ML073410047

Documents Submitted by Dr. Sternglass During the Beaver Valley Power Station License Renewal Public Meeting

ML073410047
Person / Time
Site:	Beaver Valley, Indian Point
Issue date:	11/12/2007
From:	Mangano J Radiation & Public Health Project
To:	Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
References
Download: ML073410047 (94)

Text

Indian Point Public Health Risks Pulc

Heft, Rikz Of Exedfn Licen[ses Of Ttde Dý.nr Ponn 2, aan 3

ulrRatr Joseph J. Mangano, MPH, MBA Executive Director Radiation and Public Health Project November 12, 2007 Advisors:

Rosalie Bertell PhD, founder of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health.

Marci Culley PhD, associate professor of psychology, Georgia State University Samuel Epstein MD, professor emeritus of public health, Univ. of Illinois-Chicago Sam Galewsky PhD, associate professor of biology, Millikin (IL) University Donald Louria MD, professor of preventive medicine, New Jersey Medical School Kay Kilburn MD, retired professor of medicine, University of Southern California Janette Sherman MD, adjunct professor, Environmental Institute, Western Michigan Univ.

EXECUTIVE SUMIARY The Indian Point nuclear plant, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan, has three reactors, two of which remain in operation. Entergy Nuclear, which operates the plant, has requested that the federal gov~ernment extend the operating licenses of the two reactors for 20 additional years beyond their 2013 and 2015 expiration dates.

To date, federal officials have not acknowledged any public health risks of license extension at Indian Point. This report explores risks from extending the Indian Point licenses.

Continued operation of Indian Point raises the risk of radioactivity exposure in two ways.

e First, the reactor cores wouldproduce high-level waste to be added to the 1,500 tons already at the site, worsening the consequences of a large-scale release. -

• Second, because 'reactors routinely release radioactivity, keeping Indian Point in service would mean greater releases and risks to local residents.

The principal findings of this report are:

1. A large-scale release of radioactivity in a meltdown, from mechanical failure or act of sabotage, would harm, thousands through acute radiation poisoning or cancer.

2. Indian Poiit--has released the 5th greatest amount of-airborne radioactivity out of 72 U.S.--

nuclear plants. In some periods, releases are up to 100 times greater than normal.

3. Radioactivity levels in the Hudson River near Indian Point are over 10 times greater than those in Albany.. Large variations exist in -local radioactivity levels; for:ýexample, 2006 airborne radioactivity was threetimestas high in late fall, an in late spring.

-K

4. -'Levels of Strohtium-90 in local --baby teeth are the highest of any area. near seven U.S. nuclear plants. Local. children-born in the late 1990s have an average Sr-90 level 38% greater than http:f/www.radiation.OrglspotlightIO7.11-2-1ndianPointExecutive.html Page I of 2

Indian Point Public Health Risks those born a decade earlier.

5. In the four counties closest to Indian Point, the incidence of cancer exceeds the state and national rates. In 2000-2004, excess cancer cases range from 2090 to 3631.

6. Local incidence rates of childhood cancer and thyroid cancer, both known to be sensitive to radiation exposure, are among the highest in New York State. Local thyroid cancer incidence is about 70% above the U.S. rate.

7. Cancer incidence in the towns within five miles. of Indian Point is 20% greater than the rest of Rockland and Westchester Counties.

8. There is a statistical link between average levels of Strontium-90 in local baby teeth and local childhood cancer rates.

9. If closing Indian Point is associated with decreases in cancer mortality as it did near the Rancho Seco CA plant, 5000 fewer cancer deaths would occur in the next 20 years.

While many factors contribute to cancer risk, evidence suggests that more detailed study on Indian Point is warranted, and that the public be informed of any health risks.

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-,THYWOIC INC D NC£ AND ThE NWIT MUCLEAR POWER REACTORS Joseph J. Mangano, MPH, MBA Radiation and Public Health Project February 14, 2007 Summary. The rate of thyroid cancer, which is rising faster than any other cancer, is highest in Pennsylvania. Within the state, the highest rates are in the eastern counties closest to and east (downwind) of four nuclear power plants. Because radioactive iodine found only in nuclear weapons and reactors is known to cause thyroid cancer, it would be helpful to conduct closer examination of reactor-emissions-and-the--disease.

Background. Thyroid cancer is a relatively rare type of malignancy, accounting for about 1-2% of all new cancers in the U.S. It is one of the least deadly cancers, with a five year survival rate over 95%.

Not much is known about the causes of thyroid cancer; the most recognized risk factor is exposure to ionizing radiation, specifically to radioactive iodine.

Established cancer registries in five states and four cities (9%,of the U.S. population) show incidence of-thyroid cancer changed little in from 1973-1980. From 1980-2003, incidence more than doubled from 4.3 to 9.4 cases/100,000 (adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population). Rates doubled for males, females, whites and blacks. Thyroid cancer is the fastest-rising cancer in the country, with no explanation for this trend..

A recent article in the journal jAMA suggested that better diagnosis accounts for the increase. This theory is questionable, as most thyroid cancers are found through routine physical examinations. No data exists that physicians are more proficient in examining patients for thyroid cancer, or provide more physical exams than a generation ago.

Geographic Patterns - by State. With cancer registries now operating in all states, the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has assembled cancer incidence data for the years 1999-2002, for 38 states and the' District of Columbia. Pennsylvania had the highest thyroid cancer incidence, at 10.61 cases per 100,000 persons, adjusted to the 2000 U.S. standard (5436 cases). The state with, the lowest rate was North Carolina (4.89, 1207 cases). Table 1 shows rates.for the states with the five'highest and five lowest rates.

Table 1-I

-Thyroid Cancer Incidence, By State, 1999-2002

-S-.In Age-Adjusted Cases Per 100,000 Persons (U.S. Rate 7.42, cases = 72269)

Highest Lowest State Rate Cases State Rafe Cases Pennsylvania 10.61 5436 North-Carolina 4.89 1207 Montana.

0.16 374 Arkansas 5.04 408 http://www.radiation.otg/spotlight/pa-thyroid.htmrl Page 1 of 5

Spotlight,

Rhode Island 19.82 1 425 J IOklahoma 1 5.10. 1 7 02 Delaware 9.69 1

313 lAlabama S5.57' 1003 Nevada 1 9.64 607 South Carolina i 5.61 1

912 Excludes Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.

The differences between the states with the highest and lowest rates are substantial, for no apparent reason. Pennsylvania is of particular interest, not just because it has the highest rate, but because it is the 6th most populated in the U.S (see Table 2). Its high rates are consistent among all years, genders, and races (for 38 states and District of Columbia).

Table 2 Ranks of Pennsylvania Thyroid Cancer Incidence Rates Period Category Rank Period Category Rank 1999-2002 All Races 1st 1999 All Races 6th 1999-2002 Whites 1st 2000 All Races 1st 1999-2002 Blacks 2nd 2001 All Races 1st 1_999-2002.... _..Males___

_2nd.

2002-A!LRa-ces...

1st 1999-2002 Females 1st 1999-2002 Age 0-44 2nd 1999-2002 Age 45-64 2nd 11999-2002 Age 65+

1st Geographic Patterns - by Pennsylvania County. The next step in a geographic analysis of thyroid cancer patterns is to examine rates by region or county. Such an analysis is feasible for Pennsylvania, as the state makes annual age-specific cancer cases for each county from 1990-2003 available on the internet. The 2000 U.S. census age-specific population allows age-adjusted incidence rates for each county to be calculated.

Average annual.thyroid cancer rates for 1997-2003, adjusted to the 2000 standard U.S. population, were calculated for each of the 67 Pennsylvania counties. The state rate was 9.89 cases per 100,000 (8871 cases), with a wide range in rates by county (Table 3).

Table 3 Thyroid Cancer Incidence, By Pennsylvania County, 1997-2003 In Age-Adjusted Cases Per 100,000 Persons (PA rate = 9.89, cases = 8871)

County Rate Number

1.

Sullivan 17.87 8

"2.-

-Li1*

=67A4"*

377..... *

3.

Northampton 14.88 291 4-ý Luzerne 333

5.

Lancaster 13.46-'.

440 6.-

Bucks

.13.26. _-- ~

58 7.

Montgomer/.

,ry-12.7

i.

703 8.-

Clinton 12.00M

-34 http: //www.radiation.org/spOtlight/pa-thyroid.html Page 2 of 5

potlight 9,

York 11.81 331 U

Wyoming 11.65 23 11, I

IA I

1 2.

Monroe 10.77 108

13.

Carbo 10.50 47 Lackawann 10.28 162 A remarkable pattern emerges from the county-specific analysis of thyroid cancer rates in Pennsylvania. Of the 14 counties with the highest rates, 13 are located in the eastern third of the state (Clinton is the exception). There are no apparent socioeconomic factors distinct to this part of the state. Some counties are densely populated, while others are rural. The percentages of poverty and minorities vary as well. Even if there were a clear-cut pattern, none of these factors suggest a high risk for thyroid cancer.

Thyroid Cancer in Pennsylvania and Nuclear Reactors. The risk factor most commonly associated with thyroid cancer is exposure to radioactive iodine. There are various forms of iodine; I-129 decays slowly (half life of 16 million years) while 1-131 decays quickly (half life of 8 days). When iodine enters the body, it seeks out the thyroid gland, where it kills and injures cells, leading to cancer and other disorders.

Radioactive iodine is only created when atomic bombs explode or when nuclear reactors operate.

Above-ground atomic testing ended in 1963 and all testing ended in 1992. Nuclear reactors have operated in Pennsylvania since 1957. There are five plants with 12 1 operating (Table 4). The state has more reactors than any except Illinois. All plants except Beaver Valley are in the eastern part of the state.

Table 4 Nuclear Power Reactors in Pennsylvania 1No. of Lcto Plant Nors Location Year Startup Reactr

_________I__

Beaver Valley........

3.

Southern Beaver County 1957, 1976, 1987 Peach Bottom 3

Southern York County 1966, 1973, 1974 Limerick 2

Northern Montgomery County 1984, 1989 Susquehanna 2

Western Luzerne County 1982, 1984 Three Mile Island 2

Southern Dauphin County 1974, 1978 Except for Clinton County, each of the 14 counties with the highest incidence rates from 1997-2003 are situated directly to the east, northeast, or southeast of a nuclear plant (see Map 1). This finding raises the theory that thyroid cancer risk has been raised by exposure to radioactive iodine, which is routinely released as airborne particles from each plant. Most iodine is propelled by prevailing winds, which blow from the northwest in colder months and the southwest in the warmer months.

Map I http:1//www.radiation.org/spotlight/ pa-thyroid.htmP I Page 3.of S

Spotlight 1997-2003 YhyroWd C__incer Icr-ri Razue. By~.(>ut 20CC VL U!:z 1-D.1

~C

t. Ai "i

_-WN:5~

4 A AIN,-3

-U Nij NEU A¶~

u "'i ý "eq RFF\\

WI6 !t FA Y ITl Iodine enters human bodies through breathing and the food chain. One means to transport iodine into the body is water; east of reactors, municipal drinking water is typically obtained from local sources. Another vector is milk, which is often not produced locally, but transferred fromdairy farms.

Much of the milk consumed in eastern Pennsylvania is produced on farms in Lancaster and York Counties, which lie in the midst of the Limerick, Peach Bottom, and Three Mile Island nuclear plants.

There is often a lag of a decade or more between radiation exposure and onset of cancer. Seven of the 12 reactors in the state were operating by 1978, and all reactors had started by 1989. Thus, several decades have elapsed since reactors began emitting radioactive iodine into the environment, making the reactor-thyroid cancer link plausible.

The one Pennsylvania nuclear plant not in the eastern part of the state is Beaver Valley. The Beaver county thyroid cancer rate is not one of the highest in the state, but exceeds all but one of the 16 most western counties in the state (Table 5). The only western county with a higher rate is Lawrence, which adjoins Beaver. Typically, thyroid cancer incidence is low in the area; Armstrong, Crawford, Forest, Greene, and Venango counties are among the lowest seven in the state.

I Table 5 Thyroid Cancer Incidence, By Western Pennsylvania County, 1997-2003 In Age-Adjusted Cases Per 100,000 Persons (PA rate = 9.89, cases 8871)

County Rate.

Cases

1.

Lawrence 10066

2.

Beaver-9.841ý,

134 Mercer 9.20 81.

4.

~Allegheny

.8.97 866

- [-5.-

Washington 7.98 1251

6.

7Butler 7.74

j.

-95 http:l /www.radiation.org/spotllght/pa-thyroid.html PPage 4 of 5

Spotlight

• 9

7.

westmoreland j

LIL 8.-

Erie -

7.20 142

9.

Warren 7.13 25

10.

Fayette 6.49 73

11.

Clarion 5.52 16

12.

Forest 5.24 2

13.

Armstrong 4.64 25

14.

Greene 4.30 13

15.

Crawford 4.27 28

16.

Venango 3.79 16 Implications. There is considerable state-by-state variation in the incidence of thyroid cancer, fastest-rising cancer in the U.S. The rate in some states is more than double that of others. In Pennsylvania, the state with the highest rate, there is considerable variation by county. Rates are highest in the counties in the eastern part of the state, each of which lies.east of a nuclear power plant. The release of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere from these plants raises the possibility that these emissions are driving up thyroid cancer rates. More detailed study should be undertaken to better understand this relationship.

Sources.

Ries LAG et al (eds). SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2003. National Cancer Institute, Bethesda MD. http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975 2003/

Davies L, Welch HG. The Increasing Incidence of Thyroid Cancer in the United States, 1973-2002.

Journal of the American Medical Association, May 10, 2006. Vol. 295, No. 18, pp. 2164-2168.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Program of Cancer Registries Invasive Cancer Incidence Results. http://wonder.cdc.qov/cancer. html.

Pennsylvania Department of Health. Health, health statistics, cancer incidence and mortality.

htto://www.state.pa.us, U.S. Census Bureau. Your Gateway to Census 2000, the 2000, SF-1 file. http://www.census.gov,

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,BAYWOOD REPRINTS INTERNATIONAL JORNAL :OF HEALTH SERVICF health and social pohcy political economy and socioýogy,.

ehiso :and ha*d

-o.h ethics anid aw 2,:

editoriff-chief.

Volume 36, Number. 1-2006 A Short Latency between Radiation Exposure. from Plants and Cancer in Yog Children Joseh J Ma ao

'iJ PUBLISHIN-G:COMPA"'Y, INC-

EnvironmnentalHealth Policy, A SHORT LATENCY BETWEEN RADIATION0 EXPOSURE FROM NUCLEARPLANTS AND CANCER IN YOUNG CHILDREN" Jo sph J. Mangao

,,?.*L:.iL=_:::hortiatetr;

~ iie~o~ t,

-c~bu g hildren Previous reports document a so lncy ofancer oset in ounil exposed to, lw doses of radioactivity. The standard moirtality ratti (SMR) for can.cer in children dying before'age ten rose in theperiod vtd6-0years'after the

• Three Mile Island anCerby acci~dents iii,population~s. most exposed to fallout: SMPS near most nuclear power plants w.ere,lev d*-j* 0...ars after t a L articaly for lemia 'Cancer incidene in children uner age ten livi.... N isP....-Yrk and. Iw,J.rsey nuclear opants increased.4-5 y after increases; in average strontiumm:9O in baby, teeth*,, _idec.min4e years r.;after: Srý~ayei ages. dibppa._Thc assumptipn th~t S9f-0'ad ch~ildhiood

• acrTaec9t4isbs supported fora&uprlnea'-c

~

d6-resp~n.e, Sradiation exposure, even attrelatively owd doses The* latency period between radiation' exposure and the onsiiof cancer has been docuinented to be as, longas several decades. However, some radiation-induced cancer, occurs~aftera much shorter period. Perhaps the first t

evidenceof a short latency,wasdocumented inthe 1950s, with high rates of yy9,4~d9dher cancers typi&

10ears ofiX-rayi4ation:to infts rd ig children

.(13): Leuikemia rates among Hiroshima. and.aga0ki r Were elevated Vbegingifi5hyears~fter the.1905....bombn reachgy pe

.10.9yearis,., after (4-6).

in 5yer* er abj'iis de on Adults ti~eited. with., therapeutic radiationfor an 1

1-demon-Adufrom 1uket~miia withi I2t"a s

.r.td increases in o

rtleuktmia yrshmrate

cancer, paicreatic.cancer.and extracranial.

Turs,. eac-aI, r g cancer afer exosure (8)

Irradiation treatment for cervical cancer resulted in ecr;at cancer arin Internationhal Jhurnal 6of Health Services Volume 36, Numberi 1,

11ages3 11-135, 2006

'C 02006, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

113

114, / Mangano leukemia 1-4 years after exposure (9-11). Peak levels of bone cancer after injection of radium-224 occurred 8 years after treatment (12).

Even at relatively low doses, irradiated adults are at greater risk for cancer just several years after exposure. A peak of chronic myeloid leukemia incidence was observed 6-10 years after X-rays to the back, gastrointestinal tract, and kidneys (13). Mbrrori families in Uiah.livimgidirectly downwinduofatmospheric nuclear*0 weapons tests in Nevada were found-to -have significantly higher incidence of all cancers conbined and certain radiosensitive tumors 7-15 years after the tests began (14). Four to 5 years after the Chiemobyl accident, thyroid cancer among adults in the Czech Republic and Poland increased (15, 16).

The developing fetus and infant'haive'a predisposition to cancer from various types of low-dose radiation exposure within a decade. Pelvic X-rays to pregnant

-women, in, the 1950s initially was linked to a near doubling of the risk of cancer death before.1 0 years of.age (17, i Subsequenit rýoffd '6n laiger populations conifirmed this excess, forboth leukemia and other childhood cancers (19-2 1).

'.Elevated: levels& of radiosensitive, cancers in the Y9u shgrtly. after exposure to falliout frbm atmospheric nuclearweapons tests. haveaiso e documented.

Peaks i*

A utdcifhiiiyelbid leukemia'deaths :in US. children.age,5.9. years occurred mi 1962 aid 1968, about 5:ears4after -the peak testingoperiodsof the late 1950s a h.early I,60se(i22).

• • s Ficii-1948-2 to 1958-62, the number of Utah residents underage 30,wli hadt e deidef~us yrhi-idglahdrenioVed surgically rose from to t3*O,,much. f$aster than the~6nal -increae `(23)*. Ifivýi Nordic countries, leukeemial incidence in children under age"5beaed.

g.t iihest perods of fallout from bomb tests, (24)..

More recently, an elevation in leukema diagnosed n the first year of life was seen in children born in 1986 and 1987, just after the accident at Chernobyl, representing aý Wtercy peniod, of le*'ssthan 2,years..betweenw in utero exposure and diagnosis. These elevations were documented in multiple nations, including Belarus (25), GreeCe'J(26), S6otland (27), the United,.;States, (28), ý.W.ales (29),

and West Germfany (30),,plus!groUpingof;European countries (341.A latency

"*beginnin* just '4.ars betweefthe accident at, hemobyl:and,,e.levated thyroid, cancer rates in children has been reported&in Belarus and the Ukraine (32-34).

Rising thyroid ! cancer imcide'icie inh-children: has.'also -been eported within 10 r "- f'he.*;year.ofcth ie"acid"ent-in' th'emodeatelye'dxposed areas:.0of.,.elgium (35) East

11ungary (36) and'nofthermnEnglandL"(37):. While* some: reports4,have found no excess m notn-th*oid canc'ers ;in'children irradiated&,by. Chernobyl fallout, and TZkey(39).

'.;,:.'..P Other reports have found unexpectedly high rates of childhood cancer, often leukemian and typicailly diagnosed before oage 10,..near nuclear installations.

Early childhood cancer near nuclear plants likely represents effects of exposures

-in utero and in infancy. In theUnitedKin~gdom'-'loi~

e 'tlat eleven-such

-reports representing-ifferefint uclear plants exist (40-50): Similar results were

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer J 115 observed in Canada (51), France (52), Germany (53), and the former Soviet Union (54). Reports on this topic. from the United States have been limited to

several examining populations neara single faciliat least two decades ago (55-59)., Data from a: 1990 National Cancer, Institudite report show that cancer incidence for age. 0-9.years near.each of four U.S. reactors exceeds the state rate (60). A recent -analysis shows that cancer incidence for age 0-9 within 30 miles of each of 14 U.S. plants exceeds the national average for 1988-97, based on 3,669 cases (61).

'T*.. he'many.'reportsldocumenting a*5-10 yearlag bet~ween radiation exposure

!and childhood cancer onset,, plus. elevated,6chidhod 6ancr&

near nuclear power

-plants, illu'strate the heightened sensitiy*ty ofth.fefidi aidiinfant to toxins. In t-,his reportj' fuirther ;examinetin..s.sscpilt yiayzfgemol trends in'. childhood., cancer: in ipopulations exposed to loW-dose nuclear power plant

'emissions 5-10 years, after initial exposure.

-METHODOLOGY, The first part of this report analyzes~ chges in childhoo cancer mortality in four., U-.S. populations -(descnbed below) exposed' to radioactivity from nuclear reactor emissions. MortaAy, iused since it'seasaVilyailbfor each U.S. county

foreach.'year from, 1979 to 2002. Deaths of children beforeage&10 years are used, duetothe hei6tened sensitivity to the fetus and infant andithe expected latency o fs 5d0years..,,-.

Beuse of the expected. brief latency between exposure and. disease onset,

:Cancer~deaths at-age 0e9mi the periods 1-5 and 6--.10 years '.,!er 'startup (used in the nal ncer Institutestudy of,52 Uj.S.nicl' power plants) can serve

..as.

controls and aes, respectiv ey. Temporal changes i' n thl standard' mortality

...- 'tiO (SM

, representifg*the ratio-fl oserved to.*epected.(local vs. national) rates, are examined. Significance of differences in bserved and expected changes is tested using a standard z-score test.

Thr'ege MileIsland-On-March,'28,, 19,79ý reactor unit 2 att*,he Three Mile Island

' "'ni*lar'installation in, Pennsylvania. expeenced a' prtialcore meltdown result-inIg. from ioss of -cooling, water. The damaged "reator.r emitted elevated (but still relatively ;low)ý evelsý of radioactivitythe, ii total oif 1.4.2 curies of airborne

.idine431 ýand~effluents :(all radioisotopes with'a halffif*

'of more than eight fr th lant to that time (62). The majority"of fallout from the, accident travele wi pre-

- -, iin'g -Winds; m. a t'.northieaserly: direction, being (detected in elevated levels in -the environment' in.distant. locationssuch as; Albany, NY (63), and Portland, ME (64).

' This 'study considers.cancermortality.for children ageQ-9 years residing in the

" -34 coritigit6us-counties.inorth and northeast of Three Mile.sland (see Appendix I).

116

/ Mangano Of these, 28 counties are in Pennsylvania and sixiin New Jersey, andall.lie within.

130 miles of0the plant.ASMRs inthe period 1979-83 (1-5 years after the accident) afid 1984-88(6-10 years after) are compared; ICD-9 diagnosis cdes 140.0-239.9 are used to identify all cancers combined, in all four study groups in this report.

SMR changes for leukemia (ICD-9204.0-208.9) and all other cancers combined are also reviewed.

Cher*c*bl. OnA' Ail 26, 1986; reactor unit 4 at the Chemobyliplant in the Ukraine experience.d a total core meltdown. Fallout from the disaster was prop'elled well into -theestrat6osphere%'and-across A-the globe.-In-the United States, elevated but rlatively' low levels'.of ivironmental radioactivity w.ere observed beginning May' 5, as pirecipitaton. rettii'ned-fallout to earth..Short-lived radioisotopes remained elevated d gi'ihe remainider of May and June;- and long-lived isotopes did not return to pre-accident levels for another three years (65).

