Suffering Effects of 50's A-Bomb Tests

NY Times ^ | September 5, 2004 | SARAH KERSHAW

[neverdem]

If they're anything like Chernobyl, there's little effect. If they're anything like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's a health benefit in increased longevity and decreased incidence of disease.

Could you explain that?

[okie01]

Your neck of the woods ping...

[neverdem]

I'm sorry to read about the loss of your mother. Thank's for the info.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the map. Where did you find it?

[redhead]

"I think they got several things wrong with this. Nevada is south of Idaho, so a north wind would probably not bring radiation to Idaho from the Nevada testing grounds. However, the prevailing wind in the area of Idaho mentioned in the article is from the northwest, directly downstream from the Hanford nuclear reservation in the state of Washington. We know that sometime in the '50s, Hanford released 5,000 curies of radioactive iodine "just to see what it would do." That stuff would have swept over the town of Emmett in Idaho, as well as my old home town of Weiser. My mother died of thyroid cancer in 1988."

I'm a "Downwinder," too. We moved to Payson (Utah Valley) in 1949, and lived there for the entire decade of the fifties, until 1964. The prevailing winds in the valley are from the southwest.

I remember the iodine tablets they gave us at school every month, and I know that now, my two sisters and I all have seriously impaired thyroid function, in spite of the iodine.

[COEXERJ145]

Here are some documents concerning exposure to fallout from nuclear testing for those who are interested.

http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/197594.pdf

http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/publications/historyreports/Radiological.htm

[LibWhacker]

Found it in an FR post a while back . . . http://www.nuclearfiles.org/remaps/

[COEXERJ145]

[neverdem]

Thanks for the links and maps.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Here in Emmett, residents have spent the last several days making lists of relatives and neighbors - living and dead - with cancer. They have rushed to a local bakery, aptly named the Rumor Mill, where the owner, Tona Henderson, has produced a form letter of her own that residents can fill out and send to the National Academy of Sciences.

A committee of the academy is taking public comment for a study on nuclear fallout and public health to be submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services, said Bill Kearney, a spokesman for the academy. While many scientists and medical experts have said there is a connection between exposure to Iodine-131 and greater risk of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer, a link between the fallout and other diseases has not been established.

Still, in Emmett, dozens of residents have gathered in coffee shops and farmhouses to talk about cancer. Many furiously said they suspected their radiation exposure was connected to their cancers.

"This whole thing is wrong," said Richard Rynearson, 62, who is dying of colon and liver cancer, and who ran a heating and air-conditioning business until he became too sick to work. "Somebody needs to own up to the fact that they messed up."

Junk science alert.

Let's review the facts. The residents of this area got about 15 rads in the space of several years (some few may have been exposed to as much as 100 rads). A Rad is a unit of absorption, a Rem is a unit of exposure (a more accurate measure of how threatening the absorbed radiation is). The most dangerous radiation exposures tend to have 1 Rad = 1 Rem. We'll use that as our worst case scenario.

Short term exposures to radiation are the most dangerous, while long term exposure to low levels has no observably deleterious effect. Every American absorbs between .06 and .6 Rems of radiation per year just from his natural surroundings. Studies have shown that doses below 100 rems have no observable effect on cancer rates, and that doses as high as 300 rems are necessary to get significant (50%) cancer rates. So, what does this story tell us? Most exposures were far below the threshold for any effect at all, while a handful may have been exposed to the very lowest amount that might have an effect.

Second, epidemiology is a very strict science, and what we have is very anecdotal information in the story. Radioactive iodine causes mostly thyroid cancer, yet the residents blame many different varieties of cancer on the fallout. This is a perfect example of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc logical fallacy ("after this, therefore because of this"). Fact: nearly three in four Americans will get cancer of some kind and nearly one in four will die of it. Cancer is a disease of the elderly, and it is a natural function of the body's cellular systems breaking down and malfunctioning due to aging. Epidemiologists track disease and cancer threats based on quantifiable and measurable increases in effects. For example, when coupled with specific exposure to a known substance, higher rates of rare forms of cancer, cancer localized in patients (such as in the liver or thyroid), or cancer occuring at young ages all are valid indicators of a possible effect. But clusters of cancers occur in then population at random as well (that's what "random" means), so rigorous statistical methodology is necessary. Besides, someone has to be the person that gets the one-in-a-million cancer...

Continued below ->

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Knowing this, re-read the article. What you have is one person that had thyroid cancer writing a letter, and groups of people now using hindsight (as opposed to careful study and statistics) to try and group a large number of disparate illnesses together. The story quickly glosses over the lack of substatiation from scientific sources (see the bold part of the quote), but that's because it is more interested in "scare" than "fact."

This is Love Canal or DDT redux. But expect our tax dollars to get drained to pay people whose cancers have nothing to do with the fallout, simply because big government wants to show it cares (and cover its own a** from the scientific illiterates out there who easily get stirred up about these enviro-scares).

[Travis McGee]

PING!

[wideminded]

Looks like the Canadians might want to see the map in #13 extended.

[Squantos]

HUA.........

Stay safe.....

[Smokin' Joe]

Seems to me they had an accident at the SL-1 reactor there in the '50's also. You might check that out.

[Smokin' Joe]

Anything that takes 40 or 50 years to kill you cannot be logically classified as an enormous threat.

WHEW! I can keep smoking!

[Smokin' Joe]

A large number of my friends born in 55-6-7 in Western North Dakota have died of cancer. Hmmmmmm. Maybe coincidence, maybe not...(plumbob tests)

[RadioAstronomer]

This is no different than the power line cancer scare of a few years ago.

[RadioAstronomer]

Seems to me they had an accident at the SL-1 reactor

I have the report form that accident. The reactor operators died in that one.

[Smokin' Joe]

I Understand there was at least one tech in the containment who took a while to remove. Not sure about releases, though.