Tuesday, Sept. 30, 1997 | 9:40 a.m.
The government's failure to release information linking nuclear fallout from Nevada Test Site above-ground explosions to possible thyroid cancers could have caused more cases of the disease.
That is the conclusion of an article in the November issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on the eve of a Senate hearing into the National Cancer Institute study.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, as part of a Senate appropriations hearing, will ask the National Cancer Institute Wednesday why it took so long to release the radioactive iodine study and what people who were exposed should do.
The article's authors, Pat Ortmeyer and Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, found out that nuclear experts and the photo industry knew of the radioactive effects from the first atomic bomb well before the public was made aware.
For 14 years, NCI has studied risks to Americans across the country exposed to radioactive fallout from above-ground experiments at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, in the 1950s and early 1960s. The agency released preliminary findings in July. The final report is due in October.
The NCI said in August that fallout from the blasts probably had caused 10,000 to 75,000 extra thyroid cancers.
While the government said for years that no one was exposed to dangerous levels of iodine-131, its radiation spread to children through cow and goat milk. Federal officials warned photo experts, such as Kodak Inc., of the dangers to their products but didn't warn the public.
U.S. officials knew from the first atomic test, Trinity, triggered at Alamogordo, N.M., on July 16, 1945, that milk could deliver iodine doses to the human thyroid.
That first test dumped radiation on Indiana, 1,000 miles away, causing Eastman Kodak customers to complain of fogged film. A Kodak physicist found the cause: The film had been wrapped in radioactive corn husks.
Radioactive clouds from the Test Site blasts blanketed the country and left "hot spots" in New York, Massachusetts, Idaho, the Dakotas, Montana and New Mexico.
While government officials told Congress in 1959 and as late as this year that radioactive iodine gave a 0.2 to 0.4 rad -- 0.4 rad is roughly the dose from one mammogram -- American children actually received from 6 to 14 rads on average.
In the 24 most heavily contaminated counties, children got 27 to 112 rads. After the Test Site's experiment code-named "Harry" in 1953, children living in St. George, Utah, might have received thyroid doses of up to 440 rads, according to the study.
After testing moved to Nevada, Kodak complained that radiation fogged film in Rochester, N.Y. The Atomic Energy Commission agreed to give the company advance warning, including "expected distribution of radioactive material in order to anticipate local contamination."
But the AEC did not provide milk producers or consumers with such early warning, although the milk pathway became clear by 1953.
Makhijani and Ortmeyer argue that rather than keep data from the public, the government should release its information so those exposed and their doctors may get health checkups.
"The failure to provide adequate warning of the dangers of fallout should not be compounded by a failure to release full information to the millions affected by Iodine-131 fallout from atmospheric testing," they concluded.
A spokesman for Kodak, Paul Allen, gave an account similar to the institute's about how his company had discovered the fallout. Some film was fogged because it had been packed in a material made from corn husks that had been contaminated by fallout, for example. But Allen said no one still working at the company knew whether Kodak had been warned by the government.
But Thomas Dufficy, executive vice president of the Photographic and Imaging Manufacturers Association, said the government had given regular warnings to his industry. Dufficy, who joined the group in 1967, when it was called the National Association of Photographic Manufacturers, said government officials would call to give a warning after any radiation release, including nuclear blasts by foreign countries.
After the companies were warned, they could wait a few months before using materials that might have been contaminated with iodine-131, which is radioactive and produced in abundance by nuclear tests, to let the level of radioactivity drop.
Harkin, the ranking minority member of an Appropriations Committee subcommittee that will hold the hearing Wednesday, said, "It really is odd that the government would warn Kodak about its film but it wouldn't warn the general public about the milk it was drinking."
Iodine-131 is absorbed by cows and incorporated into milk. In humans, it concentrates in the thyroid gland, where it can cause cancer.
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