U.S. goveninmeit"mieasure*, ients during May and June identified areas of the country *tat received the greatest levels of Chemobyl fallout. The upper Midwest

.,,and P*cificiiorthwest, along w ith New York Cityý Washington, DC, and Maine, had the highest coicentrAtis'6fiodine-13 11 (half-life of 8.05 days) in pasteurized milk from May_6 to Juiie30, '986'(Table1').

The change 'in SM forcancet age 0-9:-yea'rs from the,period 1986-90 to 1991-95 (1-5'and 6-210 years after the accident) for 17'states and the District of Colu.mbia is compared with that of the remaining U.S:& states. 4n New York, only the New York City area is includ**e s:inc' the averageI-131 concentration in

.Buffalo and Syraciuse was 8.0 picoiuries per liter of pasteurized milk, well below

,the Ne 'York City aveiige"(l4-.)oiICa*lifoinia; 6nly'the 29-northern counties are included, as¶131 ave'*ýýages for Sdr-a.ento6 andý San' Francisco (19.6 and 17.2) wlerleel:aboe' thaforL6s Ag~lef (6:.-7): See Appefidix II: for a list of states adcounties studied.

Counties near New Nuclear Plants-Startup before 1982. The 1990 study by the National Cancer Institute examined cancer mortalitybefore and after startup of 52niniidhr po0*Ve'plants'4 The-'1990 rePort calculated SMRs for 5-year intervals (1-5 years bef6die'nd aier startup, 6-10 years before and after startup, etc.) for various age groups. This report examines!the change in SMR from 1-5 years after tarteprto s

er.iartup for children age,0-9 years livig near plants.

P Ib the 1990 study) -with: the liirgest populations, which account-fr,o. 89 percent o annua

--cc deathsat age 0-9-ne*arthe 52.plants. Morethai.84.3, million persons lived in these counties ii2000(Table 2).

Counies near Nev Nuclear "Plants-w-Startup since 1982. Beginning in 1982, a iotoalb'i f23 U'S. nrueler ýa' nb' egan operationsiat ingtallations with no existing nuclear-reactors. These were not included in the 1990 study, because of the late

Radiation Exposure and Childhood -Cancer I 117 Table I U.S. sites with highest average concentrations of iodine-131 in pasteurized milk afterthe Chernobyl accident Site No. of samples Average 1-13 1a Boise, ID Spokane; WA Helena, MT Rapid City, SD Salt Lake City, UT Seattle, WA Wichita, KS Sacramento, CA Portland, OR ' -

Minneapolis, MN San Francisco, CA Des Moines, IA Grand Rapids, MI Las Vegas; NVV Omaha, NE New York, mNY OklahomaeCity, OK Minot, ND Portland, ME, Washington, DC.

Detroit, MI Other U.S. sites 28 12 12 12 12:

10-

.13 10-10

• 13

- 1:0 13, 12 10 71.0 42.0 30.8

• 27.8 25.6 24.8 19.7 19.6 18.8 18.1 17.2 16.8 16.5 15.5 15.4 14.0 13.6 12.9 12.6 11.6 11.1

8.0 Source

Office of Radiation Programs (65).

aAverage picocuries of iodine-:1 3 1/liter of pasteurized milk, May 6-Jume 30, 1986.

startup date. For purposes of.this report, proximate areas re defined as those

,counties situated cornp1,tely or. mostlywithin 30 :miles of the plant. Of the areas proximate to these 23.-plants, the most populated 14 (with 88% of the childhood cancer deaths a decade after startup) were selected for study. One of these, near the 7:Catawba plant in South Carolina,,

as.excluded.fromf..

analysis, since it lies

.:startup, *and is inclued in th ious analysis_ More, than.17.5 million A-" ericans livedin ~ounities proximate.to'.these plants in 2000 (Table 3). The SMRslfor ichildhood cancer,at. age *-9,for the periods -15 years and 6-10 years S

affei startup are compared near each plant. If a plant began operations in 1982, the periods 1983-87 and 1988-92 are used.

118

/ Mangano Table 2 U.S.' nuclear plants started before 1982 and proximate counties, as defined by the-NationaltCancer Institute, with largest populations in 2000 Plar4 Startup Counties Population Shippingport 1957 Beaver, PA; Hancock, WV 214,079 Dresden 1960 Grundy, Will, IL 539,801 Yankee Rowe 1960 Berkshire, Franklin, MA 206,488 Indian Point 1962 Rockland, Westchester, NY.

1,210,212 San Onofre 1962 Orange, San Diego, CA-5,660,122 Fermi 1963 Monroe, MI 145,945 Oyster Creek 1969 Ocean, NJ -

510,916 Millstone 1970 New London, CT 259,088 Pilgrim 1972 Plymouth, MA 472,822 Quad Cities 1972 Rock Island, Whiteside, IL.

210,027 Turkey Point 1972 Dade, FL 2,253,362 Zion t1974 Kenosha, WI; Lake, IL.:

793,933 Duane Arnold 1974 Benton, Linn, IA 217,009 Rancho Seco 1974 Amador, Sacramento, San,joaquin, CA 1,822,97 Three Mile Island 1974 Dauphin, Lancaster, York, PA 1,104,207 Cook 1975 Berrien, MI 162,453 Fort St. Vrain 1976 Boulder, Larimer, Weld,CO.

723,718 Salem 1976 New Castle, DE;. Salem,:NJ, 564,550 Sequoyah

" 1980 Hamilton, TN 307,896 McGuire 1981 Gaston, Lincoln, Mecklenberg, NC.949,599 Total 20 areas 18,328,424 Source: Bureau of the Census, 2000 Census of the United States, State/County quick facts, www.census~gov.

The second part of this study examines the effects of radioactive emissions, as detected in the bodies of children. The average strontium-90 concentration in baby teeth was 'w mesured for'more than 4,000 American.children, most residing near nuleapower lants:.The amount of Sr-90 per. gram bf.calcium at birth in each ba....6oth was' Mikes in aradiochemistry laboratoryi-using a scintillation.

counting techniqu&.

Wio we alyed by ybirthyear of the tooth donor, I"

since much oft the Sr-90 uptake-in d~cd-t-

"k early inifancy. T-ein6pdal hendsiin Sr-90,a4,erfages were compared with trends in

' p'nder ideridf66rihicdrhifkiifd er age 10 in the countiesnear. nuclear plants for which the, lagest numbrs of teeth WereI aailable; Tthse.plants include Suffolk County (NY; near the Brooklhaven National'Laboratories); Monmouth and Ocean

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer

/

119 Table 3

,U.S. Nuclear plants started since 1982 aand proximate counties with largest populations in 2000 at sites wi no previously existing reactors Plant Startup Counties Population Summer 1982 Chester, Fairfield, Lexington, Newberry,

" Richland, Union, SC 660,202 Susquehanna 1982 Carbon, Columbia, Luzeme, Montour, Schuylkill,

• Sullivan, Wyoming, PA 645,411 Diablo Canyon 1984 S'an Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, CA 586,028 Limerick 1984 Berks, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Lehigh, PA 2,466,961 Byron 1985 Boone, De Kalb, Ogle, Stepfi~fisbni, Winnebag(,

755,250 JL; Rock Walworth, WI Fermi 2 1985' Lenawe6, Mofiron,

,Washt, naeIw; Wayne, M 2,628,892 Palo Verde

1985, Ma-criopa"'A 3,072,149 River Bend 1985 E./W. BatoniRbug*, E./W. Feliciana, Pointe-503,999

Coup'ei,;LA; Wilkins6on, MS Waterford' 1985' Ascension, Jefferson, -Lafourche, Orlean.s, 1,219,073

'S't Charles, St. James, St. Johnlthe Baptist, LA Periy 1986'; Aslitabula; Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, OH 1,815,112 Bra idWood 1987 '..Grundy, Kankakee, Kendall, Will, IL 698,178 Harris 1 1987 Chatham, Durham,-.H_,etL Lee, Orange, 1,168,781 Wake" NC Seabrook 0--

1990 -. Rockingham, Strafford, NH; Essex, MA; 1,299,753 York, ME Total 13, areas 17,529,789 Source: Bureau of the Census, 2000 Census of the United States, State/County quick facts, www.census.gov.

Counties,, (N-J;i,near f. he, Oyster Creek plant);- and -Putnam, Rockland,. and

~WetceserCqiinties '(ea th& irdiia'nPoinit plant) 'The correlation between these tw6 trends-is assessed using:aPoisson regress~in, analysis testing the hypothesis that they are related.:'Linear and quadratic correlations are tested using the actual

.value, square root, andfourh i6t"of Sr-90 averages.

-The specific, methodology to, Olculactte Sr-90 contcentration for each tooth is described elsewhere (66, 67).,Teeth from Suffolk'Co0unty ýwere.' aalyzed using a Wallac WDY"i1220X Quantulus.low-level scintillation spectrometer; a Perkin-was usedfor other teehfi. In addition, the method used to clean teeth before testing differed between Suffolk C6unty A~n',,tjr pith;' ai more's6ophisiicated preparation for non-Suffolk teeth, plus use of a different uinter, 'alioW*d inore Sr-90 to be

120

/ Mangano detected. However, results for each area are internally consistent, allowing Sr-90 patterns and trends to be analyzed.

Strontium-90 results are compared with cancer incidence diagnosed in children age 0-9 years who'resided in counties i*iir nuclear plants it the time of diagnosis.

Cancer registries from the states of New Jersey and New York provided counts of incident cases, while U.S. Census Bureau counts and inter-censil estimates are

- used for resident'population. Three-year moving averages, rather 'han individual

-years, are used for both Sr-90 'and c6aicer rates, to increase thel statistical power of the comparison.

RESULTS Three Mile ks hi nW In the-34 downwind (north and nothdeast) counties closest to Three Mile Island, the SMR for cancer in children age 0-9 years rose 23.8 percent (0.87 to 1.08) from 1979-83 to 198,4-88,.the pe'o 1l*5 Years and 6-10 years after thd accident. The crude cancer mortality, rateiat age,. 0 in'the'3r4counties iicre d 3.6 percent, compared %With: a.nationalidecline.,of, 16.4 percent. Because the number of local deatbmi m each 5-year penod'(12Zand 1,35) was relatively small, the rise in SMR is of bordelitnesignificance atfP!..:09, (Table. 4). While the SMR for leukemia

, fell from".9*5'toOL88,:'the':ratio.forall' other cancers combined rose from 0.83 to 1.17, s§ttistically sigifianit at P <'.03..;

Chernobyl From 1986-90 to 1991-95 (1-5 years and 6-10 years after the accident) the SMR

'for cancers at age 0-9 years in the.18 states with 'the most'fallout from the Table 4

.,Three Mile Island: change in standard mortality ratio, children age 0-9, ater te arh 8 19'dccident,-`l97983,vs.I984:.8 34 counties notIh/nofthe.ast andclosestt6 Three MileIsland Typ*e of cancer

', 1979-83

1 9844 88

% Change SMR All cancers combinied 0

(

.08:(13)

+23.8 (P <.09)

S Leukemia 0:951,(48)

":. 088 (35)

, -6.8 (P <.90)

-Source:..U.S. Centers for Disease Control aiid Prevention, http://wondler.cdc.gov; underlying cause of deathi; uses ICD-9 codes 140.0ý-239.9..'"

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer /

121

• Chernobyl accident, rose from 0.97 to 1.06, a significant increase (P <.02). The crude cancer death rate at age 0-9 declined 6.6 percent in the 18 states, compared With a reduction of 14.0 peicent elsewhere in the United'States. The SMR rise for idukemia (0.90 to 1.01) exc-.eded that for all other cancers (1.00 to 1.07). Neither increase achieved statistical significance (P<.10 and P<.13, respectively) (Table 5).

Counties near Nuclear Plants-Startup before 1982 The SMR for all canceigiri children dyiIg before their tenth birthday in the 20 most populated areas near nuclear power plahts cited in the 1990 Nati6nia Cancer

..Institute report (startup-before 1982) increased for 1-7 of the 20areas from 1k5 to 6-10 years iftdr plant startup. Table 6 sh ws the total SMR rose from 0.99 to 1. 18.

Because of the large number of deaths in each period (587-and 590),Ithe. change

-,was statistically significant at P <.003. Only one of the 20 changesmnear indi-vidual plants (Shippingpoit) was statistically significant. The increase in SMR for leukemia (1.00 to-&122)' exceeded that.for all other cancers:(0,98Mto 1.15).

Both increases achieved statistical significaýnce (P<.03 andP<.05,-respectively).

Counties' ear Nuclear Plahi'ts-Startup since 1982 Table 7, shows that the cancer SMR for age- 0-9 in the 13 most, populated areas near nuclear plants started since 1982 rose from 0.92 to 1.05,,which is

'of borderline significance (P < '.08).Theiratio.rose in'nine of the'13 areas near nuclear: plants, declined near' three, and w*vas es'sntially unchanged ini'another.

The crude rate near the 13 'plants fell just" 1.6 percent, compared with' larger declines finationwide. The SMR increase for leukemia (0.85 to '1.04) was 6ughly double that of all other cancers (0.96 to 1.06). Neither of these chainges achieved statistical significanc6(P <.1 2 and P <.28,, respj6ctively).

Table 5 Chernobyl: change in standard mortality,*ratio, children age 0-9, after theAprO i 26, 1986, accide4 I i98690 vs. 1991-95, Ms18sttes with sites with highest averakge !-131 :measurements SMR (deaths)

Type of cancer 1986-90 1991-95

% Change SMR All cancers combined 0.97 (1,501) 1.06 (1,466)

+8.7 (P<.02)

Leukemia'

,0.90

-(434)

.01: (422) lLS-l(Pl5<.!l0)

All. other cancers......

1.00.(1,.,067)!'

...,1'07 (1,040)

' +7.0(P<.13)

""" "So4rce: '

Centers for Disease Cofitrol and Prevention, htp://wpnder'.cdc.go; underlyinig cause "of death;ýues ICD-9 codes' 140:0-239.9.'-

122

/ Mangano Table6 6 Counties near nuclear power plants that began operations before 1982:

change in cancer mortality, children a'ge 0-9, 1-5 years vs. 6-10 years after startup, 20 most populated ar*.s SMR (deaths)

Type of cancer" Ali cancerscombined "euk ziiia All Otheri &ancers SAil canceis by plant

ýShippingport Dresden.

Yankee.Rowe: :..

....Indian Point, San Onofre Fermi I Oyster Creek

.'Millstone

.Quad Cities,

,T.urkey oint...:*

Duane Aermoa Rancho Seco Cook Fort St. Vrain Salem Sequoyah McGuire 1-5 yrs after

-'0.99 ;(587)

..:0:98 (31 1)

-0.84- (20) 0,(22).

..... 0.?65, (1,)

0.98

• 75) 1.07 (186)

0Q68t, (7) 1.12 (15) 4.34',417)'

1.02 (19),

.,1,.03 ;(11)

,0.94 (48)

.9.74 (18),

1.,6.06

1. 14 (44)

• 0.07 2) 1.35 (9) 0.67 (10) 0.79 (12) 1.60 (13)_

0.78 (14) 6-10 yrs after 1

J.1&8(590) 2 1(264) i15"(326)

1.

"I~47

-:(29)-

1.26 '(26)

1.

".,.23 '.(17.)

1.;22.-(79) 1.11 (153) 1.1.

I,8:,(10):.,

• 0.69 (8) 1:0.60 (5)

..10,(16)'.

1...48 412).

+/-.',.'112,: (.49) 1.43. (55) 1.29 (36) 1.54 (8) 1.11 (16) 1.01 (13) 1.51 (10) 1.16 (20)

% Change SMR 419.(P<.003) 422`.9.(P

.0~3)

+16.4P <'105)

+73.7 (P <.05)

+26.6 i+/-89.9 I

+:23.9-.:

+3.4

-38.6

+8.3

+÷43:.3/,:.

+18.3

.+36.2--.,

+22.3

+47.4

+ 14.1

+67.0

+27.5

-5.6

+49.2 Total "199(587) 1.18(590)

+19.3 Source: Nati6nalCan'cer Ilsiitute, Canýcerin"PPp'iulation*'NeirNukliar'FiPitiies U.S. Government

'Printing Offc, WAshingtd loDC go.9.0.

Strontium-90 Trends and Childhood*Cancer Incidence.

Figures 1, 2, and 3 illustrate: the. comparisons of average Sr-90 in baby teeth, and cancer incidence in childisri under age 10 years '(Ca 0-9) nea, three nuclear-plants.

Eachrepresents btween 10 and 14 the-yea pends(ovin aveag) covermig persons bornmin the 1980s and the early 1995Theanalyses: inc1ude, a large

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer

/

123 Table 7 Counties near nuclear power plants that began operations since 1982:

change in cancer mortality, children age 0-9, 1-5 years vs. 6-10 years after startup, 13 most populated areas SMR (deaths)

Type of cancer 1-5 yrs after 6-10 yrs after

% Change SMR All cancers combined 0.92 (353) 1.05 (368)

+14.7 (P <.08)

Leukemia 0.85(115) 1.04 (124)

+21.6 (P <.12)

All other cancers 0.96 (238) 1.06 (244)

+10.6 (P <.28)

All cancers by plant Summer 0.95 (14) 0.76 (10)

-19.8 Susquehanna 0.41 (6) 0.87 (11)

+113.0 Diablo Canyonr 0.54 (7) 0.77 (10)

+42.9 Limerick 0.76 (39) 0.99 (48)

+30.8 Byron 0.59 (10)

.1.26 (19)

+112.6 Fermi 2:

0.94 (64) 1.20 (73)

+28.2 Palo Verde 1.01 (55) 0.89 (49)

-11M6 RiverBend' 0.83 (11) 1.18 (13)

+41.7 Waterford 0.69 (24) 0.94 (26)

+35.6 Perry 1.10 (47) 1.31, (48)

+18.6

.Braidwobd 0.57 (8) 0.71 (1Q0)

+25.3 Hariis 1 1.67 (31)

/

1.06 (19)

-36.7 Seabrook 1.37 (37) 1.37 '(32)

-0.3 Total 0.92 (353) 1.05 (368)

+14.7 Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://wonder.cdc.gov; underlying cause of death; uses ICD-9 codes 140.0-239.9.

• number of teeth, and cancer cases (453 and 390 for Suffolk County, 167.and 434 for Monmouth 5d Ocean Counties, and 239'and 371 for' Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester Counties). The three areas indicate a similarity of trends in Sr-90 and childhood cancer, with a four-year. latency between the two in New York and a five-year.latency in New Jersey. For example, the average Sr-90 level in Suffolk County teeth steadily, rose, from 0.97 to 1.68. picocuries of Sr-90 0-9 diagnosed with cancer. steadily. rose.from 1.18 to 2.075,cases pe! 10,000

• persons from 1985-87to 1988-90.

The correlation was statistically significant (P <.05) for Monmouth/Ocean and Suffolk Counties, but fell short of significance for Putnam/Rockland/Westchester.

It was also significant for all three areas combined, after taking into account that

I.J 1A 0

.l*,dl II

.1 I

I I

I I

I I*

I I/

'81-3;ý '82-4 '83-5

'84-6

'85-7

'86-8

'87-9 '88-90 '89-91 '90-2

. 'Sr-90 Ca, 0-9]

Figure 1. Sti calcium; cancer itium-90 in baby teeth vs. cancer incidence at age 0-9 years, Suffolk County, NY. Picocuries of Sr-90 per gram of Lses (Ca) per 10,000 population; four-year lag (Sr-90 begins 1981-83; Ca begins 1985-87).

5 4.5 3.5

,3 2.5 2

I I

I I

I II I

I 80-2 '81-3 '82-4 '83-5 -'84-6 '85-7 '86-8 '87-9 '88-

'89- '90-2 '91-3 '92-4 '93-5 90 91' ISr9O Ca 0-91

ý0 t:"t 0

C)

CL 0

CL CD Figure 2 of calcium Strontium-90 in baby teeth vs. cancer incidence at age 0-9 years, Monmouth and Ocean Counties, NJ. Picocuries of Sr-90 per gram ancer cases (Ca) per,2,000 popiiti6on; five-year lag (Sr-90 begins 1980-82; Ca begins 1985-87).

I VI

~

I I

I I

I I

I f

t'3 0

'82-4 '83-5 '84-6 '85-7 '86-8 '87-9

'88-

'89-

'90-2 '91-3 '92-4 90 91

-- Sr9a 0Cao-1 Figure 3. Stro of Sr-90 per gr ium-90 in babyteeth vs. cancer incidence at age 0-9 years, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester Counties, NY. Picocuries

)f calcium; cancer cases (Ca) per 2,000 population; four-year lag (St-90 begins 1981-83; Ca begins 1985-87).

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer

/

127 Table 8 Poisson regression results, average Sr-90 concentration and cancer incidence, age 0-9, areas near New York and New Jerse. nuclear power plants Counties P value 95% CI IRR Monmouth/Ocean, NJ Actual Sr-90 value

.039 1.005-1.201 1.099 Square root of Sr-90

.038 1.020-2.003 1.430 Fourth.root of Sr-90

.038 1.058-6.716

,2.665 Suffolk, NY Actual Sr-90 value.

.043 z 1.011-2.029 1.432

.Square root of Sr-90

.049

'1.002-4.908 2.218 Fourth root of Sr-90

.053 0.978-28,886 5.314 Putnian/R*cklandlWestchester, NY Actual Sr90 Value

.704

.ý-0.912-1.146 1.022 Square root of Sr.90

.693 0.688-1.755 1.099 "Foilirih roit of Sr-90

.688 0.46:50.29 1.316 All afasýcombined

",Actual Sr-90 :value

.020 1...0051L064 1.035

'SquarerootofSr-90

.021.

1.017-1E223 1.115

-. Fourthroot ofSr_9O.

.021

.04'1:1650

.1.311*

• Note:. CI, con fide'nce interval; IRR, incidence rate ratio.

there may be confounding factors.P values were similarmwhether the actual value, square root, or'foutirtlrtot of the SrOiieesui reenits WaS used. However, the quadratic, (fourth root) of Sr -90 beSt fits ilh tassi.mption that the two variables are-related;,.the incidien-e rate ratio (IRR) 'is highest for each area when the Dourthu root isused for Sr-90.(Table 81.'

DISC-USSION Themmiimu"m'latency period betweent-radiation exppsure ofihe fetus and infant bhsiand t'ofcancer has often bedn docuumented as about 591 years. This latency ina....

cl r

s typesof radiation exposue (fromX-ray&s niuclear weapons test cance ir, a

eothermalignancies). In.theiUnited States, the issue of whether nuclear cancer, and o r

.react6r op'ratioihs :ha-vedaffected childhood cancer.-risk is fargely unexamined.

Reactor operations is a pertinent area of study, since atmospheric and subterranean weaponst 'pess'tg'seiised in'1963 and'1992,re.spectively. The 1i03 U.S. nuclear power

128

/ Mangano reactors now in operation represent nearly one-fourth of the world's total, and include some of the oldest reactors.

