Test Site (NTS). They aimed to see if a compelling argument can be made that there is strong global evidence for radiation-induced leukemia or thyroid cancer among locally and 'distally exposed' US residents.
The team compiled fallout deposition data for U.S. above-ground tests from 1951 through 1957 and for a few days in 1962 (when underground bomb test SEDAN leaked), which has been published by the government for Iodine-131 on a per-county basis, and looked at the association between cancer mortality and scores of other fallout-radionuclides in five Midwestern states during that time period. They basically threw into a statistical program the inferred deposition from 125 'Hicks tables' radionuclides (that are produced by an atomic detonation) by county, mortality rates from dozens of cancers suspected to be radiation-related, and gender for each county, among other variables. They chose counties in the Midwest because it has relatively few chemical industries, relatively light population movement and are unlike desert areas (in the West) where dust can easily travel hundreds of miles.
Is
there a link between nuclear fallout and cancer? How about for
'downwinders' living far away? Their
results suggest a statistically significant correlation between some
radioisotopes in fallout and certain cancer rates. The
team isn't suggesting a causal-link between fallout and cancer but
only that there’s a statistically significant correlation between
fallout and several cancers known to be radiation-related.
They note the plausibility that NTS fallout could be
related to health effects.
Read more about Rich Miller and his famous map
Monkeywrench alert: Read about why estimates and studies based on NCI studies are unreliable and what that means for health-cancer research findings here
From radiation.org:
'Follow-up Health Study of St. Louis Baby Boomers Who Gave Teeth
RPHP's current tooth efforts are patterned after a study of 320,000 baby teeth in St. Louis from 1958-1970. Average Sr-90 in children rose rapidly while atomic bombs were tested above the Nevada desert, and declined rapidly after President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev signed the treaty ending large-scale tests above the ground. In 2001, officials at Washington University in St. Louis discovered 85,000 unused baby teeth from the original study that had been in storage for over three decades, and donated them to RPHP.
In a pilot project RPHP has found it is possible to identify a significant sample of teeth donors, finding current addresses for 80% of the male donors and death records for donors who died after 1971. Nearly half of the sampled surviving donors have expressed a willingness to complete a health history questionnaire.
Thus RPHP has determined that it is feasible use the St. Louis teeth to study whether or not Baby Boomers who developed cancer by age 45 had higher Sr-90 levels than those who are healthy at age 45. Such a study truly has ground-breaking potential, as very little information exists on harm from Nevada above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and early 1960s. The federal government has only produced a 1997 estimate that the tests caused up to 212,000 U.S. cases of thyroid cancer. In general there has been virtually no long-term health effects studies of low-level radiation exposure. This study presents an unusual opportunity to determine whether or not low levels impact on our health.
RPHP is beginning this study by attempting to identify 100 Baby Boomers with cancer, and then comparing their Sr-90 averages with that of 200 healthy Boomers. We hope the potential of such a study will encourage funders to contribute generously and thus allow us to proceed with greater dispatch.'
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Bookmark this page and check back occasionally for new studies! |
(87 grams per Curie of Cesium-137)
Note that the 'Fatal Cancer Yield' of 800 'excess' cancers per 1 million-person Rem applies to whole-body organ-dose, and is actually a lower estimate. John Gofman, after re-calculating the A-bomb (Japan) survival data in his 1990 book 'Radiation-Induced Cancer: An Independent Analysis,' came to conclusion that the yield was more like 2,600, not 800, per 1,000,000 person Rem. Gofman said that this 'Fatal Cancer Yield' applies to low-dose exposures, acute or slow, at between zero and five Rems. Fatal cancers are just one part of the heading of 'malignancies,' which include non-fatal cancers (at same yield), and leukemias (100 'extra' leukemias per 1 million person-rem).
Idealist's public document archives: 1. 
2.
'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
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
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