'This report analyzeg cancer mortality in children exposed to radioactivity from nuclear poWer *reactors who died before their.tenth birthday. Because the lag between exposure and diagnosis can often be 5-10 years, the periods 1-5 years and 6-10 years after initial exposure'were compared. Excess cancer deaths among children during the first 5 years after..exposure would not be expected, and thusrepresent a control group, while an elevated level of cancer deaths 6-1 0 years. after exposure would be expected, In areas of the United States exposed to the greatest levels of fallout from accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and areas proximate to-newly started nuclear reactors, increases in the standard mortality ratio 6-10 years after initial exposure in children under age 10 were observed. Increases in SMR ranged from 8.7 to 23.8; each of these temporal chang'es achieved.0or'approached statistical significance. For each of the four areas studied other than the ar'ea near Three Mile Island, the SMR increase for leukemia.exceeded that for all other cancers. All SMs w ere less than 1.00:in the period 1-5 years after initial exposure, and were S gr!eaterfii.n 1.00 in the Oeriod 6-10 years&after; thisjindi6ctes that populations with c~ineri rates below the national average changedl t*othse with rates above the national average in just a few years.

In addition, the report examines the relationship *between temporal trends of in-bodys adioactivity7(i.e., Sr-90 in baby teeth at-birth) and childhood cancer incidence. near three U.S. nuclear installations.'-"For-each area, the pattern of ciiildh:odcancer increasing

., yeas after a !rise in-,Sr-90 (and decreasing 4-5 years after a Sr-90 decline) was consistent.Wii1e6tthe relationship achieved statistical significance in just two. of the three areas, plus all three areas combined, the results suggest a link between fetal/infant exposures from nuclear plant emissionsý and cancer in childhood. Much of the Sr-90 in deciduous teeth of childrenliving near.*iclear plantS prbab'lyrepresents emissions from the plant that areingested in air andfood,(67)..

An important, finding in the comparison of Sr*-90 and childhood cancer trends is that the quadratic (fourth _r0oo) vatlue of:Sr-90 in baby teeth provides the highest incidence rate ratio, and thus-supports the tlihor' that a 'quadratic of Sr-90 fits the assumption of a linkbetter than does linearity. Thus, the upward supralinear

' dose-response best describe's the relationship between in-body Sr-90 and child-hood canter risk'. This relationship indicates that the.greatest per-dose risk occurs athte lowest dose' levels,.:which is critical to, understanding the health risks of ron.ental emissionso ee.e...

d fom nuclear facilities.

Thefinigs tnsin-tems near U"S.n*iiclearplanits are important in severalways. The ort the pttern o

-are lativly Slihrt lag l'riod between exposures early in life and disease onset. The pattern'f children exposed to0radiation being:especially susceptible to leukemia as opptsed to other types of cancer is consistentwith many earlier findings. Perhaps

Radiation Exposure andChildhood Cancer

/

129 the most important aspect of the report is documentation-ofan apparent childhood cancer risk at relatively low levels of exposure. Many previous studies involved considerably larger doses, includin.g fallout from atomic boomb tests rnd radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Radioactivity levels in theUnited States from the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl-accidents were considerably lower than that in Belarus/Ukraine after Chernobyl. While environmental-emissions of fission SPrOducts from nuclear plants vy, they are typically loweruthan those released in major accidents or in bomb test fallout. Results indicate that ongoing exposure to radioactivity may present an) increased health risk to.infants and children not previously understood. Exposures such as Hiroshima and medical use of X-rays represent a single-dose, while.nuclear plant emission,s-are continuous, and long-lived isotopes from Three Mile Island/Chemobyl remained, in the U.S. fo'~d chain for years.

-The study-has limitations that. should be addressed inr.- subsequent research-efforts. Perhaps the most important of these is the need to continue to improve dose estimates for exposures from nuclear plant emissions :and Ito further explore epidemiological comparisons of health risks. A case-contfol comparison of I in-body doses of radioactivity in children with and without -a disease such as

(

cancer who live proximate to nuclear facilities would be,useful to fill this need.

This report isolates only-one specific type of cancer (leukemia). It examines potential effects only on young children, not adolescents oradults. It examines patterns of cancer mortality only in the first deeade after initial exposure, and not thereafter. Not all increases: in SMR,*.or all -correlations between Sr-90 in baby teeth and childhood cancer incidence,: are statistically significant:

Despite these shortcomings, the,pidemiological finicgs documented here represent a-novel contribution to the'understanding of'radiation risks to the very young.._Withlens of.mh0iions-ofAmericans living. close -to -nuclear-reactors,-.....

more detailed stuadies shouldbe pursued-forthwith.

h -

Acknwled-m.

-T author th k

cAra' i Bu§bywPh.D.; for her assistance

.,with statistical significance testing* for this repo APPENDIX I Counties Included in Table 4 Pennsylvania and New Jersey. counties:located:.noith/northest of Three Mile

- Island and within -130 miles of the:plant that~are included in analysis in Table 4:

Pennsylvania Counties -

Berks Monroe.

Bradford Montour Bucks Northampton-

130

/ Mangano Pennsylvania Counties (cont'd.)

Carbon Northumberland Columbia Perry Cumberland Pike Dauphin Schuylkill Juniata' Snyder Lackawanna Sullivan

'Lebanon Su'squehanna ULhigh-Tioga Luzeme.

'Union

,Lycoming Waynie Miffiin Wyoming New Jersey Counties f

-4 Hunterdon:

Mercer F

.Morris,

• .,Somerset iSussex S

Warren-(

,.PopulationsAge0-9 W-PA NJ, Cunties 1 919,7983,-

-2,981,889,

...l,..1984488"

" :,k:-'3,058,676

" t.,..*:, "

A f. lf-lT+-.. T T ',

US 465,5932,42a

'1i75,532,642 7

F'

~T'J TV Ib u,'

in~r~~ll 11 "Satesiand CountiesIncldid "' Table' Statesa counties with highest-iodine-13 L.averages inr milk, measurededuring............

May and June 1986, after ithe--Chemobyl accident, that. are included in analysis in Table 5:

-States Califomia,(29 counties).Nebraska District 'of Columbia

.':Nevada Iowa Kansas Maine r ew I orx j, cour1ues).

North Dakota Oklahoma Oregon.

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer

/

131 Michigan Minnesota Montana California Counties Amador Butte Colusa Contra Costa Del Norte El Dorado Glenn Humboldt

`Lake':

Lassen Marh Mendocino Modoc Napa Nevada South Dakota Utah Washington Placer Plumas Sacramento -

San Francisco Shasta Sierra,,

sioIIou Solano Sonoma sutter Tehama Trinity Yolo Yuba New -York Counties Bronx Kings New York Queens Richmond' Rockland Westchester Populations Age 0-9 1986-90, 1991-95 States with High -13i.

39,082,847 40,863,580 Other US.

,141,343,373 151,355,461 REFERENCES

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132

/

Mangano

3. Simpson, C. L. Hempelmann, L. H., and Fuller, L. M. Neoplasia in children treated with X-rays in infancy for thymic enlargement. Radiology 64:840-845, 1955.

4. Heyssel, R., et al. Leukemia in Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors. Blood 15:313-33!,

1960.

5. Bizzozero, 0. J., Johnson; K.; G., and Ciocco, A. Radiation-related leukemia in Hifoshima and Nagasaki, 1946-64: I. Distribution, incidence, and appearance time.

N..Engl. J. Med. 274(20):1095-1101, 1966.

6. Preston, D. L. H., et al. Life Span Study Report 10: Part 1. Cancer Mortality among A-Bomb Survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1950-82. Technical Report RERF TR 1-86. Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, 1986.

7. Darby, S. C. et al. Long-term mortality after a single treatment course with X-rays in patients tested for ankylosing spondylitis. Br. J. Cancer 55:019-190, 1987.

8. Smith, P. G., and Doll, R. Mortality among patients with ankylosing spondylitis after a single treatment course with X-rays. BMJ 284:449-460,1 1982.

9. Boice, J. D., et al. Second cancers following radiation treatmeinit for cervical cancer: An international collaboration among'cancer registries: J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 74:955-975, 1985. -

10. Boice, J. D., et al. Radiation dose and leukemia risk in patients treated for cancer of the cervix. J Natl. Cancer Inst. 79:1295-1311, 1987.

I 1. Boice, J. D., et al. Radiation dose and second cancer risk in patients treated for cancer of the cervix. Radidt. Res. 116:3 -55,4 1988.

12. National Research Council, Committee on the Biol6gical Effects of Ionizing Radiations. Health Risks of Radon and Other Internally Deposited Alpha-Emitters (BEIR M9, p. 602. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.

13. Preston-Martin, S., et al, Diagnostic'radiography as a risk factor for chronic myeloid and monocytic leukemia. Br. J. Cancer 59(4):639-644, 1989.

14. Johnson, C. J. Cancer incidence in an area of radioactive fallout, downwind from the Nevada test site..JAMA 251(2):230-236, 1984.

15. Murbeth, S., et al. Thyroid cancer has increased in the adult populations of countries moderately affectedby Chernobyl fallout. Med. Sci. Monitor. 10(7)'CR300-306, 2004.

-16. Roszkcwska, -I, and Gorynski, P. Thyroid cancer in Poland in. 1980-2000. Przegl Epidemiol. 58(2):369-376, 2004.

17. Stewart, A., et al. Malignant diseaso'in childhood and diagnostic irradiation in utero.

Lancet 2:447, 1956.

18. Stewart, A.,,Webb, J., "and Hewitt, D. A survey of childhood malignancies. BMJ 1:1495-1508, 1958.

19. MacMahod, B. Prenatal x-ray exposure and childhood cancer. J. Natl. Cancer Inst.

28:1173-1192, 1962.

20. Bithell, J.. F.,ý and Stewart, A. M. Pre-natal irradiation and childhood malignancy:

A review of British datafronm the Oxfd su ey. Br. J. Cancer 31:271-287, 1975.

S 21. Monson, R.R., and MacMahon, B. Prenhatlx-ray exposureand'cancer in children. In Radiation Carcinogenesis: Epidemiology.anhdBiological Significance, ed. J. D. Boice m&I FF~rauzWRvv D oj sj New Yprl, 1994.'

22. Archer, V. E. Association of nuclear fallout with leukemia in the U.S. Arch. Environ.

Health 42:263-271,1 987."

23. Weiss, E. S., et al. Surgically treated thyroid disease among young people in Utah, 1948-1962. Am. J. Public Health57(0)!:1807'1814, 1967.

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer /

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24. Darby, S. C., et al. Trends in childhood leukaemia in the Nordic countries in relation to fallout from atmospheric nuclear weaponstesting. BMJ304:1005-1009, 1992.

25. Ivanov, E., et al. Infant leukemia in Belarus after the Chernobyl accident. Radiat.

Environ. Biophys. 37:53-55, 1998.

.26. Petridou, E., et al. Infant leukaemia after in utero exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.

Nature 382:352-353, 1996.

27. Gibson, B. E., et al.Leukaemia in young children inScotland. Lancet 2:630, 1988.

28. Mangano, J,. J. Childhood leukaemia in US: may have, risen due to fallout from Chernobyl. BMJ 314:1200, 1997.

29.. Busby,.C., and Scott Cato, MK Increases in leukaemia in-infants in Wales and Scotland following Chernobyl: Evidence for errors in statutory risk estimates. Energy Environ.

11:127-139,2000..*

-30.

Steiner, M., et al. Trends.in infant leukaemia in West Germany in relation to in utero exposure due to the Chernobyl accident.,Radiat. Environ. Biophys. 37:87-93,

ý1998.

31. Parkin, D. M., et al. Childhood leukaemia in Europe after Chemobyl: 5 year follow-up.

BrrJ. Cancer 73:1006-1012,.1996..

32. Karakov, V. S., Demidchik, E. P., and Astakhova, L. N. Thyroid cancer after Chernobyl. Nature 359:21,1992..

33. Likhtarev, I.A.,et al.,Thyroid cancer.in the Ukraine. Nature 375:365, 1995.

34.,United'Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of AtomieRadiation (UNSCEAR).

Sourcesand Effects of Ionizing Radiation:'2000Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes. United Nations, New<-York;,i2000.

35..Blackburn. D J,Iet al; Occurrenceof thyroid papillary carcinoma in young patients:

.A Chemobyl-connection?.J..Pediair. Endocrino!U *Metab. 14(5):503-506, 2001.

36. Lukacs, G. L., et al. Changes in theepoideriological parameters of radiation-induced

-illnesses in.East Hungary-10.years after Chemobyl. Langenbecks Arch. Chir. Suppl Kongressbd. 114:375 377;,4997.-..,

.37. Cotterill;: S. J,,Pearce, M. S.; and Parker, L: Thyroid cancer in children and young adults in the North of England: -Is increasing, incidence related to the Chernobyl accident? Eur. J. Cancer 37(8):945-947; 2001.

38. Noshchenko, A. G., et al: Radiation-induced leukemiarisk among those. aged 0-20 at

-the time of the Chemobyl accident: A case-control studyin the Ukraine. Int. J. Cancer 99(4):609-618, 2002.

39. Gunay, ;U.,.Meral,,A.,: and Se~vinir;B.

BPediatric..malignancies in Bursa, Turkey.

J. Environ. Pathdlb Toxicol. OncoL 15(2-4):2637-265, 1996.

40. Sharp, L.,:McKiney,P.AA; and BlackR; J; Incidence of childhood brain and other non-haematopoietic neoplasms -near nuclear sites in Scotland, 1975-94. Occup.

.Environ. Med. 56(5).308_-314, 1999.,

.41.. Busby, C.;,and Catoq,-M. S..,Death; rates, from leukaemia are higher than expected in areas around nuclear sites in Berkshire and&Oxfordshire. BMJ 315(7103):309,

42. Black,, R:. J.,'et AL, Leukaemia and. non-H~kt'--mbm-.n-dneiýýbl,ý oý

_JM 4uwls tenin e

on areaý ofCarness, Scotland in 1968-91.

.. Epidemiol. CommUnity Health 48(3):232-723 61994'.

43. Draper, G. J., et al. Cancer in Cumbria.and in thevicinity of the Sellafield nuclear installation, 1963-90. BMJ 306(6870):89-94,,1993.

134 /

Mangano

44. Goldsmith, J. R. Nuclear installations and child~hood cancer in the UK: Mortality and -

incidence for 0-9 year-old children, 1971-1980. Sc. Total Environ. 127(1-2):13-35, 1992.

45. Kinlen, L. J., Hudson,.C. M;, and: Stiller, C. A. Contacts between adults as evidence for an infective origin of childhood leukaemia: An explanation for the excess near nuclearestablishments in West Be-ks-hii6? Br. J. Cancer 64(3):549-554, 1991.

46. Ewings, P. D., et al. Incidence of leukemia in youn!ppeople in the.vicinity of Hinkley Point nuclear power station, 1959-86. BMJ299(6694):289-293, 1989.

• 47. Cook-Mozaffarij P. J., et al. Geographical variation in mortality from leukemia and v other cancers in England and Wales in relation to prdxih tytiiiclear installations, 1969-78. Br. J. Cancer 59(3):476-485, 1989.'

48. Roman, E.,: et al; Childhood leukaemia in the West Berkshire and.Basingstoke and North-Hampshire Distict-Health Authorities in relation to nuclear establishments in the vicinity. BMJ (Clinical research ed.) 294(6572):597L602, 1987.

49. Forman, D., et al. Cancer near nuclear installations. Niture 329(61 39):499-505, 1987.

50. Heasman' M. A., et al. Childhood leukemia in northern Scotland. Lancet 1(8475):266,

• 1986k'

51. McLauthlin, J. R.,,et al.'Childhood leukemia inthe Vicinity of Canadian nuclear facilities. Cancer Causes~and Control,4(l):51-58i, 1993.

52. :Viel. J. T., Pobel, D,, and; Carre, A.. Incidence of leukaemia in young-people around

" the La*I'ague nuclear waste reprocessing, plant: A sensitivity analysis. Stat. Med.

14(21i22)`2459-2472, 1995:

S-

53. Hoffrann,,W.,,DiecannnnH., and Schniitz-Feuerhake, 1. A cluster of childhood leukemia-neai a nuclear reactor; in northern Germany. Arch. Environ. Health

.52(4)'275-280,.1997.

54., Zaridze, D. G., et al, Childhood cancer incidence in relation to distance from the former nuclear ýesting site in Seihiipalatinsk, Kaiakhsitan. Int J. Cancer 59(4):471.-475, 1994.

55. Johnson,.;C. J.,Cancer incidence in anr area contaminated with radionuclides near a nuclear installation. Ambio; 10:176-182,1981.

56.. Hatch, M. C., e-al. Cancer'near the Three. Mile Island nuclear plant: Radiation emissions. Am.l.,J:Epidemiol. 132(3):397-412,1990.;

G57:

Goldsmith, J. R. Childhood leukemia mortalitybefore 1970 among populations near two United States nuclear installations.Lancet 1(8641):793, 1989.

.58.Enstrom,ý J:E. Cancer mortality patterns around the Sani Onofre nuclear power plant.

Am. J. PublicHealih 73(l):83-92; 19,83. '-

59. Johnson, C. J. Cantcer and-infant mortality around a nuclear powerpplant. Am. J. Public Health.73(10): 1218,it 983":.........

60. Jablon, S., et al. Canicer in Poipulations Living Near Nuclear.Facilities.. National SCancerlnstituite,NIH.Pub. No.90-874. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1990.

.61. Mangano, J. J., et al. Elevated childhood cancer incidence proximate to U.S. nuclear 3 '003

62. Ticliler, J., Doty, K;,-and'.Lucadamo, K. Ra £oactiveaia Se ease ro Pow' er Plants, annug.l reports.-NUREG/CR-2907.: Br6okhaven National Laboratory, Upton; NY, various years.

63. Wahlen, M.,;et al. Radioactive pltimefromn the Three Mile Island accident: Xenon-133 in air at a distance of 375 kilometers. Science207:639--640, 1980.

Radiation Exposure and Childhood Cancer

/

135

64. Armentrout, C. Report in In Re Three Mile Island Litigation Cases Consolidated II, Civil Action No. I:CV-88-1452, Harrisburg PA, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, January 5, 1996.

65. Office of Radiation Programs. Environmental Radiation Data, quarterly reports.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Montgomery, AL, various years.

66. Gould, J. M., et al. Strontium-90 in deciduous teeth as a factor in early childhood cancer. Int. J. Health Serv. 30(3):515-539, 2000.

67. Mangano, J. J., et al. An unexpected rise in strontium-90 in US deciduous teeth in the 1990s. Sci. Total Environ. 317:37-51, 2003.

Direct reprint requests to:

Joseph J. Mangano Radiation and Public Health Project 912 MiU\\Grove Drive Norristown, PA 19403 e-mail: odiejoe@aol.com

=7

l F~,

The Health Effects of Low Level Radiation Proceedings of a Symposium held at the House of Commons, London, April 24th, 1996 edited by Richard Bramhall I

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• ~I-U Green-Audit Books Green Audit Wales Ltd Aberystwyth -1997

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Professor Sternglass Cynog Dafis: "Thank-you. Now our last listed speaker is Profes-sor Ernest Sternglass, Professor of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, author of Low Level Rladiation, Secret Fallout and other publications."

Professor Sternglass:

"As you can imagine from what you've heard just now, there's a wide range of views on how to evaluate 1-1 radiation exposures that take place in the actual environment of the world. The A-bomb studywas the first of the major studies I.that gave one kind of result. There were studies of medically ex-

• -4.1 i

posed people and of course Dr. Stewart's famous study(12) that showed a very high risk for the developing infant in utero - typi-cally anywhere from ten to a hundred times that of the adult - in direct relation to the dose, so that there was no evidence for a safe threshold.

Dr. Stewart was clearly a pioneer in showing extremely small doses to be harmful, especially since for the I-betler-1,part of a hundred years there had been no significant evi-dence of serious side effects in adults given ordinary diagnostic x-ravs. :So the question is: "Can we explain the surprising effects of small doses, and how can we detect effects in the environment i* J at exposures that are so small that most people had expected not Ito be-able to find any?"

Well, Chernobyl gave us a terrible example of what can happeni, to as.ociety that has greatly underestimated the risks, and this ishow Wve began to find out about it. All of you know how enornmous the 'effects have been on the children of Belarus - that I...

there ha's now been an increase of the order of something like a hundred-foldin ithe incidence of thyroid cancer, which amazingly appeared in apeod of only a few years.. Just to give you an idea of whatjthis looks like, Figure 31 shows theý incidence of thyroid cancer in children in Belarus. It is taken from an article in Nature Wz_ý 7 _ -

in i ":

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five by 1991, and by today, within the latest data, it is more than 75

Professor Sternulass double this. So there ca9 be no question about two very important thing~s that, we did not expect'. From studies of children whose thymuses were irradiated by x-rays in the 1950s and '60s to shrink the thymus (in the nlis.aken belief' that the thvmus was not an important organ) it was found that the children did not develop cancer until - typically - ten. filfeen. twenty.!ears afterward.

Many did not tbr twenty or forty years. So it was totally unex-pected to see thyroid cancers in only four to ftie years. Further-more'the incidence wvas vastly rreater than expected- "something like a hundred or more cases were fLunnd than had been expected.

In tfact-'the World Health Oruanisation and the inteinational Atomic Energy A-,encv hadphedicted that no detectable iricrease in, cancers would bh found after Chernobvl.

["

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j~..37. lIncidene Ol'thNr6id cziulcer In Ibclaru1S I 080-I 70 x.

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Professor Sternmlass In the United States we did see very serious effects of the Chernobyl fallout reaching the U.S. more than five or six thou-sand miles away. This is what happened. In 1986 the fallout I

reached the US and beginning on May 10th, as you can see very clearly in Figure 38(14) there was an excess of radioactive iodine-131-in milk above what is normally :registered - just a few picoCuries per litre. A picoCurie is 1/27th of a Becquerel, so that these levels result in,extremely small doses. In fact the levels observed.were not very much larger than those typically observed as a result of normal operations of nuclear reactors anywhere, when from two to ten picoCuries per litre (pCi/lt) are usually I-recorded in the milk. Every U.S. state measured the radioactivity in milk after Chernobyl.

I--

40 I

30 c

-20 10 MAY Ist 10th 20th 30mh JUNE ith Lii oinc-31 in fresh farm milk in New York/ New Jersey Metropolitan area after Chernobyl, May June 1986 77

Professor Stemelass Here are some of the monthly statistics on infant mortalitv that are available in the U.S.. In Figure 39 wre see that in the case o.f the Pacificstates after the arrival of the Chernobyl fallout in earlv Mav.- by June there was an increase of 509,6 or~so in the infant mortality rateover the previous year's rate. with lesser rises in July and August. and-then a. decline; This was f6und-all:.over the U.S. as you can see-in Figure 40. There wasa Very clear peak in the total infant mortality :for the U.S. as a whole - in this case 12%-0 to 13% in June. and declining in July and Alugust. This is extremelv unexpected in the sense that the doses were'calculated to be extremely small - of the order of tens of millirads for infants - well below permissible leels. You have to understand.

thie slide you saw earlier showed 40 pCi.lt. but the permissible acti, itv in the US. at the time % as 155.000 of these units.

.1 I

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APP!VAI. Of CHEPNOCYL FALOLaJT FIG. 39.

Percent change in monthly states of'the U.S. 1986 vs. 14985 iifluit mortality in the Pacific 78 A

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Professor Sternglass is,

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F.IG.4-0. Percent change. inmionthyififant i:. 1985.

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-i7m pmortality in the U.S. 1986 But there was more than that. In the case of the state of Massachusetts,' sutddenfily-as !in the case of Poland and other areas hard hit by Chernobyl - there was a terrible decline ini the number of live births. Let. me just show you this here in Figure

41.

Monthly live births in Massachusetts, which are very accu-rately recorded, declined extremely sharply, from something 7A,*,

close to 8,500 in January to 1352 in the monthof June. In ýJuly the Health Department did not report any data, and that means

.there must have been an enormous number of spontaneous mis-carriages and other causes of. inifant death, which, by the Way,

- paralleled what -was seen in many parts of Europe and Russia...

Now we also have something'else. It so happened that in California in a bird sanctuary just -north of San Francisco;" Dr

-David deSante had been banding birds every year to checký the number of newly born birds, and he found suddenly, without knowing that,here was any fallout from Chernobyl a 60%

decline in the number of neulv hatched birds (Figure 42). It was only later that he realise that there had been rain-out romh Chernob'l: radioactive clouid~and'that large amounts of El Ia zi 79

Professor Sternglass 9COOC

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FIG. 42.-Nuinber of newly hatched land birds in the period May

" Aug 17 197 6 - 1986 j,

80

Professor Sternglass 7

radioactive iodine had comne down. But again, as you can see from the milk data, half-way round the world we are dealing with extremely small doses. This was published in the (Conhn" maga-zine in 1987 (15), and it's also discussed in the book DeIadly

LDeceit, by J. M. Gould and Ben Goldman( 16). Incidentally, no such effects were seen in an area of the west coast of the U.S.

F whichfiwas spared by the rain that contained the Iodine 131; bird fertility was normal in that same part of the, world where there was very little rainfall.

I_

Intrigued.by these observations we gathered the statistics which are available in,the U.S. for the effects on total mortality by census region in the summer of'86(1 4). We again looked at the measured data reported by the EPA for Iodine 131 in pasteurised milk in each region-again measured in picoCuries per litre. As you can see iný Figure'38 forlthe case of the New York area, typi-cal for the U.S, the-'highest doses w,'ere of the order of 40pCi/it.

.This is roughly 1.5 Becquerels, so wevd'ir alking about extremely small doses. In Figure 43 we are. talking' aLbut nine regions:

Middle Atlantic, West South Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, East North Central, West South Central, Mountain and Pacific states - (all these are census regions). You can see that the curve relating the percent change in' mortality to the Iodine-131 in pasteurised milk across the U.S. for the months of May through August 1986 relative to the same period in 1985 is slightlybetter fitted by a supralinear or concave downward rela-tionship than by a linear dose-response relationship. But that there should be a dose-response relationship down to the very.

lowest doses is extremely significant because, as you heard from the previous speaker, there was no way of measuring doses is this range among the Hiroshima survivors, and therefore all the estirnates w-*'e have seen in the past have been based, essentially, on an assumed lin'e-ar extrapolaftion frofh vastly greater doses.

..81.

• 1

.1 Professor Stemglass 5

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Professor Sternglass We also investigated what individuals died of, as shown in Figure 44 (14) (16) and this is very revealing. The greatest in-crease in the month of May over the same month in' the previous year, was in AIDS-related deaths, which had actually declined the previous year. This means that individuals whose immune

,-1:5 systems were already comnpromised were kicked over the brink.

That is exactly what also happened with all types of infectious diseases combined, which were very high compared with May 1985, such as pneumonia, as well as with total mortality in young people - 20 to 34 years old - who are normally u--u very resistant. These people were born during the period of I __

massive nuclear testing. So we now believe that this data is further support for the idea that the principal effects of nuclear l-fission products are on the immune system, which fits with the idea of strontium-90 because Sr-90 concentrates in the bone, and

,,_I unlike natural radium, which emits a short-range alpha particle, emits a powerful million-volt beta ray, which penetrates to the bone marrow. The Sr-90 accumulated in bone keeps irradiating and damaging the development of the cells of the immune system at an extremely slow and gentle rate over a period of decades (since the half-life is 28 years). An article which Gould and I published in the International Journal of Health Services in j;L,*n 1994(17) is extremely supportive of this idea, because we find, as yo.. can. see in Figuire 45',_A very -close correlation between Sr-90--

measured in bone and low birth weight for New York State. Now, we've already heard from Dr. Busby that the paper by R. K.

1 Whyte (4) supported our earlier findings by risesý in first day neonatal death, 28 day neonatal deaths and new-born deaths both

!,~

in the US and the UK, and that Whyte concluded that there was of nuclear weapons. I might add that a recent study by Araceli Busby, the daughter of Dz.>Busby, who independently investigated 83

Proressor Stemrlass V.,

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-. q Professor Sterrnglass the changes in infant mortality for her thesis at Imperial College, ONE7 also concluded there is no other known explanation for the effect S..on infant deaths.

Now, we have the evidence, as seen in Figure 37, that thyroid cancer in children rose very: strongly in Belarus after im Chernobyl. We also have data on what we've seen in the U.S. at much lower doses. I want to show you how the data looks in terms of changes of thyroid cancer rates in Connecticut in successive five-year periods during this time. First let me show

{i you the annual data for 1935 to 1992. Connecticut has the oldest cancer registry in the U.S. and the only one to have continuous data of a very high quality since 1935. Youcan see in Figure 46 that between 1935 and 1944 there was actually a slight I:

decline( 18). Beginning within four or five years of the first fallout the number of cases goes up. This is happening very much more quickly than we know for x-rays in connection with treatment to shrink the thvmus, where thyroid cancer typically does not evolve until decades after exposure. But here,, in the case of fission products, we find the number of cases of thyroid cancer going up o'liy five years after exposure. Thisis a solid tumour that is clearly related to radioactivity, since 90i95%

or more of iodine

.Iconcentrates in:the thyroid gland. Thyifoid cancer has been found I..

niithe-MarshalIIIslands1after`:fillout-fro-a nuclear -test-so -that there is no question that thyr*id canceris rdelted to radiation. As y.ou can see in Figure46 4th'ereWas an enormous rise four to seven years after the first bomb-tests, very much like the thyroid cancer in Belarus after Chernobyl; there-were peaks.after large releases from the.Millstone reactor and again a very large rise at the end

=qf th,~Of-c fou 911s_ &W e& vrve yearse I

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that the increase after Chernobyl was comparable to that after the bomb fallout in the earl), 1950s, and that the recent rise repre-sents a 26% and therefore highly statistically significant increase in cancer incidence in Connecticut, as you see in Figure 47.

85

Professor Sternglass j

4.5 4.0 5 YEARS AFTER CHERNOBYL 3.5 5 YEARS AFTER R 3.0 MILLSTONE START Je 2.5 5 YEARS AFTER tu PEAK TESTS A

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t1i Professor Sternglass r.u Now the question is: "Is there any way we can hope to explain it?".

We are not sure about all the possible biological mechanisms that take place when two hundred different chemical isotopes at a time enter the human body, concentrating in differ-ent organs, but there is a theory based on the work of Dr. Abram Petkau, working for the Canadian Atomic Energy Establishment, who made the following discoverv in 19'72(19).

HNAVY PARTICLES (ALPHA PARTICLES. PROTONS) 101

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1. Hasic modes of biological action of ionizing particles I!_.*.*on living cellS. (al and ib) represent the direct action of massive

~and light-weight particles, primarily on the genes. (c) and (d)

I ;

represent the indirect chemical action via the production of' free ii *+1* 'radicals such as O02. Noterithat the higher ionization density tuiain el iii) eutn argerfriction i _;

• of 0;,molecules able'lo reach, the cell membrane in (d) than, ill

~~~~~~(c

). "

'FIG. 48. "Petkau" effect of oxyg'en free radicals on cell membranes 87

Professor Sternelass Petkau found that when he took a cell membrane 'and immersed it in water and put an x-ray bearn on it. if he protracted the radiation over long.,er and long-er times it took less and less of a dose to damage the membrane.

lie finally concluded after manny studies that a different mechanism than direct damage is involved. It involved the creation of necativelh charged free radical oxv,,en molecules. These molecules are attracted to the membrane and initiate a chain reaction in the membrane which then ruptures in a matter of less than an hour.

This means that there is an enormous target for this effect.

Let me illustrate this here in Figure 48. We can see on the left you hae the typical case of direct damage to the DNA. You have to hit the DNA in the nucleus of a cell - a verv small targ-et. But

.%ith the indirect effect of oxv\\,en you don't have to hit the nucleus. The tar-et is the whole cell, and since only one free radical oxygen m6lecule reaching, the membrane can lead to its rupture, it is like asking how many needles does, it take to punc-ture a balloon? Obviously onlh one-and throwing2 a thousand at it is a waste of eneruv or a waste of needles, so there is ver, little J!.further damage per unit dose. And that's exactly what seems to be lIo on "" here. Thus. the free radical effect is very efficient at the verNy IOW doses. where vou are producing only one free radical oxvgen at a time. This is %%hv Strontium-90 is so deadly - it

-.. " _spreads. its_.acti.on ov-er a.lone time. comlpared.to.a_single epo-sure to a diagnostic x-ray which occurs in a short time and pro-duces a ver, !hieh local concentration of "xveen molecules which. bv collisions with each other,. immediately de-energ.ise each other..ou could say detoxilf each other, so that they be-come ordinary oxygen...

This allows one to explain how there can be a very rapid rose-response re a ions iip a w

off at high doses. At very hiNh doses the free radical damae is inefficient and the DNA mechanism takes over. But the DNA I'

1r a

U a

-:I Professor Stemglass represents a very small target, in addition to which it is very easily repaired, because over millions of years fantastically effective means of repairing DNA darmage evolved to protect the reproductive genes. The only one who cannot repair DNA damage very well is the embryo and the -foetus - it's not yet fully developed. This is why Dr. Stewart found serious effects on childhood leukaemia and other cancers from diagnostic x-rays, because they were given to women during pregnancy, mainly just before birth. Not only are the repair mechanisms not adequately developed in early foetal life, but the cells are very rapidly mul-

-tiplying, and so the embryo and foetus are very radiation sensi-tive.

Petkau's findings can be put into context with other work

- he is not the onlv one who has observed a much higher sensitiv-ity at low dose rates than at high ones. It is also found in human beings.

In Figure 49 the results of Petkau and others are plotted for various dose rates from 10-8 to 108 rads per minute.(20) There were many experiments done of the effects-of radiation at high dose rates on cell function and cell membrane permeability, and

_they showed that it took an enormous dose of ten thousand rads or so to break a membrane. But Petkau found that doses as low as one rad could break a cell membrane, at low dose rates, and he measured the dose needed to break a, membrane down to back-g*ound -radiation levels, where the dose required was only some

.. ten to twenty hmillirads. Now,, we get about-a hundred-millirad per year from !he normal backgroundin.our environment, and you could ask, rightly, why haven't we all, disspoved7 Why are we still here? The answer is that over millions, ofyears ourcellsevolved the means of-detoxifying the, oxygen. free radical. Under most ii normal conditions the means of deactivation works to a very high 89

Professor Stemglass o61-C C

C C

e io'0

-S.-Sijsceutibil Bone ma~rrow V

O CeIluiarity

.1

.4 da

ýEry:Ihrocae

~permejolri.K

+MemWraneS I

I I.

I

-7 I

I.

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10-2 SI...

I~

I lu-4 108 D

DOSE RATE. r3 as.mkn W0

!D6 NATURAL MEDICA.L DIRECT

,BACKGROUND

,X RAYS.

ATOMIC AC" ROU.D "BOMB FIG. 49. Plot of doubling dose DO vs. doseý rate :tl direct and indirect radiation effects One of -the protective mechanisms is the production of dismutaselenzyme,ý%\\vhich is extreýmely effective. In fact thi,s lis seen in the difference between the'data for the in vivo-and in vitro st'udies,- vhich shb-w that cells are ten to a hundred times more protected when the dismutas' enzyme* is present, as can be seen III riguic.t7 i"'

ii.

I Ia

.l;U III vl.Iu :IlU,V LI t

UL* U*

t Stokke in the Oslo Cancer Hospital, who found Iextremely small K doses in the millirad range damaging the cells of the bor*ie-marrow in rats( 2 1). Also on this line is the data of Scott !who

-90

• .. {r

Professor Sternglass studied x-ray technicians who were exposed to low doses at very low rates but he nevertheless found the permeability of their blood cells to be significantly increased. So the effect of free radicals on cells has been seen in the laboratory over an enor-mously wide dose range, as seen in Figure 49. Furthermore you can see that at the relatively high dose rates used in diagnostic x-rays and x-ray therapy we are not finding these terribly low doses needed to damage cells that is seen for the very low dose rates

, *encountered in the case of environmental exposures.

the..Now let us see what the implications are for the form of the dose-response relation. If Petkau is right, and there's ever, reason to believe that it occurs in every kind of environment, then instead of being a straight line, having a safe threshold,.or having quadratic form that curves upward, one gets a supialinear curve, which is concave downwards, rising most rapidly at low dose.

"-31*

Therefore, what we need to do is to test the shape of the I-*

dose response at low doses and see what form it has. This can be done for the case of large human populations exposed to distant fallout from Chernobvl across the US., and we have, done it for the case of hypothyroidism - which is the under functioning of the thyroid, comparing the change for two years before Chernobyl and the two years aftenvards. As shown in Figure 50, taken from a. paper(*8 ) we have just given at a conference in S.Vienna, we found a curvilinear relationship between new-born hypothyroidism and the actual, measured picoCuries per:litre of lodine-131 -in the milk. As you can see, there were never much more than 45 or 50 picoCuries pre, itre anywhere in the U.S, and so we find herethe kind of data that the study of Hiroshima and

ýNagasaki survivors.could not: give us, namely, data: at the extremely small, -doses that are awith levels of 91

Professor Sterrmgass Z 50 40.

_30.

uJ O 10 IL i A

20 25

`

M PCI/L OF 1-.131 HN MILK FIG. 50. l-ypoth"vroidism and Iodine-13 1 in nijk: correlations before anid afier Chernobvl With* a; correlation coefficient of 0.95 the chances of this being purely an accident isless than I In 10,000.

So. we are dealing.

with a high statistical certainty: we are dealingwt a tosan cases in each 'Period. It is thereflore an enormouslyv powerful stud",

in 'terms of statistical. power.

-But, in' addition '*."- also-discovered a:

'ver-dsturbin phenomenon. The incidence' of 'new-bor hypothyroidism should

,ha'v'e disappeared within a er or two after Cherrobvl

-but instead it kept climbing, and that puzzled us for a lOng time. This is what we fo'unde as shown in Figuire 5a fr he tirty sates for which data is-adailable. Until 1-985' 86 there wvere j.ust a few bum os, but-then, a continuous ris15 86 l

thr wer juta 191 few '

ear' at to see wheter i willor the n ext

(ii)i;iiii:i;.i~~i!:):!ii!'illfew Yea rs' data, to see whether it will come down again.

92

Professor Sternglass r"

32 cc 30 LU

Ž.H28

0. 26 r24 u3: 22.

.20 1981 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 E9. 90 91 92 93 94 FIG. 5 1. Newborn hypothyroidism in the U.S. 1981 - '94 30 states with 66% of all live births This is so disturbing because it involves a significant increase from about twenty-one to thirty-two cases per hundred thousand new-borns - an increase of almost 50%. Now, children that are born with under-functioning thyroids can become U...

permanently damaged in terms of mental ability;, if not detected and treated early they often have extremely low IQs. So this is a very serious finding that affects an enormous number of people, 5because small amounts of thyroid dysfunction can have an effect on prematurity and low birthweight.

'In Figure 52 we see a similar finding for premature birth, almost exactly the same shape as for hypothyroidism, and more

~~bJ ~

~ Y~

tIUI&IU~L ~JI ~IIi&UI~II VVELU aL~ UUI II under 2.5 kilos or 5.51b, shown in Figure 53. We are now dealing with about 7% of four million children born each year in the U.S.

93

Professor Sternglass

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q:

LU-9.2 z

9.0.

0

<:8.8.

U) 86.6 8.4.

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7.08 19.81 82 83 82

• 85z 86 87 8"

.ES 29 9

91 92

52. Percentage of premature iive'births (under 37 weeks gestationY..

U.S. 1981 - '92 r

FIG.

I:

L y

.CN V

I--

I-7.2%

.7.1 %

/

/

a 2~,

i:.!iL

~,

.. ~.d,...,.,.

i;rfh;z-thti~der 2 5 k-g-U. S. 1981 94

Professor Sternglass I-*

We're talking here about tens of thousands of children LI who were born prematurely and with low birthweight. Premature birth is very serious, because it leads to an increased risk of brain damage, epilepsy, and a much higher incidence of learning disabilities.

This data on low birthweight provided an important clue because in a paper in the Internationai-Journal of Health Services(17) we found a very high correlation between Strontium-I.--

90 in adult bone in New York and the percentage of infants born under 2.5 kg as you can see in the almost-perfectly similar shapes of the two curves shown in Figure 45. This means that it is really

...the Sr-90 that seems to be the, main agent because it concentrates in the bone, irradiates the bone marrow, and affects the growth of

• the child by an indirect mechanism - as Dr Busby feels.

• Two things-happen.

hen-the immunhe system of the

.I_

mother is slightly damaged it tends to reject the foetus earl), as a foreign object; this leads to premature and low weight birthK':The other thing is that the Sr-90 creates Yttrium-90, which has a different valence, and concentrates in all the glandular organs, and the pituitary, gland, and the reproductive glands. The pituitary m-.

controls the entire birth cycle - sexual maturation and so on'.and it also controls the production of hormones in the thyroid gland

--~

so that you get both direct effects on the thyroid and indirect-or secondary hypothyroidism. This in turn leads to physical* and

-3 mental developmental problems which are-traced to honlonal S.

problems.. The concentration of Yttrium-90 in the glandular organs was discovered in the late 50.s in German. bY a number of investigators.

Now we can understand what is going on. The pituitary contoljqs all these "diff erent key organs such as the thyroid and adrenal functionsi In-the female adult it causes decreased libido and,. abnormal menstruation. In the male adult it produces decre se........

uc...

~

~

L. 1,!! -

11 95

Professor Sternglass Pr'*

body hair. All this is done through tiny damage to the pituitary which controls all these hormone producing organs.

In order to test this hypothesis we can now ask: "Did Strontium-90 increase in the united States after Chernobyl?"

Here, in Figure 54, is the answer.

1L 0

t 0

2.8.

2.6.

2.4.

2.2'.

2;0.

1'41 1.6.-

1.2,

198 ci 81 82 83 84 85 86.87 88, 89 90 91 92 93 FIG.54. Sr-90 in milk intheb U.S. 1981 -'93 Oc-DeCaverage for 10

'EPA.districts

.This is-EPA, data-fo0all areas 'of th-U.S. in the -last quarter of every 'year fr.om 1981 to"1 f9z You can see that in 1986it sttopped,: declininigandl in 149"7 there was in-fact a peak

.Theo levels in the milk declined again iml 1988' but then they refused i

&d go d ow ny;

";further and *atuayii'oseagai*n (18) We

• "behe thi hgas"'h6 do :"th tii' fact tlaitmiiy nuclear reactors

• bl - hve is t acn,:trrode and eak'n4irtiul1rlv j'hehpet exdehnaner

'I,

• r.

rl"inihe-hAftýxchanger

-or

,steam genratbr ;sys-tsfis, das.lasý...ecentlybeen discussed inta report by Ralph Nader&f'subhic" Cizen. group in Washington 96

Professor Sternglass which u

there were fourteen lawsuits brought against Westinghouse, for leaks in the system that divides the primary from the secondary coolant in all Pressurised Water Reactors (22).

These findings therefore support What Stokke found for tiny doses of fifty to a hundred millirads produced by Sr-90 in the crucial cells of the bone marrow in rodents. This is in the same order as the yearly exposure allowed to the public around nuclear facilities. You can therefore see that the effects indeed fit both' the laboratory and the human epidemiological t data, showing a supralinear rather than a linear dose-response relation.

Whether or not either Dr Busby or have found just why Strontium-90 is so enormously more effective than anything we expected from external radiation-is a question that needs to. be.

examnined by furtherresea-rch. But this research is something that was squashed, that' was simply not supported 2during the time w*en nucilear weapons testing was thought., essential by all the..

nuclear nations. -, The logic: of -the, Cold-War explains why we J;*]

have no further'Tufidifig for_.any work"in epidemiology, at, extremely low,doses.of the kind we are talking about here, except ofr the recent U.S.,National Cancer Institute study, which is the

'Sad story of a cover-up discussed in a new book, The Enemy Within(23 ).

S..

What this all means -is that if you have data at high dosiaes_ý;.-_

and high dose, rates,.the, risk..per unit dose goesup only slowly If you make themistake of assuming lineinty all the way down to

.,zero dose, then. your underestimation. of the risk at low-, doses can

be. anywhe~re froma hundred to a thousandfold."

You may now_.as,

'.',Can,w ;be more specific;, does this.

happen around nuclear reactors as.a result of~normal operations, ni-n prow pdo yuce smaller aoses tnanyywe'a expect from Cier-nobyl fallout in the United States?"

97

II I.

Professor Sternglass Here& then, is a most im'iportant finding related to a reactor near New York Cit.

The Black pop0ulation in Harlem-and the Bronx uses the drinking water fom reservoirs locIated near the reactor at-Indian Point. As shown in Figure 55, wefound that tere wereithi-ee successive peaks of emissiois from, the plant and t iree' succssiVe.increases in babies bd~m-grossly'underweight 1.5 kilos -or*'3.3 lbs.' (The, emissions pea1ks wereeshifted by one year toXakecare ofthe*elay, inthe e'ffect" n the'nedv-bom.)

C.9 C3, LU A

w 0

-4 wL Cf, wU 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 FIG. 55:.

Low birthweight.:in Black population emissions from, Indian PoiMnreactor 1972 -'86.

and Iodine-131 Thi iss an enormouslysignficant rysult because there are a lot of infants born inbthis way, and the effect. does obey the 98

• lxi

]

Professor Sternglass supralinear relationship. associated with free radicals. This is shown in Figure 56, which isa plot of the percentage of very low birthw ight infants in Figure 55 versus the annual airborne releases of Iodine-131 from Indian Point. Clearly, the best fit is again not a straight line, but a concave downward curve that rises' rapidly at low doses. As you can see, a straight line. extrapolation from.the highest doses would yastly underestimate the effect at low doses If you simply tok the slope at hig.d se, and assumed it would give the risk per unit dose at low doses it would grossly underestimate the risk. This was done with the Hiroshima data, because there was no very low dose data in the '50s.

As shown in Figure 57, when you plot it on a logarithmic j!

scale for the dose, the points fall on a straight line.

.2,70%:-

S2-.65%-

+

0) 0 2.60%-

~'2.55%-

S2.45%-

+

0 M t

" 4.

E 0 0i 0.0.2,0.4:

0.6 0

1.0 12 6

1.8

..-0,

. 0. *.0 4

0.

.. 8,,* 1,.0 -1,2 1).4 16 1.8t'

'i Curies, lineart scale FIG. 5,6. New York Black births<l500 1311973 '85

~ ~

~ ~ ~~~fh 9 gr.1974-',86.vs13I 97

-'5..

99

IH

-Professor Stem glass

.2.70%

2.65%

+1985 o

~+1976

,0 260%-

2.55%-

c wcw 2.50%-

m0 2.45%-

17 981 Z

240% -.9

+1979 10

• 1*974 1982

+1977 2.3,50/

.1984 -1l983+188

2.30%0: 0, o0.100oo 10.000 Curies, Iogscale FIG. 57. NY Blck births < 1500gr. 1974-86 vs. 1-131 emissions 1973-85 This is very serious because in te U.S. today there is a recurreunceof an epidemic oloW gbirt h [ii a e

t he i

fin ernicei

• o

]:rti !weig td ins-a ed the U.S. in 1950 (F igure 58). In fat the ratewofelow bilweight was even lower bietween 1945dand 1950 when we have data only for A!i

'NeWYo'k, buftince th&e U.S and e:w York state data m

'ed in Parall elthe U.S. rate'must* aso have been: lowr than in 1950, and thenpeaiked "

the time wen.

Stron, i

IrI decline after thienda of b' mb testiig, aý a renewed rise hen nuclear reactor operations began o** a large scale in the eairly'70s.

100

Ji Professor Stemglass 9.5% -

NEW YORK STATE LBW%

29.0%-

N 8.0% -

W ul 7.0%"/

I-cr j 6.5%"/

M 6.0%

5.5%0

-10 wj

-J Ui Cr 0.01 (n 1945 19501955 1960'1965 919701975 1980 19851990 FIG. 58. New York low birthweight perc.ent,, 1945 - '92, and Sr-90 You can see that especially in New York there has been an enormous resurgence in very low birthweight, :which is now greater in teirs of percentage of the abgies under, 1.5 kilgs than

-hadbeen'founhd af the heiglht ofiu-cle-a-b9onb-testing.

<i.

This is all very senous, because, 'as sjow in. Figure 59, the dldt'ien who are born underweight, according to Studies published by Buka 24 ), have a much greatermuchance, f not having normal intef agene*-

test-Scoresi and ceuate academic achieven.ts by age seven; and those with birthweight. less-than 11MM t

.. 1.5 ki1lo' w're found to have twice.as,great a risk ot having less t.han nornmal ability than those with normal birthweight.

77~~

101

A I Professor Sternglass

7ý 7 I'

Thus, the real problem that we are confronting now is that if we refuse to look at the data because it would prevent us from building more reactors or threatening to use nuclear bombs then our societies risk going the way of Rome, where lead piping for drinking water eventually destroyed the brains of the children, as we now know from many recent studies into the effects of lead on learning and behavioural problems. In this connection it is important to point out that lead in bone contains a significant

-amount-of-radioactivity,-comparable -with-that-of-Stronti-um-90.

Thus, the futu're for us andor children is bleak unless we have the courage to face the fact that with the end of the Cold War, the protectioinof human health and life must come first."

E i

tlcrccni LM too 90 80 II 70 60 50.

40-30

'10 10.

111711 M

%ot in School IQ 80-90 & LD-IQ 80.90 L

IQ ý go &- "LD""

9 T La.

Normal B~inh-~eight Binh-eight 1500-25Og 00g).)M S

In = 3967)

IN = 36.167)

IQ 90 "LD' Ocarning deficiency) refc to academic achieve.

men( scores one year or more below grade level.

0

'.er Loss Birthweielhi

(<(1500 YI IN = 24 (I

F1acieement soe

• ,=52.,1ation f irthwei,hi to intelligence and achie.e..n scores at age 7.

(Source: Buka et al. 1990. Based on 40,000 children followed from birth (1960-66) to age 7 in the National Collaborative Perinatal Project) 102

i!*

iiiii i i !i~i......

I C'.

( Itsliv (1995),

Wfing.'," ofl.)eaih Green Audit ISBN I-9776 1-03-1.

R FERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation) 19 Iq1 ) trudies aof the Alortality, qIA,-BonmhSu rvirors, in M-ortaflity and Radiation D~ose_

---

l9tl-3-6*d*(*TWB*[e.

l. ato. and C. E. t~and. RERF TR-I 11-70:,:.

-,4 repr. in Radiation Research 6 I.3-49.

3 Luning. K. F..

Frolen, Fl..

Nelson. A...

and Ronnback. C.

(1%93),

G'enietic( lh.'[]ics.

Strontium-90 Injected into Male M-ice.

Nature. 197: 304-5.

4 R. K. Whyte:

V~ir.st I0arl Neonatal Mlortality, since 1935,- a Re-ft,;::*

4 30 :*

ffoanlinlalion o['the 0"ro.ss li-pothesis: British Medical journal 304 41 6992..

5 Smirnova. E. I.-

and Lyaginska.

A.M..

(1969).

HearAudi......

I-)evelOpmF (dtSr-90 h

tured RRese in Radionaktiv onotopy Organizs.

348 ed. Moskalev.-Y.

r.Land lzd.

.I

t.

(Moscow: Medizina) 6 Bentham. G. andJ Kaynes.

R, (1995) Childh.,ERd RIeukaem7ia0 it

(;rea. Britain andio Rsarht.om Nuclear Weapons Testing, J. Rad. Prot.

15,1T37--43 7

Darby, S.. Olsen, J. 11. Doll A.et al (

R992)

Trend" in (Chi~hiood: Lui, entc ia in the Nordic-C ountries in Relation to I,'allout..

ftom Nuclear Weapons 1es4ing.

BM.I 304: 1005-9 8

Viel.4. F.. Pobel. D..

and Carre. A. (1995) lncidencs t?/'

Lttkaemit in -Young 1'eaple around the la Hague Wavte Reprocessing l'ham, a-Sel sifivilt'v.

issIo.

Statistics in Medicine 14: 2459-72. 3 4

9 Busby, C.

.1996) ancer and leukaema in (1hi9lren horn in l7erePT'm.n '?I o

rt nire1/s in, Rai 1i Iotopy GreenAuits.

Occasional Papers 96/2

• a

(

0 ParkBin et al. Cahildhood les(kaemia'in t irope afier hernohyli 5 vear~fidlhor--up BJC ( 1996) 73 i1006-1I012 7

Knox et al. (1987).

T.renbrd Sudve (Y'hildhood Cancers J.

Radiol. Prot.W

7. 177-89 8

Vie.J.-FPe

(

I o

III

References 12 Stewart, A. and Kneale, G. (1970) Radiation Dose Effects in Relation to Obstetric X-Rays, Lancet, 1, 1185.

13 Kazakov, V. S.,

Demidchik, E. P., and Astakhova, L. N.

l (992) Thyroid Cancer acfier Chernobyl, Nature 3.59, 2.1.

14 "GoukL J. M., and Sternglass, EJ_

(1989) Low Level Radition and Mortality Chemtech 19, 18-21.

15 DeSante, D. aid Geupel, G. R. (1987) Landbird Productivity in Central Coastal. California: :the RElationship to*Annual Rainfall and a Reproductive Failure in 1986, The Condor, 89, 636.

16 Gould, J. M. and Goldman, B. A. (1991) Deadly Deceit: Low Level. Radiation - High Level Cover-up, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York.

17 Goiuld, Jf MI, -and -Stenglass, E. J. (1994) Nuclear Fallout,

.Low Bithweight and.immune Deficiency, Int. J. Health Services 24,

• 311.

ii o18 Gould, J.M Magano, J..J., and Stemglass, E.-J. (1996)

Post;Chernobyl T hyroid;Disease-.in.the-United-States ofAmerica, paper presented at the. nternatio*al Medical Commission Conference, Vienna AprilP 12-5*51996 (avai lable from the Radiation and Public Health

.Project 302 W.86thl Street New York, NY 10024) See also Mangano,

-.J. (1996) Chernobyl and Hypothyroidism, Lancet 347, 1482.

19. "9 PetkailA..(972 Effects of 2 2Na+ on a Phospholipid Membrane Health Physics 22, 239.

20 Sternglass, E. J. (1i'976) The Role of Indireict Radiation Effects on Cell Membranes in the:.immune.Response, in "Radiation and the Lymphatic Sy ed. John H. Ballou, ERDA Symposium Series 37, "21 Stokke,. T.., Ofeal P. and Pappiis, A. (1968) Effects of Small

- oses of Radioactive Strontium on the Rat Bone Marrow Acta Radioloca 7, 321.

S-22 Riccio, I (1994) -Westinghouse: Leaks and Lawsuits, Public Citizen, Wkashington, DC..

143

References 23 Gould, J. M., Sternglass, E. J., Mangano, J. J. and McDOnnell, W. (1995) The Enemy Within. the High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, Four Walls, Eight Windows/ Turnaround, New York!

London.

24 Buka, S. L.,

Newman, L.

and Gortmaker, S.. L. (1990)

@Cognitive and Academic ConLow jBirti;iheight, Working Paper, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.

25 Welsh Office'Press Release W96174, 22 April 1996 26 F.H.AttiX

& W.C.Roesch, Radiation Dosimetry Vol.!

Fundamental Theory, New York: Academic Press, p43 144

Nx~t I ToC I Prey

., { *.

• i ** 'q

"/.

0, Fal*loutat Shippingport?..,,...

THEISTUDIES of Lave and DeMroot provded independent evdence that infant mortality.was.,

correlate wit l16ieilrdioctivity, rom~nuclear--weaponsfallout and rea6ctor reea-ses-; b~utCa, number 6f p tuz ling ffsisried fianW

It d

wasIIuhderstandabUe in;thdelight*of'Dr. _

S te"!i'sir t findingublis in

1970, f!.thlttiif-14t 1,15rhta'li ty mighit gA iup sigtificantlyas as result of e

-hr~intiauter'in e' xposu~rdet thlb hudrdfold geater-s nsitivity.,bf- ý.th.6 ftsin the fi rst thriee ninthsýýbd of bý-

deilp~iak pard to th4dltI asifficult to..uniders-tand, however, how total mortality rat.es,dominated.by.,the'eolder age groups rather than-by the smallF number-of newborn infants, couldpossibly be affected as strongly as Lave's study had shown.

Still anothe g,,uzzi Ywas te nffiding byit mortality rates in Beaver,.

County where the Ship'"piftgpor reactor ýwas Iýoýc*ýa't-ed, 'di'd niot decline as radpidly as for the state-.

of Pennsylvania-as a hole; there was o. correlatiow between a

the abiormally high infant mortality rates and the officiall announced, s mall releases fromff the-plant.

.... Both

'of-tlese~-td W

siit-ed no*.

fiidheifs61ui6,in a

ý'Ost enppet 0d-m-anner withit a -a year after DeGroot's aai.

Lave's studies had.been completed.&Late in 1972, a notice in the Pittsburgh newspapers announced that hearings would shortly be held by the Atomic Energy Commissi onto grain, nope'r-atig licens.efor the B e8avere Valley UnitI 'reactor; which.was then' nearing, :-ofmipl"etion".

ThiS,power,station was gbeing built'right'next to. the original Shippingport reactor on the Ohio River, some 25 miles: downstream and to*,the west of Pittsburgh. According to the newspaper story, itwo'uld be of -the same pressurized-water-type.that had been pioneered in Pittsburgh by Westinghouse, under Admiral Rickover's direction, except that it would bep some ten times larger.

Knowing that it was a. naval type of reactor with a doublecooling loopIto minimize the amount; of gas" thattW6ld have t& 13e1 dischariged into.the atmosphere. caused meto -feel little concern especially in view of the fact that the AEC had only recently-announced.that it was, proposing to tighten up the standards for permissible emissions. (These new standards had been issued following hearfings£ ini washingtoni at which I had been asked' to,testify' in behalf of Various environmental groups ho the heed to lower pemissible doses. Also, westinghouse had just http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchpl5.html Page 1 of 2!

15, Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island*

11/25/2007 07:33 PM announced that it had been possible. to operate 'Shipilngport with "Zero" gaseous releases in 1971,'so that I felt certain that this much more advanced new power-station only a short distance upwind from Westinghouse headquarters and thfe-Bettis Nuclear Laboratories, where the first submarine reactors had been built, would, surely be provided with thb very latest in the available-equipment for contairiing aFl'radioaciive gases.

Y Thus, when some of my-students asked me whether I planned to attend-the hearings I expressed

.no.. great concern, sayfing... only. that I might" taknua-hlook. at the Sifety Analysis Repor, beifg k*ept in the public library of the-nearby town of Beaver, a few miles from Shippingport, to make.sure that the planned emissions were indeed as low as I expected them to be.

Afewweekslat nopportmtyp nteltsf tor lieck 'on-the proposed releases. I had to go to the nearby Pittsburgh airport to pick up my mother, andtsince the Beaver County Library was only a few miles from the airport, I left a few hours early to check the figures.

/

Since I had examined similar reports for the Davis-Besse and other plants within the past year, it, did not take-me'long'tb.findThe-d nformatio nJ wasjooking fqor.,But hatI -found shocked me profdundly. Instead-of gaseous :releases of, only& smaltfractioný ofa curie, such as had been reportedfor Shippingportin recent, years/, :the*,more tadyanced;commercial: plant about to, go.into operation was apparen*tlde~sigige~d *m:to:*ease?,sonm

,69 ci~ ies'pf* fission gases per ear into thfdalready`h~ea iyg pollute ar f tfhe Ohio-1~iypr valley. This-,as. millo~o ie more th~an-was claimed to; have beenpprdischarged. annually,from the oldShippigpot plant in recqent years,,

even though'he,,

iowr output would be

,onyten tms g1reater:..

A'_1 In fact the summary of past releases from nuclear facilities published by the Bureau of Radiol'ogical: Halt had- ~listed, ony-:.3 curies 'of fisso, ae at the time o6f,the. highest-repbored tdiscages back in

.1963, for ýwhich.,theq,.calculated: dose was 0.*,87 percent of the maximumlpermissibe of;50'millirems to someone. living near, te plant. This meant that the estimated radiation dose -producedi by 0Q35,curiesw*as only about 4. millirems. Yet even at these relatively low calculated external doses (due to gas releases), there seemed to be a disturbing

. ise 1i infant.mortality in surrounding Beave-r Countyand especially the nearbyjtown of Aliquippa,:some1O0 miles to the: east in theOhio: alley.

There were,thus only two possibilities. Ifthe, reported. figures on the likely magnitude of, gaseous releasesýfrorri :the,new large)reactort,,were correct, therewould.,ve 4ikely be a major, increase in infant mortality and other detrimental health effects unless vastly more efficient means of trapping the-gases were installed to bring, themdown to the, levels reported for the existing reactor.'

The other possibility was that the actual releases from the Shippingport plant had somehow been much ' larger than the amounts officially reported. And this would of course explain.why DeGroot did not find' a relationship betw.een the tabulatedlreleases and. the-yearly changes in.

infant mortality for the Shippingport plant..,

Deeply troubled by these findings,, I decided to contact the utility lawyer for the City of Pittsburgh, Albert Brandon, who had long: been, battling the Duquesne Light Company's growing requests for rate increases needed to finance the escalating cost of the Beaver Valley nuclear plant. My hope was to persuade the city to intervene in the upcoming license hearings http:/ /www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchpl5.html Page 2 of 25

15, Fallout at Sliopprigport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hir6shima To Three-Mile Island1 2

7 I lj,?ý/?007 07:33,.Pi

. ý; 1..ý. ý ý ý 5en

ý. ý 7 _;,.ýý:

-inmorder to getoto thA. bottomof tlAisturbing discrepancy.,between -the: annual +caimm for, "zero-

- release" nuclear plants and the actually planned emissions. Even though it was too late to stop thepjaplnt from.ging 'into operationp aerhdps'iWo.ild'st'illfbe possible to force the utilitY-t install: the' latest equipment for trapping the tadioactivve gases so9 as to reduce to a minimuni the health risk to the people lvmi i

e,,

in thae 4..,

4 '(4'-,

j, v',

Co"ncerned by -these facts., B~arandoni,p-rom~ised.to discus's,.the,,matter with the,mayor, Pete Flaherty. A few days later, a meeting was arrang*d:,,iahdaftdera brief.I-di'scUssion,_Flahri agreed

.. a eCi ofPittsburih becom e an intervenor in mhe upcoming li'cense hearings, together with a group of local environmentalists

.o w.ho I had previously outline s

Shortly after the publicannouncement that the City of Pittsburgh'would-intervene ithe.,_..

hearings for the new plant, I received a telephone Call from a man who identified himselfas the manager of the new power station being built at the Shippingport site. He said that great efforts were being made to assure the safety of the people in the'aiea, and thathevwo uld be glad:to 1 send me" the' detailed-plans for the environmienta!n monitoiing that'would-be dne

,to assure.th.at no harmful amounts of radiiactivity'could 'reachlthe-pbublic.

Withi' a day.; a larg*rmanila'enveiope was*dehiere&to my, officeatAthe, unversy from-the Duquesne Light Company. As I leafed -through ists 'cntents I' noticed0a seres of documents entitled "Pre-Operational Enivironmeintal, Radi6acti'Vity Monitoring Program: at:theý Beaver Valley Power Station" in the form of quarterly reports for the years 1971 and 1972. The documents had 'been. "prepared -by the,NUS. orporattion of Rockvlle, Maryland.<These were apparently part of tle. Environm`ental' Report" for' the *BeaverrValley:Power Station, Unit,-II' Cons*ructionPer rit Appli6ation', subrmtted to th**A*ECin Novenber,-1972 as ;,required by the :.

new National Environmental Protection Act', whih had justcome ito effect...T-hus, the datai were gathered to establili* thie-radiation evel s existig at the site.prori to.the-operation fof..the new plant, providing a baseline for comparison with later measurements that Would be-gatheredl" once the plant had gone into operation.

As I 6egan todtI ook through ttables with theilf ists of numbers, I: noticed that gthere were some v'ery high meas'ureme'nts for the e'xtefn'a'l gdanMlia doses in early.19771,, measured-,in.-

micrrems p*i hbour. 'When irWI or*e*a dit ouinith*,mo-re failiat' units of millirems per year, I 1. 2 c6uid hardly believe the result: In March the r ate Was 370 millir6ms per year for Station.No. 10, located in the town of Shippingpo*rr, compaed I

t a

th nrmal values forAlthe, area of 704to90.

millirems per year. There were-a few moirei"readiin'gs at +thi-s location in the range of 300 to 350 millre~ms per year by u not un*

ttilhfinafy'ryf 1972 :didthe numbers return to, the norma!.

rate of 86 millirems per"year.,

Other locations showed comparable peaks of gammIa radiation, but the highest were in the town of Shippingport closest to the site or on the site itself. Could it be that these extremely high radiation dosei-ates were produced by the' old Shipp`ingport plant, for which the official, reports had shown almost n 'gaseous releases at adll?

Turning to the tabulations of strontium 90 in the milk, I saw immediately that:the levels,'

measured in the farms around Shippingport were much higher than in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Cincinnati, and Buffalo as reported in RRadiation Health"Data and-Reports for the early partof 197 i:.The fact that the e6 tr`eely high redings Were confined to the Shippingport area made it http:/ /www.ratical.com/radiatlon/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 3 of, 2'

.5,'FalIout'atSh~ipingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island".

11/25/2007 07:33 PM Unfikily that they were -duez to._worldwide& fallout from, high-r-altitude atmospheric bomb testing..,

To check this further,4 plotted:-the concenjtrations of strontium,0.in-the soil -i~d found that it dTopp5d offsharply with

-distanceaway from -the. plant lboth-east towest andn to sout.-*In 7 qu

~~este an othathtyil April of 1971, the levels within three-quarters of a mile,.. ere'fifty times.greater than the typlcal levels-produced by worldwide fallout, and by early in 1972, the rans had apparently washed most of1th'e activity;itnf6ot heOhi:o Riv, et,,.the *measuire-d ilevels hav6 ing gone: down-frm-their peak

.of,

'~pieCuriesir kilorami tolssta1iQ Clearly, such a-highly li6oclizec-crncntrion oL u 1' Shippingport plant could not be explained by worldwide fallout, which is more or less uniformlnydistrisb-uted -arkinditheglobefa-s~the raiins bring down the fine particles circulating in, tlhe upper atmosphere.

• ,r-Stilffutlier confirmation,of thelocalizednatureof the radioact-ve contamnation came from the m 6ýaforjjentS of, shor4iv.`ed'iodiniej-31 in-, the- -milk.,,.-eginning n Deeber of.19771,. and, peaking in February 1972, the levels ofiodine for, the six dairies within, a 4107mileradius starfed to rise above 10 picocuries per liter, the Range I reporting level set by the Federal Radiaition Councl fdr contiudi-scdiui5tmp

,reachirn*g as highcas 120 picocunies periliter. This waswell Sabovie the100pioi*ifie per-liter imit-of Range, andiit equaled the in-nof values reachedin*

the easter6m United *States,duiing the heighbtofnuclear-bombtestng..

Yet when I looked.upwthe monthly;iodineq:131 leels fortother:locations in Pennsylvania (such as Erie, Haiisburg, and Philadelphia) in Radianon-Health Datfa-nd Repoir, they.,were.lllsted with',zer valuesor. eow ert fetetn-ea

,twas.

extremely, unlikely that'any wihezro! auso eo,h"ii of

~

it was r

aati' Chfinese falloutwould someho.w*iconcentmte radioacti*ve iodine'13:1 overqthe Sh"ippngpr site,.

leavii-g,-the nearby areas:of.Ohio-,and. Pennsylvaia withouit any detectable increas. osfiradiatioii iit rn i&*lkz'.

X-afiiial-ieck. I-compared-th-e--monthly-alues-of stronti-um-9'--in-the-mil:kwithin a-1-2inii-ei radiuds of Shippi"Agport with themonthlyelectrical poweroutput in kilowatt-hours published in Nucleonics* Week.:Both' strontium 90and poWer output, lpeak'd in January. 1971 and agai n in, Apnil,inmoving up and, down together-until.,the ýplant was;closed-fqr repairs later in the summer.

After_'theý plant, was shut down,b..oth -the local and thei Pittsburgh. milk showed a :sharp reduction in strdntiim' 90 levels, from a peak of 27 picocuries per-liter nearest the plant in early 1971.

dowh to 7"ipicocuries per. liter measured in Harrisburg that suimmer. As I learned later from an analysis of,the milk-marketing:reports,sthe city of Pittsburgh obtalined about a third of its milk from an area within 25 miles of the Shippingport plant. This finding was consistent with the fact that the Pittsburgh milk showed strontium 90 concentrations some 30 percent higher than the Cifcinrinati and, Philadelphia milk in early 1971.

Yet during the time of'the sharp peaksin. radiation levels in the air, the soil, and thle miiki that occurred between January and June of 1971 near Shippingport,, there-were no nuclear-weapons tests carried out in the atmosphere by any nation as reported in the monthly issues of Radiation Health Data and Reports-.

After weeks of graphing and analyzing the data *with the'help of colleagues, volunteers from local -environmental Organizations, and students at the university, there could be no doubt about http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchpl 5.htmrl Page 4 of :25

l

!9Faj4out at Shippingport, 'Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From H iroshima To ThreeTMllesand..

i~i.: * '*'*

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=*::.

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.?

S11/25/r20,07" O?33.P the result: The data collected by the Duquesne Light Com-pany's own, hired team of4 experienced health physicists clearly -idicated that the Shippingport plafit must'have been the source of radioactivity in the environmenilt many,,thousands of times as great ashad been claimed*the t.

official reports to state and federal agencies.,lnstead of annualtradiation doses of.lessthan 05 milliremns claimedby the utility, the ',:mombiirad y'th&of dosimeters5.and internal radiation (from the gases,~that.were inha.led-oringse ih h ik the water., and the local meat,and vegetables) Was man.yh hnrds of millirem e er In ded thisq dosage exceeded the levelof radiation that'xyas-received 0

b the opeople f'thiAsMarea idurinng ý`

the height of nuclear-weapon0s testing. Moreover-the scientists wh6 had 6iarried out these-.

meas urem en Ls.

c e a.r y fail.e a to wN,..

er t i.e u i

.y o I..........

err...

e r l p4ublic.heal thofficils at the. state or federal 1evel,, or the public: whose" health, and's'afety'weref bigedagrd'by the secret fallout from tT~at Faced

• with tlesedisturbing discoveyies, the eqadedrs of thelocal "environmental groups in "Beaver Colunty decided to hold a public meetinig at-whicýh 'both t'!he "-Duiquesne. Light.Co-mpany anýtdý-."lz Pspokesmen for a Pittsburgh environmental group would -be. able to, present their,' vieiýs __to the people of the.,area.,The meeting tooký.,place early in January of 19,73, at-- asho6p~ping mral~l in te_

town of M1onaca, just a few miles from the Shippingport plant. After the superintendent of.the<.;

Shippiingporit plant e6xplained tha-tthe hew power,statio n W ould be "the Cadillac -of the in-dus-try"

-- with a wastte.-disoa 1-system_ that -would pri ny2mnml mut frdociiyt escape -* therhead ofEnovironmentvPittsburgh, David Marshal4l,-.an&d: I presented the dataý-

gathered bylthie Duquegsne ýLight Company's, own consultats. S lid after slde showedl th

- localized concentrations of radioactivity in the milk, the soil, and the rive.rsediments rising to, many times their normal value, together with the peaks during the months when there was no.

nuclear-,Weapons testng-.Obviously, the findings i

'oouresentation were completely at variance With, what he6 utility,.had told,,tte local people,oer the years..

The Duquesne' Lighti'officials%.were unprepared for this damagingevldenie and.could donly--e lamely repeat*,their assurances'iilthat ithe new -plantiwould have in&gliible inmpa'ct on the -healtl.hf of

- th-e-ýtiblicI -ft.tCo1Cth&fti-i-fa~f day-_ ýto prepa4re: afi idvertisement for thiPittsburgh Pos-Gaet in which they claimed that they had opertedtheir Shippngport6facility safely 1-witlout 2

releasing more than a small percentage of the releases allowed by the Atomic Energy CommiSsio0n -and the.Com*monwealt of Pen nylvania andftiherefore without injuring any member of, thepublic.

the'people whohd attendedte meeting were no longer so certain that this wasthe case, and thereý Was,a demandforiarn iidependnt -iiestigatfon ofthese disturbing findings, by.the various environmenrtal groups in Pittsburgh andBedver County before a new and still larger,reactor would be given ahlicense.This:dermand was supported by" the mayor of Pittsburgh, Pete Flaherty, and his utility lawyer,WAlbert Branfidoin.:.

Confronte&dWith the evidence of: very high levels: of trontiium 90,.cesium 137, aid iodine 1'31 in the area in. 1971, ;while: "zero" release had, beeni officially'-e ierted, I' beganii to wonder-aout earlier releases.7The plant had been in-operation siince 195'8, s5 in light of the, unreliable'claims-by the companay, I wondered if there migti indeed"ha*v be en lg-term exposure tohe people of'Beaver County and n earby Allegheny County, in Which the city of Pititlbrgh, was located. In particular, enough time had elapsed for leukemia and cancert6 develop,'s6 that orne imight for the first time be able to determine whether the operation of commercial nuclear plants did or did not leadto the sam-e-kind of:'canhcer.increasesthat I had abegun to see following the start of http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 5 of 25

15, Fallout itaShippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From HiroShih*loTheM'ile lsi'nd 1112512007 07:33 PM nuclear-weapons testslnr-.Nevada,'thle Pa-cific, and Siberlia' My students, and 1I startedto examine theannual-tal statibstcs repor-sfor Beaver County, A-l~dgheiyý-jCounty, and ithefo iaj-ori to wnst -at differehndist *f*r'oSi p

Shippig po p

d down the Ohio;Riven :Withna few, days the frst:ýresu:ts -Wereltbfae, ndtýfiie ee trln In th-on fM dlac;;s at A6ijie donsrem fnYhi en~x the fiei68F dIan the OIo River wateri T'he ner~death~rate-tlhstowwntad 'nsn fk~m.alow-of-149.6per hundred..

thoAusandi populoti6"n ii 15 8"0,fh.id

-the;plat'stafte-d' ftXa

'ati,

p to p

a eakogf 4-2633.,

b1970. This was an :inc~rease bfilS84 per~ent in-'oiily:-*elv*years>

',"*s~~*.--.***.,.*,:::*:_:!,*

Imte-tow

'-d'-'

f4-6 po e-'ri W.

fr a-o For*Beaver.*,ounty *as -a!!whole,* surrounding the-plant; the,rate had-niseni from' 14z7.7, to 204.7 in:

the tim the plant had gone online with-so much-hopefora.cleaner and

-,I healthier environment. This was a rise of close tO 40 percent during a time when the state of PennsylvAniaas,a.wholeshowedan icerase kof' nl426"10yprcn7t"anadthe U.S.' canhiei motity' Srose by-:only 8 -percent2,',,rom alJow of:.293 *cancer, deaths in' Beaver, County' i 1958,-the numb~er beendno more than an' additionalq 3Oiffthe county hiade continued a

to.folow the average patterfor th-stte s

`

18*

&rjff ebny-,

We 44 Likewise, `the Pittsburgh~cancer death ra~e h'ad-climbed.by *31 *pent betwve~eii2.1958 ahnd 1968, despite thie*st~eady 1ea~nu. upof ordinary*air-and *water -pplluti~ofiithat had *begiin-r i ght* a*tei* World.::

War II, whie.n thae~irningiof*soft-coalj:n the :ci~ty was'endedTand:i :rfiajdr-effort. Was-begii~tci::**':

cle aný iptea t f

i--w 1v Y

~~-

gone o,

n OPP Similarly,s in thehtons ang te pOhioadRi*er donstrea-im from, Shippingport-and Midland, cancer rates had climbed sha arpl trhe m re-sq the loseerct dure atothe plait.Fwre Eastat -"f Liverpool, just across the border in Ohio and some 10 miles downstream, the cancer death rate had risen4,40 pe~rcent, by 41968-and4 674 percent by 1971'-. 'In-Steubenville, somei* 30 m6ies**':

ca 168,ý and6 even' as far-away as Crosennatisome 81, 0Q-miles aý,down

'-the9_htoa'ive--`

umshddib~2 pr

ent, whie he increase.~

ony6pretfo OioL5 cas a whole. s-pe yer w b'thr h

had-n~n,.w 4',

by._961 d

e, Further evidence,suggested

-thatithfe freleases fcurom Shi;ppingport yhad addedd heavily to all"the,a or othe~r :sources o~f-carc¢inogens,: f~rom: bocmb ites~ts i:to :cherni*'cal!*plants. The city. of Columbus, :Ohio;,'

which did not :us* the: ofi'o River :for, its* drinking-water: supply,* actually experienced a. 10.

• percent declcine in its canicer rate during *the *same period; even.though it suffered from all. the other likely source~s

-f carcinogensincludJng -automobiledexhaust,-.cigaretfes, food additives, hair dyes, artificial sweeteners,..and eso on.rld But ieShi'ppingpor was responsible for these striking cancer-rises in the towns usinga-the Ohio River forW theira wter sup ply,then the discharges-into the rivner-would have hado to be vastly greater than the amounts for ~vhich thie plant had. been licensed. Was there any evidence that the activity in the-wat~r: had beeni mucthe greater downstream than upstream of the plant?After all; it-was ncearr that it could not be the milk that was responsible for transmitting the radioactivity all the way to Steubenville and Cincinnati.

Fortunitely, there was a wayto check this. For many years, the Pennsylvania State Department of Envirocmenital Resources in Harrisburg h-ad bpeen making quarterly measurements of the p:/ /www.ratlcal.com/ radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp 1S.html Page 6 of 25

15NFallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To-Threeý-Ml lIsnan 11252-00-7 0 radioactivityjin all.the-

-majp streamsof thestaate atyarious pOints along each riei.

ii the studentf hiiid coleted U1h6:

forr th Ohi~o and o'ther -,streams in western

.tia L

answer began to emerg6. There was a largepeak in the Ohio River radioactivity in late 1970,+.-

and early 1.9.1, exatl.a he etmewhenjthe-N.U.S'. Adata haad n

gpea'of in soil,, milk, riy.er sediment uand+fish.:AtMi

&dlnd; jut i ttle 6V+fa-mi" e below+-t-e Shiain+pmgff plant, the ross beta c hivi t:ha dclimb r.e o m, -1 a 6f' F

l o'

3:i-cu +

ehi-er and the Monongahela, measured at locations more than 30 nDls away,'upstream to the est thb nseJ f."

d*

Thus, the rise in river radioacti`vity could+ not hhave bnuto favl which would have affected the more distant, upstream aredsjuist as.. sfrong I

But i. was c.. si e1 with'high, unreported gaseous6 releases that would settle on the sie dai*+*iideh b wash d int 0the bhio River with the rain and meltinge snow. In fact, bthe rapdid'disap.+tan*ce 4of thehigh values of long_4iyed.otrontium 90 in thep soiT 9around7the Shipiig.ortplntbei-geii early 1971 and 197 could be explained onl b the action ofn ca ing, t eradioa.ctivdity from gaseous relases into the local streams..and. jrivers. This-Vssibihity-was: futhe, sui*pp`edy he**fact-tha_

t.h tw neamret snia.l.40ivers.that joined the Ohi ju list af s ip......i fr Shiing

.. t.

Beaver Ri.ver andRaccoon Creek both sho ee n

.r r

-hes......

i.

.. -+.

ing -peaks so

......... *+,++_-++.*

=.+..

>+.++:e++ - k.b

-~ s6,:

.ed eve-larý gerr.ises m na. m y T a hi~~ g~ ks --f.

20 picopures petlitdr Adurng-,the saequatr 7~

gain -

It was apparently not any direct liquid discharges that were involved, which by the terms of the, original,,license. vereytoJ be, hldto.lessthan 0.56 curie*.ut hae originated.fromai rbornereleases -that settl-ed o*.the-s r

s u

to.

• ^ +.......*

• .+:+.+.....*.....

. ed on th urrou d ht lan asý far ups.

-,mas 20 to 30

• miles. Only releases nto~the-alt, could:als0exp*laint re.,

a,. increas*sinmilk i:

iacvity all around.

the armssurounalng~the Ohio River infBeaver-County.

o, This would makeit possible to understand the paradoxical fi.din.g..

that

.even--

.upstream,

locations and.tributaries of the Ohio withi n20 to-30miles; showed ieaklwin rnaioactivitvhe, -

the' ocal"milk rose in strontium 90, cesium 137, and iodine 131.And it-woIldelain why cancer rates in cities as far away as Pittsburgh, upstream by 25 miles, could have their water supplies ontaminated. The jwind was blowing the

' gases iup the Dhio Vali*y*t6the streams thatfilled the.rese voirs, serving Pittsburgh, just as the fall6utfrom the

."Simonshot in Nevada had contaminated tthe reservoirs of Albany and Troy back Ai the spring of 1953.

Clearly, if such releases were taking place but were somehow not reported, even, cities using tributaries of the Ohio entering the river 10; to30 miles-upstrea from wshippingport, as well as communities far downstreamcould have their drinking v~ater affected and their cancer rates increased by-the invisible, tasteless, and odorless radioactive fallout secretly'discharged into the ambient air.r' 4

By looking up. the amount of water carried by the Ohio pei'.second-at Midland for each month of the year, i was possible to calculate how many curies had been carried downstreamfrom theI airborne releases in late 1970 above and beyond the amounts in the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers that joined to-form the Ohio soime25 miles upstream from the plant. The total worked out to 183 more curies in the Ohio below the plant in-a yar`than were camrried by the Allegheny and MonongahelaRivers, which combined to form the Ohio. This was 300 times more than the original permit had allowed for'direct discharges into the Ohio River from the

p://www.ratical.com/radlatlon/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 7of 25

15, Fallout at Shippingport, Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile ad' 1/25/2007 07:3 PM

=.*.

11/25/2007 07:33 PM Shippingport plant, and 2500 times more than the 0.07-riess that the Duquesne Light: Compahy had officially reported for liquid discharges in 1970 to thestate and federIaltiealth agencies.

Theere were apýparently:.hundreds,tq thousands of times-as manyc-urie'sof highly toxiC radoaciviy n~,~eOhi Rierhanwer alowd y ste en fdalimiits, edsignedd to -potect the.pu thehio for thei-r drinking, wate6ft. Th eradioaectiuitr did iio coi; theal ethqf "

the d'

from :the direct hluiddischargeshhowever",

but' through therun-off, of unreported gaseous releases that had settled on the land...,,

Here, then, was at least one piece in the puzzle as to why not only. infant mortality but mortality at all ages had been affected so,.strongly,-,despite the relatively.:'maHll exterfi-l* radiation doses from gamamrays on the ground that irradi.te. the whoIe body u mniformly Itwash* e ai'`one gaseous activity and the run-off.,into the. rivers serving. as `,drinking-wate sp ies ta a apparently carried the more dmaging short-lived beta-ray-emitting chemicals rapidlyinto the crtical or-g'as.6f*the p-opleelin addit9fnt*htýin heoterpathways via the' milk; the-e*al*es, ete friits, thel fisha,nkd the meat that Were, most.iMportant for the 16tig5411Vied §"fJIih1 i u`§'faind`

cesiufm 137. And.-although :ad0ulit§, ere more-resistant to thebidlogica daimiag' tht..e' he' developinig fetu's',they receivd t e

doe sedlovrmn ersrahrtanjt'fr4 aew months, by" continuouslydrinking.the waterjinhaling the gases,.and'eating thkefood-thatwas contaminated first by the fallout from the bomb tests, ýan'd;th,-,n",by 'the secr'et'ýgaseous "ýr'elease's 7' from the peaceful nuclear reactors along the rivers of the nation.

Of equ isignificance jwere the hmnplcations for one' of ýthe,most important cuestins-DeGroot" was unable to ans;wer. Why he,,not found acorrelation.,betWeen,thelchiang'es.in i*ant.'.

mortality in Beaýer County and,the.published :radioactiveý releases nthe case of.the' Shijppngport reactor, while he had discovere, d hsuch

-a -correlation 'for the other.three nuclear reactors he had studied? Clearly, if there existed such large unreported releases as the data gathered by the N.US. Corporationthe Environmental Pr6tefiAon Agen';y,;-ihd' the"stat" f' Pennsylvania :seemed to indicate. then one-oud nopossibly expecutbtoind a I"rectrelatlonshlp -....

.between the announced annuall, releases and the changes in mortality rtes.,

Now anew and !most disturbing.question had arisen: How was it possible for larg-e quantitie sý of radioactive _gases to escape. from: the Shippingportýplantwithout-being officiallyreported' as required by.the existing regulations2?,Not.until many months later, was.-this;riddl'e des-tinýed iob-e'-

solved in a most unexpected manner.

In the meantimne, therewas a growing public, debate overithe abnormally high-levels of radioactivity around -the Shippingport plant and the sharprise in infant mortality in such nearby towns as Aliquippa..I documented my findings in a report and, sent:it to the governor of Pennsylvania, Milton Shapp, in January of 1973. Early in the spring, Governor Shapp announced his intention to, appoint a special fact-finding commission of independent scientists and public health. experts who would hold hearings on the question and issuietheir own report within a few months.

The latest numbers. for infant mortality in Aliquippa, some 10 miles downwind and, to the, east of the plant,,were indeed alimring. Forthe years 1.970..and 1971i, the years-of high levels of radioactivity, Aliquippa's infant mortality rate climbedto a twenty-year high of 144.2 and 39.7' per 1000 live births. These were more than double the overall state rates of 19.9 and 18.2. Yet"'

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15'F)llout at Shippingport, 'Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshimal'To Three-Mile Wland*

11125/2007 07:33 F back in 1949 and I952,1".when ordina'ry-air' pollutnio-frrom the steel mills was much greater,- but before Shippingport* had started, Aliquippa's infant mortality rates had been as lowias 16.0 per 1000 births.

This could not be simply explained by a change in the composition of the population, which had remained essentially constant, the.nonpwhite.*population representing 21 percent of the total in 1960 and 22 percent in 1970. And for,the State of Pennsylvania and the United States as a whole, infant mortality had resumed its previous decline after the end of atmospheric bomb News of the controversy had reached the cities along the Ohio below 1

Shippingportt, and in April I was asked to present my findings at a public lecture at the University of Cincinnati by a local environmental group and university professors concerned about the construction of the Zimmer nuclear power station upstream from the city's water intake. At the end of my presentation, members of the university's Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering attacked my findings, charging that numerous state and federal government health agencies, including those of the State of Pennsylvania, had found no substance to my allegations in the past and that I had beenrepudiateld especially by such prestigious organizations as the Health Physics Society, the, American Academy, of Pediatrics, the National Academy of Science, the Atomic Energy Commission,,and the Environmental Protection Agen'cy.

AsDr. Bernd Kohn, director of the Radio Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering Research Center put it: "In each case, an epidemiologist has refuted his claim by the same data." But Dr. Kohn and the other engineers present were unable to point out how else to explain the Startlingly high localized values of strontium 90, cesium 137, and iodine 131 in the environment around Shippjngportý other than that it was lik~ely -to-be Chinese fallout.

However, when I showed the data to the mayor of Cincinnati, Theodore M. Barry," hewrote a.,

letter-to Governor John J._Giligan of Ohio, requesting*a investigation by the-Ohio -W6i;'

Environmental Protection Agency. Also, the. chairman of the" %energy conservation comnttee 6of the Cincinnati Environmental Task Force, after seeingthfiedata on radioactivity and cancer mortality changes around Shippingport and the other reactors that had been studied by DeGroot and me, announced that hewould 'recommend that the City of Cincinnati become an intervenor in the public hearings on an operating license for the Zimmer plant.

The next day, theCincinnati Inquirer carried the fo11owing two h*eadlined storieson its front page: "Mitchell Denies Knowledge'of Plans' to Bug Watergate" and, just below, "AEC Denies Radiation Damage to Ohio River.",,,

In the light of the enormous discrepancy between the official claims of "zero ele(ises" and the N.U.S. findings of much larger than normal amounts of strontium" 90ii fthe'soil, the milk, anid the river sediment around Shippingportý,the coincidental: juxtap6sition of these two stories took on an ominous ring. The facts that had emerged so far were hardly consonant with the AEC's claim in the Inquirer story that "the release of effluents from the Shippingport Atomic Power Station is carefully controlled and monitored so as not to endanger the public."

The story went on to say that "the radiation levels in these effluents are so extremely low that they pose no threat to the people in the cities mentioned by Dr. Sternglass." It all sounded

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15, Fallout at Shipplngport, 'Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation;From Hiroshima.-To Three-Mile Island 1'0 P

11125j2007 07:33 PIVI exactly like the old reassurancesithat had.been issued -.*by',the ABEC at-the 'time of thie niudlar9tests A Nevi'&da~and the denial by former:Attorney: General JohnM..MitchelbIef6r& ý'federal'gr"ad jury that he had any prior knowledge of the Watergate case and always vetoed any gbi ggi..

plans that were suggested while he was President Nixon's campaign manager.

Tlie'rwould soii be another kind ofgrand jur appointed-to hear the diffefing claimis of 6verement o*fficials and, independent:.pscientists,,.who-had 'stumbl *iupon-iiifo mation. that was noti meant to reach the ordinary,-citizenof our country.r.

Newspaper sto-rs in the Pittsburgh area repeating the denial of large discharges from Shippi*ngport and blaming the high readings either Ofi falloutt, or ýon ero'0rs' int-h'fiefeaIuriet mets 0ere cfedf'. indibhiisfdep 9nc~rn:by tie AEC*uquesne

-ioghtpd Ni'U'S --AIl triee organiz~~~~~Atisqnsow -knewta bef JOng theypwould be-facing 2haig ya 4 ii~eietbd of hn6oied'geabkekscientists.

hTe bureaucrats and-scientists in-the eAEC knew thatthhis time the Bdhear fiilg"*X(dntii behi~ndethe-sncenljkes :~f~to:' mase~

the'usbial licensifg, hansghe-wa bhtappened

-i od not egthe st unff r

oeappiebthe agenncy whose, mandtedgtaskit Wd boh to promote and iegulate~the -safety Q11/2t~he,-,nuclea'r -indusitr.i.

But 'the' full exenkt6 f _.N6e 'bhinid-he-scenes,.effortst -t m ake-the-public -believe. that'nothing' -had hapeed~tShp'hYjort did not emerge u1ntitlong~ater.ýhe,,hearings d-f: th ýfa'ctfi ndinig' commission had taken place at the end of July. The story was pieced together later in an article by a free-lance investigative writer; Joel Giffiths and-published.ii'r an rticle fin the Becver.

Cou MTimes on June 7,41974, after. the.ABC, hadcissuedcicensesr f

fthe'oopration a"td" construction ofithe Beaver Valley PowerStatin Units Iand I ey an I

Quite unexete dly, the story cameto iight,,as tlhe result of.a~routie requestrsubmtted bybthe-attorney for the City of Pittsburgh, Albert Brandon, in connection with the discovery procedures.

preceding the licensing hearings-for thel new.r.eactors at Shippingport. (ThisW a few m0nths after the Sliapp Co6-issl:n heags i: Aliquppahad takenplace.)_B'andoii -h'ad-a Sled'fb--

f copies of all correspondence and internal: memoranda connected with the Shippingport

, eilesofthe AEC. Andthen,-one day inthefalltof 1973,-not log Jefore the controversy. in th fils of

-th AE.A- ý.t licensing i jngs. Nwrescsheduledt0o begin*, a large envelope -arriyed at Branidon's offic& ewIth al devastitig series ofjnteal memoranda,, letters,: and otherdocuments revealing What-had taken place behind the scenes.

As Griffiths described it in his article, early in,1973 the AEC's Earth-Science Branch had conductedian in-depth investigation of, the situation-and concluded that It is highly un'likely that the **adio-i6cfivity was of Chinese origin. Most likely it was either of local origin, ortheh result of inadequate sampling procedures." Griffiths wrote that this was a crucial finding. "Local origin" was. a euphemi~s~mfor Shippingport, since there was nOthing'-else in the'- \\'icinity that could have produced,that amount of radioactivity. Thus, if the radi-ativity had"intfact :been there, ShiPfpingprt was.clearly implicated.; The only other possibility was that niayb' tbhe, radioactivity had really not been there in:the first place.,

As Griffiths put it:

This was where "inadequate sampling procedures" came in.: The idea was that N.U.S. might have bungled procedures it had used to measure the radioactivity in p://www.ratlcal~com/radiatlon/SecretFallout/SFchpl 5.htmi Page 10 of 25

15,Fj llout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island" 11125/2007 07:33 PI

. the samples-of soil, milk, and other items-from Beaver Valley and somehowý-!-

produced hundredspof erroneous, readings,, and all ofý them-too high. This, however,.

was synonymous with, the conclusion.,that N.U.S. was~incompetent.

There was only one way this question could be settled in a conclusi ve manner.

Some of the radioactivity in the samples that N.U.S. scientists had collected in 1970 and 1971 waslong lasting. If N.U.S.ý could turn, up, some of the poriginal samples,

that had shown thehligh levels, they couldibe reanalyzed to see if tle-radioactivity ha. eallybeen here.,

According to the records, N.U.S. conducted a search in February 1973 at its Rockville headquarters to seei4fany-Wofthe original. highsamples.were-still around.:

Unfortunately, it was the company's stated policy not to retain samples for more than a'%year after analysis,land none, could be located&,,,-*.

Griffiths went on to relate an interesting development:

By this time, a sharp divergence of opinion had grown between N.U.S. on the one hand and the AEC and health agencies on the other. Faced with a choice between,.

attributing the radioactivity to Shippingport or to N.U.S.'s incompetence, th*AEC and-others: pickedlincompetence:and began, leyeling.various-technical charges agairist the N.U.S&,reports iThiS *placed' N.U.S.1 in a: delicate *position. If their, reputation was to be salvaged without crucifying their employer, the Duquesne,.;..

Light Company and the AEC, N.U.S. had somehow to prove that the radioactivity had been there but had not come from Shippingport. So despite: all-the evidence, N.U.S. picked fallout.

In March;,1973, N.U.S. completed " draft -repoft onthe Shippingport situation, defending the accuracy of its original high readings but attempting to :prove ithat*l th-ey were not -par*iciiFl-y7

-su-at-l-aifd--er pro-61-y-dh-e-la-iiFk to Chinese bomb tests.

This" draft report was sentto Dr.'John Harley, director'of the AEC's Health 'and.

Safety Laboratory. Dr. Harley had been playing a leading role in-.the-AEC's investigation of the Shippingport affair, and he was well aware that the high radiation levels could not be explained -by fallout.:

In fact, I knew that he had worked in this field for years and had previously been involved with minimizing the health impact of the fallout from the "Simon" test that had rained over Albany and Troy back in I953. He hiad also-played-a major role in'trying to discredit the findings I had made that showed a connection between the upward changes in infant mortality from the atmospheric tests in the Pacific andNevada nd thIe levelsof fallout in, the milk and diet through the use' of 'the mi seadding "gummed film" ;daita,' which falsely Slhowed high strontium 90 levels in the dusty, dry areas where the milk levelswere actually quitejlow.

As Griffiths's story indicated:

The memoranda in the AEC files showed very clearly that Dr. Harley was not ttp://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 11 of 2 5

1., Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island" 11/25/2007 07:33 PM happy with N.U.S.'s draft report.

In comments for the AEBC' s.file8s; lted March-8,q1973ý,Harley fumed: "I.This draft, proves to my satisfactionithat the work of this riganjzation ins ncompetent.

Itris obvious that their staff is not familiar with the field and is not competent to evaluat third`t6 r those- &f'others,"

Harley`Went offto-Ist4severa examples 6f N.US.' isnempetence intheir attempt i prvth lbt t andlntheraspets of theirrepo*tj;remrigthat-tdL f

t866 h0, -,dls"-e-t 9d eil ors oAerhkrftn

,that

~obe doctoring of the numbers had occurred."

He'signed off:. "I belleve-the sittuatibn'is very-serious."

Serious indeed. Could Dr. Harley have been.referring to that team -of I"outstanding scientists" who, according to Duquesne's ads, were engaged in the vital work of making people aware that their large-nuclear plant was todie "'absolutely safe to --the public health"?

Yes:, -he w1a's'.-`I`

More serious wvas,that N-.U.S.ý ;hadalreadyý.perfonrmed extensive safety ýstudies :forli,:

some thirty-four: other nucleaf, power planits, many: of -which had already started-operating.

If they wierebunigl'ers;,.'.i....ý'

Dr. Harley's accusations of incompetence were more incongruous in view of the apparent excellent credentials of the N.U:.S1. staff, including the two members -who prepared-the draft report.

One, the vice-president in charge of all N.U.S. nuclear safety work, Dr. Morton.

Goldman, had spent ten years as a nuclear safety expert with the U.S. Public -Health Service (now.the Environmental Protection Agency).and. was;a consultant to-state, and federal :health.:agencies.

The other, Joseph DiNunno, the scientist directly responsible for the Beaver Valley survey, had received all his training and experience in the AEC's own reactor safety branch.

Why, N.U.S. almost was the AEC and EPA. Incompetence? Doctoring of figures?

Nevertheless, a couple of months after Dr. Harley's outburst, the ABC issued a definitive report, stating that the high radiation levels had been due to N.U.S.

bungling. The report was hand carried to the Pittsburgh newspapers before. N.U.S.

even got a chance to look at it.

Shortly thereafter, on June 7, 1973, according to AEC documents, the president of N.U.S., Charles Jones, called the AEC. Jones maintained stoutly thatthe*

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15,4Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hirosh*lmaToThree-Mile Island 11,,5/4:

2 607733 P radioactivity really had been there and-that there was nothing wrong witifhN.U.S..'s methodology.

T-he ABiC r~lrese6ntativ te o whornhe spo-ke,,Dr..ýMartin B.-j3ýBiles,ý director of the Diiso the

ý-peatnI aey, iaged Divi~Yo 6f a'~inlSietdsged Jones. ihen compilained that the:

uin~fvable publicity was dama.ging.hs 'pqy;a.

dso tin-m fbdn.D' Bile's--1szuggesfed ~imeeting.hicopnansmeigmutbdn.Dr On June 20, 1973 a meetin wash N

.U.S.,

Dr. --a-ey and Dr. Phil, Krey of the AEC., and a:Duquen`e Light*Co.

attorney.

Accor'ing to Dr. Harley's subsequent memo to the ABC's files, [dated June,221] it,*

wasarfruilfUl meeting.

Goldman and DiNunno began by admitting [in a separate memorandum for the files] that someone inN.U.S. had. indeed doctored, up figures to support,.the company s position [in pa-st work forthe AEC's Health and, Safety,Laboratory]v:'.

lalthounhthe?_

were unfortunately no,laboratory recordso d -veryt thefact. ;This aside owever, they h

-~a vwoiide~rfu rew deyelpen treo.In teimsince Pres~ide'nt Jones had talked to the AEC, N.U.S., had found-some.of the'originadlt hgh samplerd~

Beae Valley NolW i lt ouldbe pdssible to see if that radioactivity had really been there.

This was indeed fortuitous, especially since these samples were:,by then, nearly;, two yearsoldi and the company didnot usuallyretain.its samples for more than a yearn, A

EVidentIy they eluded the original search forsa'mples in Eebruary:.,

---

Accodini-gtoDr. (G-ldmdinall-th-l *ompioTv-abe 7stiuctedto ransack the p-reisies', and the samples hald been turned up by two lab technicians in a storage basement where suchsampleswere not usuallykept.

aml" we

...-n vusu ly Despitethe AEBC's alie miouts ibSlscredbllty, the legitimacy of these ne6fou~nd sapleisi was accepted without question. Arrangements were.

immediately made to have them reanilyzed by'the ABC, the EPA, an independent private lab, and N.U.S. It was also decided that N.U.S.,s performance in the reanalysis would serve as a test of whetherthe company had recovered its competence.

So what happened?

The'samples' were reanalyzed and no more radioactivity! Some of-the samples turned out to be as much as twenty times lower than,before, but N.U.S. had got it right this time. Their analytical' methods were corrected at last. They were saved.

Everybody was saved.

The press was notified.

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15, Fallout at Shipplngport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level RadiationFrom Hirosliima To Thiei-lvMile Isiand" 11/25/2007 07:33 PM TheO ere afew-loose'ends.

N.U.S. had to explain why so many of its measurements had been twenty or more times too highin, 197**lTlThecompany rewiewed its-laboratory records again nd:

made a new discov.eiýr;'all throu'ghg1971 there*had be6en ystemati6 errors in several of its :analytical, methods; all tending to produce only erroneously high readings.

That was it. The case was closed.

NUS's safety:.work for thitvy-four other reactors, and -even" the' low readings it somehow managed to obtain at various times and places in Beaver Valley, was allowed to stand unchallenged. Dr. Goldman and DiNunno fired several employeeS, including the lab chief, who.never stopped defendinghis measurements, and N.U.S.

has since continued in its work of making nuclear power plants "abs6ouiely safe to public health."

None of this, 0ofcourse, *was known either ýto' mfie -oirithe medmber's fthe fkt-finding: commission when the hearings began.on: July -3ýl *1973 in*th*e i n f' Aliu Th e

pnlappointed, by Governor Milt6-n.J. Shabp:iand :chair'ed 'by ýDr.ý*Leonad Bacfhai;i, the' GovernosH o

eath:'

Services Director, consisted of seVen member i'Sin additfion to the Irman, representinga broad range of disciplines andl Wide experienc`81inft matters rdlatedto publici heiah..'Only e of the panel members, however, were independent university-based scindfitits'o utide ihe state government, and only three of these had personal -experience with studies of, radiation effects in man.

Of the three, Dr. Karli Z.Morgan; Nely,' Pr6fe sor bof HalttiPhyski&S at the School of Nuclear Engineering;,Georgia Institute-of-T'echn0ologye'dit'or'in-icief ofi thejou4ral HealthPhysics,,

first President of the InternationaltRadiation'P1 Prot"cti6onAss'ociation, and Director of the Health Physics Division of the AEC's Oak Ridge National L a1b9rat3rytmm

_ _t0:9.,had: the-.---. -

longest asso6iation with the problem's -of radiation, its§ control, and its measurement.

Next in the length of his professional iinolvement with radiation and its effects on man was Dr.

Edward P. Radford, Professor of Environmental Medicine at the School, of Hygiene and-,Public Health, Johns Hopkins: University; who had recently served on the National Academy of Science's Committee on-the-Biological Effects of Radiation.

The third scientist with recent' expefience in theevaluatio.of theeffects of radiation on human populations was Dr. Morris DeGroot; Professor of M*ithematical Statistics and Chairman of the Department of Statistics at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Of the other two university scientists, one was Dr. Paul Kotin, Provost and Vice-PIresident of the Health Science Center and Professor of Pathology at Temple University in Philadelphia, formerly Director of the Nati6nalinsfitute of Environmental Health Science, with a special interest in the environmenial'cautses'of can'cer, and a consultant to both the National Cancer.

Institute and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The other member of the scientific panel was Dr. Harry Smith, Jr., Dean of the School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, who was a biostatistician

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activein thehealth field.over;manyýyears-,seryingasc6isltant to; the Nationalt Center -for Health Statistics~of theU.S.,Departmenit ofHealth,, Education-and Welfare,*..

Also serving 0onthe Governor's Commission was-the Secretary of Health for the State of Pennsylvania, J. Finton Speller, M.D., and the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of.

Environmental Resources, Maurice K. Goddard.

Al~ughth s a~ ot kno~ o. mea the tin woud actuyally.ý.be ;th~e s~tWfs of, these.t-wo sta~te A

gbi~ -this wasr n qi',,,k nqwr p

ý t i m

4talr

.pt im independent "staff responsible only to, the scientisjt,,nembers;of,. *the committee. -In*particular, the radiological portions of the -report.were* to be draftedbyý ThomasrM.Q Gersky, Chief, Office of Radiological Health, and Margaret A. Reilly, Chief.I EnvironmentalSurveillance.in, Gerusky's office, both of whom reported to Secretary Goddard. The sections of the report dealing with health effects.. ere -to be prepared hby.-Dri George ;IK.Tokulhata,'ýan epidemiologigst recently.

appointed as Director of Program Evaluationiný.the'Depaýtment of Health:All ithree of these key individualsN had AinAhe past rriade public: statements denyingithe-vatidity.of my-findingsi on low-level-raidiation ýeffects,from fallout and ireleases from nuclear plarits.:As Griffiths, later leaned inaa-series of interviews with, some Of.tthe-conmmissioners also published-iin the:-Beavier.-:.

County..Times, the'final report kept being delayed again and:again beause the staff kept; creAtingýdrafts which rfeflected the, view that, there were noh serios problems conneted with Shippingport, and which the commissioners were unwilling to-sign.-

Butvon: the day. of the hearings,.Iwas v~ery. hopeful.'thatat long last an eminent groupgof-concerned scientists: and *public.health-officials ::wouildprovide. thekiind ýof scientifiic jury able to evaluate fairly the serious evidence for unreported releases and disturbing increases in mortality rates that had.recently' come.to light;,:"

After Dr. Bachman had opened the hearings and introduced the members of the panel, I summarized-the-datailhad-pre-viously-submitted-in-t-wo-reports-to-the-governorin-a -series-of---_

slides. In-.additionI presentedfurther evidence ioffthe changes in mortality rates involving other chronic diseases besidesý cancer in a number of towns along* the Ohio.,Thus, in East Liverpool, 5 miles'dowdnsteam-from -Shippingpdft,,heart-disease-nmoitality. had, risen some 100.percent from-:

its lowpoint of,370 per 100,000 deathsinlthe period 1954-56ito 730'by: 1971, while Ohio as a" whole had 'renimined -constant at about 370 tO 390,throughout. this period. Yet back-in the early 1950s, before Shippingport had started, there was-more ordinary pollution from chemicals and coal burning in the Ohio River, from which the drinking water for East Liverpool originated.

And ini the ensuing two decades,'there had been major, efforts to clean up" the air and water.

I then presented other recent-data in.support of the possibility that the action of radioactive fallout-on all aspects of'huma'n health.may have beenrseriously underestimated, thereby explaining the unexpectedly sharp rises in both infant mortality, cancer, and chronic diseases in Aliquippa and nearby river towns since the nuclear plant had gone on line.

Some-of this data: came from.an extensive collection of heath statistics gathered by Dr. M. Segi at the School of Public Health, Tohoku University, Sendai; Japan, from work sponsored by the Japanese Cancer Society. It showed that many ýtypes oftcancers known to, be caused by radiation rose sharply all over Japan, and not'just in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, beginning some five to seven years after the bombs were detonated. Thus, while pancreatic cancer had been level for a tp:/ /www.ratical.com /radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp 15. html Page 15 of 2 5

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.11/25/2007 07:33 PM period of more than ten years prior to 194

- during a period of rapid industrialization, production :of chemicals, and *gro.wth :of01ectric-powerlgeneration by-c6ýah. it shot up some:-.

1200 percent by 1965,, anid ornly recentlybegan -to.slow down. its:enormous rate of climb following the end of major atmospheric bomb testing. The pancreas is also the-organ involved in diabetes, a disease ath*a hadalso show'nsharprises not only in Japan bu*t in the-United-States, and Specifically.in" the Beaer Cou area.

Similar patterns emerged from plots of Dr. Segi's data for prostate cancer and lung cancer, the former fising-to 6

90 percentof its.pre-1945 incidence, ad the latter to 750percent,;And agaii tow~n *of Midland had ri sen500 percent from*its1~957-58,7rate of 22-to a hi'gh of 132 ;per> 00U000 populationb 970,'whie it. ad risen only s 6ne`70 percent from 22 to 38 peri 100,000ir Pennsylv'a-ni~a as~a whole -ld'u'rin-g th'e sa-m'e' peri~odi.

Again,.- these,pattermscould not simplyý- ie; blamed on cigarette -smoking alone, although it was known that uranium-miners:who, smoked had some five.to tefi times the lung cancer mortality,.

rate, than,thsewho did.rnot,- so that ithose who-bothwotrked ifn.the mines and smoked showed a twenty-five-,tohufndredfold greater risk of dying of, lIung cancer as compared with those who.-

neither smokedý nor-wereexposed <to. the radioacti-ve6radon gads:. Thus, in -eff&ct, -the ;releases of.

radioactive gases into the already, pollutedair of: Midland has -produced the 1same kind-of synergistic effect., as if.the people !in-that town justka amile away from the :,Shippingport ýPlant had, suddenly started to work in the, uranium mines.,,

Thus, the data *for the changes in.,cancer rates, in ?the area for whichlevels of radioactivity in. the,ý.

air; the water,, the milk, ý,and the.total diethad,.-been-. mieasiured as wcomparable with :the levels produced, by fallout from bomb :tests in -Siberia :and ;the Pacific. drifting over Japan, during the.

1950s clearly supported the reality of the data gathered by the N.U.S. scientists :recently',and:

also the reality of the existence of much-higher-than-reported releases from Shippingport in the past.

In-further support of the ;argument that relatively low-doses of radiation from nuclear reactor releases-can have readily'detectable results on human health;., 1 summarized 2the.evidence that-infant mortality in Beaver-County and-other areas, along the Ohiohad increased in-1960 and 196.1 -following an accidental, release of ýradioactive, isotopes in the;:tcourse of a fuel-element, melt-down at the.Waltz Mills nuclear reactoron the Youghiogheny River, some 20 miles upstream-from the city of McKeesport: in April of 1960.,

Within a year after that little known accident, infant mortality rates doubled in McKeesport and.

then slowly declined again to the level of the rest of Allegheny County, which gets its drinking water mainly from the Allegheny River. And the effects could be seen in a steadily declining pattern of infant mortality peaks along the -Monongahela and: Ohio River communities8 for-160 miles downstream.

In the course of the questioning period that followed my presentation, I was asked how it was possible that such relatively small doses, comparable: to normal background levels.could lead to such large changes in mortality rates, when it apparently took ten to a hundred times these levels to. double the risk' for the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In response I cited the startling results of a recent study published in the journal Health Physics in March of 1972 by a http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html a

Page 16 of 25

-'scientist working for the Canadian Atomic Energy.Laboratories;'in Pinawa Manitoba,Dr.-

Abram Petkau. Dr. Petkau had been examining the basic processes whereby chemicals diffuse through cell membranes.

as the course of these.studies*,he`had occasion to expose the, membranes~esurrurn*ddbywate r toa'powerful.X X

A machiine,'and observed that th'*,i would usually break after* absorb~ing the relativelylarge d~ise of3500 i-ads;,the eq'uivalent of somie.

35,000.years of normal background radiation. I Thist cefrtainly seermedAto',be very reassuringt with regardý to any possible danger tovitalportions of cells' as a result,:0of the much,'smaller. doses,inthe environment*from either,natural or.man -fiah mades6urc*resi Buit lthien DrB:Petkau did somethfing ithat no one else; had& trie&dbefOre. He&-added a small amount ofradioactive6 sodium saltvto:the water -such-as occurs g'from fallout: or reactor..

low-level protracted radiation.

.ose W300 ad,:them ermbrahie:.ý,,

To'hi' hsamazementhe found that insteadofrequirieg.ýa dos.of -350 radst ruptured at an absorbed dose of three-quarters ofone trad,6 or at, a :dose some 5000'times less than one radcmuch"less :than was *necessariyto break itin.-aý short, Ihigh-intensity, burst ofýi.

radiation such as shad.occu*rred at Hiroshima andi Nagasaki.,

Dr. Petkau repeated this experiment many times in order to be certain of this disturbing finding, and each time the result confirmed the initial discovery: the more protracted the radiation exposure-was--, te lebss total dose it`took-. tobreatk -the ý.,membranes, compltl cotrr toth usual Icase of genetic darmage,#where. iit madeno' difference :whetherithe.radiation iwas.:givenn in one second, one day, one month, or one year.'

By a, further series.ofexperimentsý, he finally*began. to understanid what-was taing plawes,,

ce.i Apparently:abiolqgical mechanism. was,ingvolved,in.the case of membrane damage thatwas completely,d*ffer.ejtifrom the us§u direc.hit of, a.-particle on-the DNAmoleu~esin the center

~ th.

cel7IHiedbi~tfafisteayahihlytoxc unstablefiW5 ordipi_ i oxygen anor-ma found Jn cell fluids was created, bytheirradiat-ion process, *and*that.t'hs so-called "free radical" was attracted to the cell membrane, where it initiated a chain reaction that gradually oxidize d and thus weakened the molecules compo0sing the membrane. And the lower the number of such "free radicals".present in the cell., fluid at any given, moment, the moreefficient was theý whole destructive process.

Thus, almosto9vernightthe efntire foundatioofalLexisting assumptions as

• o*the likely action of very low, protracted exposures. as compared to short exposures at Hiroshima or-even from brief, low-level medical X,-rays hadbeen shaken. Instead of a protracted or more gentle, exposure being less harmful than a short flash, it turned out that there wereý some conditions under which it could be the other way, around: The low-level,, low-rate exposure was more harmful to biological cells containing oxygen than the same exposure given at a high rate or in a very brief moment.

No longer was it the case that one could. confidently calculate what would happen.at very, low, protracted environmental exposures from studies-on cells, or animals carried out at high doses given in a relatively short time. It was clear" that the direct, linear relation between radiation dose and effect was no longer the most conservative assumption,,for it was based on the implicit assumption that a given dose would always result in a given increase in risk, no matter whether http://www.ratical.com/radiati6n/SecretFallout/SFchpIS.htmI Page 17 of,25

15, Fallout at Shippingport, Secr~et Faldut, Low-'Le.el Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Islanfd" 11/25/2b07 07:33 PM the radiation was absorbedin one second or one year. ;Clearly*, ifDr.; Petkau's findings were to be confirmed byother experiments in the future, our-whole present understanding of-low-dose radiation: effects would have,- to;.be *revised,:since small exposuresimightturn out to be.far more, harmful to living cells than we had ever realized.

-Thus,; 1,ýpleaded weq shouldnotrejýect evidence for much, higher than expected.infant and, cancer mortality,rartes,, merely* becautsethat-evidence, did not seem to agree.with Our. previous estimates based ",on:. high-leveli-high-ýrate-exposures at Hi~roshima and in.various studies. I.noww believed that we-,had1 tobe ptepared-torevise drastically ourt expectations-as to. whatapparently lbk-Aland nragms from environmental sources might do.

My owntestitony*-was~foljtwedwby that of,-Dr. Irving Bross, a well-knownbiostatistician-,from the Roswell-Park Memorial-CancerlInstitute in Buffalo, New York, who had;himseelfbeen studying.the-effect of.low-level radiation ton'childhood, leukemia for. many years.In.

summarizing his findings Dr. Bross stated thatthere.exists a wide range of individuals with:

very different degrees of sensitivity to radiation, depending upon their age and their past medicailhistry This fact-alone would invalidate any-estimateof 1the Jikely effect of.sall radiation exposures.to a large-humanpopulationesincethese had been-based on the average-adult, obtained at.high,-

doses, and on the assumption of a linear relationship betweencdosetand effectcFor, a nonl' -

homogeneous group, the more resistant individuals such as healthy young adults would not show any' srgnificant'effectswhie either the Very young or 'fthevery.old and tthose with immune deficiencieS, allergies, and other special, conditions-mght show-an-unexpectedl3, large

-effe-ct

-As Bsfosshadput'it-in; a-letter to -The*N'w York Times published just a few weks~before hre

....estie; ":-

-IItilows*- t*=tat procedures, forcalc,- lat-ng otsaf-eve.--

based on,]- aae exposures' of

'average jindividuals'.are not going to ptotect the children. or adultswho need the protectionr, most"'

Next was -the testimony of the :Deputy Director of the, Division of Biology and Medicine,of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in charge of all biomedical and environmental research, Dr.,

W. W. Burr, Jr. This witness, as recorded by the reporter for the Beaver County Times, Bob Grotevainti "tabbed 'all alleg-atidins :about ta" definiite correlatioiibetween radioactive eissions fromi thle Shippingpi-t plant and increased infant deaths and cancer cases mfiadeby Dr.

Sternglass as ý'unsupportable. Burr then announced that a number of follow-up tests after publication in 1971 of."errioneous" test data by'the N:U.S. Corporation "proved that no such high levIels of any radioactiv-e products existed near the lantY."

This, then, was the way that had been chosen by the AEC to deal with what had happened, as we were to learn later from the internal memoranda, and one witness after the other for N.U.S.,

for the utility, f6rithe :EPA, and.for thek CofmmonwIealth of Pennsylvania followed the -line agreed upon -in'the 'correspondence and secret meetings described! in the memoranda. Each independent set of data wasrejected as unreliable or meaningless when it showed the existence of high radiation levels or increases in mortality rates.

As Anna Mayo, who covered the proceedings for The Village Voice, put it in an article published a few months later, "it was all redolent of -- you guessed it -- Watergate. In the http:/ /www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchpl5.html Page 18 of 25

15, Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From, Hiroshlma To Three-Mile-island" 11/25/2007 07:33 PP audience, environmentalists.,gnashed their ýteeth; wishingthat the Shippingp0rt horro0rs could have been exposed-on national,television. If Duquesne Light wouldcover, upj wouldno, Con Ed, LILCO-or Commonwealth Edison do the same if Indian Point, Shoreham, or Dresden were at stake?"

Indeed a great deal wasat stake: In 1973 some-thiryeight new nuclear reactors vwere in,the process of bei.ng ordered; the-largest number, ever, in, one year-, !each,.representing -a,potential business of about a billion dollars. And it was the stated aim of the Nixon administration. and the nuclear industry to see a thousand of these reactors operating near the cities of our nation by the dangetrwhen a thousand.bilflion dllars Were at sta e.

V.

As expected, when the report of the Governor's Commission finally appeared a year later, after the licenis4ehad-been granted-to Beaver Vafley'InitI and IIitdid not callfbr a moratorium on nuclear power plants, as',.nnaMayo" had' sggested it shold atthe end-of _her article.In fact, she had predicted the outomed exactlyf. A;s:he: had ptv it bitterly: "!About -the most that -.can be expected is~samodest plear studieS: thatigs; more'andfmore' necrophiliac 'nitpicking."

The summa*ryVofthe cotmission's report set the tone of,ýthe entire document.-By carefully using certain qualifying words that are easily passed over by the "hurried reader, :suc h as "!:'subst antial,"

"systematic," or "significant," a draft had finally been prepared by Tokuhata, Gerusky, and Reilly that the members 'oftthe committee couldvnotlonger continue to, rfuse "4to sign after months of effortstoarve atsome sort of acceptable wordig.1 It 'prov.idedsentences which,-'

when takehS*eparately, could-,be-widely used by the utilityto claim, that-it.had-been completely cleared. For example, consider the very firstiseience': "There is.no`,substantial-evdence that the

---

quantities of rAdi-actiVe maat'ils ielegased by Shippingpop t Atomic Power Station. havebeen greater than reporte by thieplant ioperators." ThiS sentence was followed, however, byone that would sati~fyý-tIhe606c fi einceS:ofs-,

/fti....

c...

o..

wod s tie s -of some of the more conicerned commissioners:! "Howev.er;the absence ofd cmpprhensive off-site -dmonitoring during-plant opeiatfions precludes accurate verification of the data on plant ?eleases," and so on throughout-the long and inconclusive report...

Far more reveali~ng than the report as to thp true feelings of, four,0of :the five ýindependent scientists on the-.comnission, willing to 'go 6n record,;werei the answers to questions submitted to them by Griffiths in his article, which appeared just beforeGovernor Shapp-released the report in June of 1974.

For instance, to the question, "Did 'the data in the original N.U.S. report,point toi Shippingport as the source-of the high radiation data," the-ý scientists answered as follows:

DR. DEGROOT: "If we accept those data, then the circumstantial evidence points to Shippingport largely because of the location of the radioactivity and the lack of plausible alternate sources.".

DR. MORGAN: "The original N.U.S. data very strongly suggested to me that the radioactivity came from the plant. If you take the data as fact, you'd be very hard-pressed to find any other source that could explain it."

http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchpl5.html Page 19 of 25

15, Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island" 11/25/290707:33 PM DR.R*ARDFORD6:,Well, there was some indication.in the original NU.S. data that there was-a release mfromsome source;,*As to whether that-souree wasShippingport, S.I'dhae to look*upthe data again."I DR. SMITH: "I can't find any direct connection between the radiation levels

• measuired by N.U.Sand the Shippingport plant. All that mish-mash is so..

niscientific that obnfte would never:'be able to, draw any valid' scientificinferences; from :it."

t e uestionrferred ito the, discrep an bten heoinaN.S.analysis~fn the-reanalysis:."After N.U.S. reanalyzed its data,,the high.-adiation e.e s,

.isappeare

.. Did this reanalysis prove to you that the radioactivity was never there?"

DR. DEGROOT: "No, it.-did nt., It did convini*e me, that the reanalysis washighly unreliable., However, I am equallyV convinced 'that *the original,N,.U.S. data showing_

,:high 'levels caninot be,consideredr,teliable evidence. There are just'so many inconsistencieis~in their,work,,that,ý: I cannot accept any of, it..!. This comment doe's not mean that all their high readings were wrong. In fact, I find it highly unlikely tfathN.U.KScouldfhave made; sytematic :errors,*alhin one :direction; in several dlifferenit analytical technliques.

DR.;MORGAN: "'The explanations :advanced by N.US.did: not atakl co*nyince me..,,,

j Fori example,' if they. -had found something wrong in only-one,of-.their, systems jt,**

• would notizbe too Surprisingh,,Wejl make mistakes. But to*have systematic errors in

,,severaldifferent andrlytical techniques,, :all tending to produce,-only high readings -.

-the chances ýoflthataee quite low.

There appears to be.a strong suggestion of.

dishoesty,.and.thatestimate ias bornmeoutby-. written,"- comments fromDr. John Harley of, the A, EC,,whoseintegrityn J respect. Dr Harley ::found.that N.U.S. *seems tohave doctored some of.their-data to fit their-arguments., If a. person willdo that with one.set.of scientific, data;,it is very possible he will do it with another.... So, as far as I can see, there is no proof that the radioactivity levels around Shippingport were not quite high in the past. For a long period now the radioactivity levels in- ýilký in that ýgeneral area have been-hi:gh according to the

-.,ý,pUblic-health agency surveys, whichaire completely lseparate from the N.U.S.:

survey. This-has never been explained.,

DR. RADFORD: "Well, they had three separate laboratories reanalyze some of~the original 197 limilk and soil.samples,:and each lab got similar low. readings. If these samples were valid,: then it is-pretty clear there Was not much, radioactivity there to begin with. Now of course you could say they dug up soil from somewhere and analyzed it -

I cannot argue; that.",

DR. SMITH: "I think that the degree of scientific merit on one side really, was better. I would accept the explanations advanced by N.U.S."

Another question: "Was there any evidence in the mortality statistics that Shippingport had caused health damage, or did the statistics tend to refute this?"

http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp1S.html Page 20 of 25

45,.Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation FromHiroshima To Thr~eeMilelsland"

/5/200707:33 PA DR. DEGROOT: "Wecannot really decide the issue becauseQf thepoor quality of the available health statistics and because the population is not large enough for a

,oreally.;meaningful'statistical*'analydsis:*.,But there:is-certainly nothing inrf the,-available data t6olo0jwer the pr'babilityab

,that there'may have-.beendwh!alth-ddariagd,, t-jis:' te0,,that

. the einnsylania ýstatedHealth Depar.tment w.*ent back adddscovered errrs of a cetain type in its published infant mortalityvrate forfrAliquippa in1971-and that the ensuing corrections sharply lowered the rate.... However, I feel it is likely there were also errors of another.tpe'which could haveraised the:ratebackup again.

"Unfortunately, the resources were not available to investigate this. posslity. So, to onethat would reduce the,number of ;deaths and loerthe rateý,:. f nay ae Sth

, there iremainsome4 anomalies:ihathave-not beefi fully-explained. Fr example,.

I did an analysis of infant mortality in Aliquippa, and the rate definitely seems to i-'

have shifted upward recently. To my mind this upward shift is not fully explained

• Y-ydemograp c'orsocioeconormicfActors;.-I' do linow if aniy of it is due-t, Shipping port, but I thinkL.d" itsVfhainvsstigation.-

DR.

RMORGAN*: "1donfot'prsonally.feelthat the mortalfity'statisticsi refute the-possibility ofsome adverse effeets oý the-populati"ons

-healfthl.

Takinthlie original published data, it appears to me that there was an effect. However, after the Health-Deatetgot't'hro6ugh m'aki'n"g corr"e'ctions and applyhing, allthe epidemiological`

and *statlStlCa techimquesý to'the mortality rates for-the population-near-the reactor,:

.they `se'em to have ýcome up wit tAhe belief that there wer'e no signi ficant health

• .eff'cts.

,jI cannot help5 butbe at'little'skeptical:.To-tr'e, ifyod-are6goingto make all'thiese--o iections'fdr the population that mghthave inbeen=

expos6ed to*radiationh-

-y-u-liae-

-t--*--iosteanto xpodPse contrdl populat0ion. It'was-

-6 to giv ci I'

thewo a-

• very'0obVI&46int me-taifhe"h'ditwudhve madea difference' in at 'least one intstance.

_DRADFORDb eThestatisticaLevidrenavorsnthehyp hesis-haltheplantAid not cause any health damage. For example',: the mortality rates'do nt* de6cin-eewith'.

distance in all directions'away from the plant. The mortality rates for Beaver Coutia' as a whole. are 'quite lo, w;a:nd onthat basis onewould be 'h'ard-pressed to say that Aliquippa *as*ffected, sinat e therest of the counti' shouIldalso beNhigh....

Then 'h6'tntiermortality rates fOr Aliquippaare corrected'for "err'rs, yousee that "Aliquippa is now~orseoff than any oher town with compar ble population chaiaoterstics.,

DR. SMITH: "In my opinion the mortality statistics indicate there was noeffect from the reactor. The adjusted mortaity rates are ndt abnormally "high.

Onecomes to *the conclusion that theShippinglport area may not be the greatest place tolive,"

since-them*oraity rates are higher there thian in" matiny other communities, but'such highrates are normal, 'expected'occurrences in,places with the kind of demograhic and socio-econbmic characteristics you find around Shippingport....

Also, I have to find a scientific,link between radiation exposure and infant mortality, and this requires a great deal of what I call logical extrapolation' r inferences step by step through a process which proceeds from the birth of a child to its uJltimate-death, http:/ /www.raticalcom/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 2 1 of 2 5

15, Fa'llout'at Ship'pingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshimna To Three-Mile'island",

17 11/25/2007 07:33 PM and iVcaiinot find& sfficient evidence for that link inthis' case.'

Although the.majoirity *cleAly wer'e: deeply. suspicious of the."rieanalysis" 'of the-radiation data.

and the-!"'adjuistment" of the vial statistics, by Tokuhatda L wassurprised by Radford's comment that the mortalityzrates do notý'decline withdistanceaway, frontmSlippingport,aand that therefore the evidence, favored the hypothesis,that the planit did, not-cause any 'health damage.

Not until later, when I saw thefihal report, did I see what,could-haveled Radforidto this.

conclusion: In tTable, Tokuhata had listed the, cancer death,.rates according: to,distance from between 5 and, 10 miles, beyond 140miles, for Beaver, County;,andfor Pennsylvania as a whole.

And at the bottom of each-columi, there were. listed the.average mortalityrtes for-each-of these regions.,-

I:,I When I looked.:a them,j, was startd otfjind thatRadford, seemed, $o be,right. The lowestrate did in fact exist for the circle 5 niles-in radius aroundShippingpojý: 1i55.7compoaed-wjih 170.4 in the next, more distant region 5 to '1rmiles away from the plant, and a still higher rate of 182.3 for Pennsylvania as, a'.whole.,T~his certainly seemed, to suggest thatradiation was, good for one's health, and that.the closer one l~vedrto,the reactor, the better,ýoff one would be.

What exactly,had Tokuhata, done to arrive at this conclusion that qhad byiously convinced Radford and Smith? It,tookme a whilg to workit out, but w henr Idid.Iwastfurious. Looking down the entries for eachyearfrom, 1961 7to

, i971j saw that allareas,.showed lower,cancer rates in 1961 thanin,9,-1, but that the area.nearest to, Shippingport~had.happened to have bynfar the lowest rates to, begn with, well ],efore: anym.-major.releases.,had occ'urredfromnShippingport and well before any increases in cancer, mortalit*ydue :toShippirgport could-hayegshown upinthe statistfics'..Ithad beenmat 1agl ua Irltvlffrefo

~lutio' an-the eoe 6 wi-h relatively good health, cancer mortality having reached a low point of only 102.6 perl_00,900 population in 1964, lower than any other listed at any time for any area in the table. The

__average-for-i :thefirst four' years 1

.96,1--64 was only 1 3 A., cornpared with 155. 3 for the 5-'to-10 mile range and, 176.8 for Pennsylvania as a whole.!

But by the.time thatthe 1963-,6,4,Shippingport releases had had a chance to,act, namely,,by 1969-70, the area.nearest-to Shippingportý had increased the most, shooting up to a peak of more than double' its lowest rate of,1,02.6, namely, to 225.6 in 1969,* and 218.9 in 1970, while the, more distant areas increased much less.,,Thus,,the.5-to-lO-mile-distant zone had risen to 189.2 bY 1969 and 191.2 by 1970, while the area of Beaver County beyond 10 miles from.Shippingport was listed at only 164.9 and 164.3 for these years.

In fact, taking the last four years of 1 968 to 1971 in the table when cancers had -had a chance to manifest themselves, and comparing. them with the first four years&when the effect of any, releases could notyet haveappeared in the mortality statistics, it was clear that the data fully confirmed my earlier findings obtained from the Vital Statistics reports of Pennsylvania and Ohio by town and by county. The greatest increases had indeed taken place for the people, nearest to the -plant: a rise of 3,8 percent compared with only 22 percent for the next zone and 20 percent for the area beyond 10 miles, while Pennsylvania as a whole showed only a 6 percent increase incancer mortality.

http:/ /www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 2 2 of 2 5

"15,'Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima ToThree-Mile:lsland".

11/25/2007 07:33 PK Thus, by averaging over all the,.eley'en--yea.rs listed:inthe.*table¢ so.as to include the years :of.

lowest cancer rates for the rural areararound Shippingport before the plant could have had any effect on cancer. rates, :Tokuhata had successfullly managed to givye the.imrpression that the closer one-lived,7to the plant, theileýss was-the' risk, oif cainer!

.~

.~:

,L' There was one question-thathad, remajnediunanfswered even by thed interna documents &from -the A

file s*:*Ho.'and wherein the'plant did the radioactive-gasesescape -without-being officially reported, as -requi.fedd by' both istate andd;federall: regulations?

tot in

. tho e alae e

en t

f deted mhnner this time not through the mail but in a phone call late one evening a few weeks after the Aliquippa-hearingS' had ended.,

J, The caller said that what had been brought out at the hearings so far was in the right di~rection,.

but that the full story behind the high radioactivity in the area could be found by putting the plant operators on the standjin theforthco ming liensingihearings ýthat *were Io beheld,by the-.

ABC-later in the year. What we:needed to doiwas :to-h~ave the men explain -during cross-examination the details of the treatment system for the radioactive gases;andthen,,force.them,,

under oath to, say whether they had found any anomalous conditions in the hold-up tanks where the-radioactive Raýseswere-supposed to be stord:d`.fr many 'weeks ojallow theshorter-lied radioactiyity to-decay before: tey would be discharged from thermonitored stack.

This was,"of.,course the kind of. break we hadhoped for. Togetherwith the internal memoranda of the AEC that had revealed the attemprtto-explain away,the findings of,high rdioavtivnityin the air, the soil, the milk, the water, and the local diet, it would complete our case for arguing that the DuquesnelightCompany shouldnot.be*...ven, alcenseto o-peate two even lar gn er..

nuclear reactbris,-, since their employees were either too inicom peteit ortoo cori",upt.to do so:,,

without endangering the health and safety of the public.

And so [obtained..the talehe gas-treatment system for the-Shippingport-plant',from, ar-ticles published in,the. literat4re,-and explained the complex'system to the attOrhey for thecity,'Al Brandon, whowould have10to do the'actual. cross-examination.-.;,.

The hearinhgs by the-Atomic, Safety and&Licensing 'B6ard ;on the. operating permit,,.for Beaver,.

Valley UnitI. and the construction'permit for Unit4I finally got.under way in the fall of 1973 in the Federal Court House in Pittsburgh. Although we;had few illusions, as to. what, the ýultimate,.

decision would eventually turn out to be, we at least hoped to expose to the public what had actually been-'going on, behind the scenes at the Shippingport plant,'widely advertised all over the world by Westinghouse and Duquesne Light as&the: cleanest' and safest nuclear reactor in the world.

For a while 'we did, not know whether we' would be allowed. to put the operators, of'the plant on.

the stand. -But then the ruling came 'down, and it all, really happened.

The first few men;. when shown the diagrams of -the gas-treatment system, claimed that they were not aware of anything abnormal., Butý suddenly, one of the men, when pressed by Brandon as to whether he had ever noticed anything unusual in,the operation of the :system,. and whether there might not have been some leakages from the gas-storage tanks in the yard, admitted that http://www.ratical.com/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp15.html Page 2 3 of 2 5

15, Fallout at Shippingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima'To Three-Mile Island" 11/25/2007 07:33 PM he had observed -something-that had caused himrto become concerned.

f Somte :time -in.late,1970 or.early. 1971 he had 'noticed an unUsual, drop inf the-amount of recorded radioactive gas releases in the plant log, and,: he, had mentioned it to,,his Supervisor, who told.,

him not to worry about it. Questioned by Brandon he admitted that the situation persisted over a perindof aE few, weeks;s and that he then, decided-to ýinvestigate what' might be going on for

-himself.He went, out~into the yardm where the arge lgasstorage~tanks-were located and found that a lock on one of the rusty valves had,`bden broken.- The val-ve.lookedias if it might be.

leaking. Using a small brush to paint a soap solution over the suspected area, he saw bubbles Again, he said that he reported the situation to his supervisor, who t6old him that he would.take' care of it, and that he should not concern himself with this problem any more since this was not partof hisjob*.'

As-andon expected,' none of=the* supervisors he

-put on the §tand could recall this incident, and the local-newspaper that. evening !rreported.that the plant personnel-had; testified that there were`,-

no' problems';inthe'plant.-

Dr. Morton Goldmah,.the.vice-president,of N.U.S&. and. formertpublic-health officer ini,the U.S.

Department of Health, Education adi elfare, testified under:oatithat atll th eir !early high,.

readings of radioactivity had been in error, substantiating the testimony of the plant supervisors thatmno unusual -*or unreported: releases could, have taken place,;and a few'months later the Atomic Safetyand'Licensing'Bofd d'ssued the-6permits for the -new reactors.

Once again, the industry had, managed to, win the-,battle 4in the, special: courts set'up by the AEC,,,

which :,controlled *the judges;, the, st and the rul'ek of. procedure for the -benefit of-;the industry it was designed to promote and protect.

It was only the people that -weremthe losers.. Two yearsafter the licenses were granted and five..

years, afterhthe hg-h radi'nhlevels hadfieen measure-diy~th-NTUS-SCorpration, witlrth*e".le7

• same. time delayasi~n Hiroshima, the cancer rates, in B.aver County :an Pittsburgh-climbed to a second peak. They rose a full 23 percent in Beaver County and an unprecedented 9 percent in Pittsburgh in the'course of only'three years: The! rise' to'*n' all-timtle high of 304:8 per,100,000,;

population t6ok place after a generatiofn of. c6stly' efforts to reduce'. the ordinary pollution from fossil fuels in the air and chemicals in the water.

But the heaviest price of all was to be paid by the men:who worked at Shippingport, as I was to learn at afiother kind' of hearingat Aliquippa seven years later.:

When preparing testimony for a hearing before a workmen's compensation referee in behalf of the family of a'man who had 'died of bone-rmarrow-type leukemia while, working at the: Beaver Valley nuclear plant next to the old S-hippingport reactor, I was shown the death certificates of twenty-one other operating engineers who had died between 1970 and 1979. All of them had been working with pumps and other heavy equipment to clean up the radioactive spills and move the radioactive wastes on the site. Out of these twenty-two men, ten had died of cancer, more;than twice the number normally expected.

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15, Fallout at Shlppingport, "Secret Fallout, Low-Level Radiation From Hiroshima To Three-Mile Island" 11/25/2007 07:33 PI1 Even more.;significantly, four of these ten were of the bone-malrowlwrelated type, namely multiple myeloma and myelogenous leukemia, known to.be most readily induced by radiation,-

when less than one in twenty cancers of this type would have been expected.

The men who worked at Shippingport were only too well acquainted with these facts. There was a common saying among them: high pay and early death.

Yet there was also a sign of hope for the future. After Shippingport was shut down by an explosion of hydrogen gas in its electrical generator early in 1974, infant mortality in the town ef tpii,,p*n tb per boni 976 If the public could only learn these facts as the nation entered the third century of its revolution against the arbitrary authority of another distant government careless of the inalienable human rights to life and liberty, even the tragic tide of rising cancer and damage to the unborn could.

eventually be reversed.

tI ToC I Pre.

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II

ISBN 1-56858-066-5 5 1495 9781568 580661 1

THE ENEMY WITHIN THE HIGH COST OF LIVING NEAR NUCLEAR REACTORS BREAST CANCER, AIDS, LOW BIRTHWEIGHTS, AND OTHER RADIATION-INDUCED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY EFFECTS BY JAY M. GOULD WITH MEMBERS OF THE RADIATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH PROJECT ERNEST J. STERNGLASS JOSEPH J. MANGANO WILLIAM MCDONNELL FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS NEW YORK/LONDON

© 1996 Jay M. Gould TA Published in the United States by Four Walls Eight Windows 39 West 14th Street, Suite 503 New York, NY 10011 U.K. offices:

Forev Four Walls Eight Windows/Turnaround Oven 27 Horsell Road London, N51 XL, England

.1 4

1. Inti All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data

2. Fal base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means,

3. Lov including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, with-out the prior written permission of the publisher.

4. Bre, N

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

5 G The enemy within: the high cost of living near nuclear reactors:

5 Gec breast cancer, AIDS, low birthweights, and other radiation-induced N

immune deficiency effects / by Jay M. Gould, with members of the

6. Wh Radiation and Public Health Project, Ernest J. Sternglass, Joseph J.

h Mangano, William McDonnell.

7. Th(

p. cm.

8. Fal Includes bibliographical references and index.

9.IsI ISBN 1-56858-066-5

1. Nuclear reactors-Health aspects. 2. Radioactive fallout-.

APP Health aspects. 3. Inmmunosupression-Risk factors.

4. Immunodeficiency-Complications. I. Gould, Jay M.

PP-,

1I. Radiation and Public Health Project.

A594 RA569.E55 1996 616.9'897--dc2O 96-789 pl CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS Forew ord................................................

1 Overview and Summary.........

15 1.

Introduction:

Fallout and County Breast Cancer Rates...... 23

2. Fallout and Immune Deficiency.......................

33

3. Low Birthweights and Baby Boomer Immune Deficiency.....

67

4. Breast Cancer Mortality and Emissions from N uclear Reactors..............

87

5. Geographic Differences in Breast Cancer M ortality since 1950.................................

101

6. Why the National Cancer Institute Failed to Find Increased Cancer Risk Near Nuclear Reactors...........

117

7. The Nature of Increased Cancer Risk Near Reactors........

127

8. Fallout and Breast Cancer..............................

137

9. Is It Too Late?.................

191 Appendix A: How to Calculate Breast Cancer Mortality Rates Near Nuclear Reactors.........................

199 Appendix B: Sixty Reactor Sites and Computer Generated Maps of Nearby Counties............................

203 Appendix C: Radioactive Materials Released from Nuclear Pow er Plants.......................................

301 Appendix D: How the National Cancer Institute Confirmed that Proximity to Reactors Increases Breast Cancer Risk... 321 References.......................................331 In dexf.................................................

339 I.