-Caveat Lector- from: http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/28/usat-nuke-sidebar.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/28/usat-nuke-sidebar.htm";> Despite clamor, fallout study still unreleased</A> ----- 02/27/2002 - Updated 09:29 PM ET Despite clamor, fallout study still unreleased By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY WASHINGTON � A government study estimating that about 15,000 Americans died from cancer as a result of Cold War nuclear fallout has been withheld from the public for nearly a year. The $1.85 million study, which occupied several top-notch scientists for two years, has been sitting in administrative limbo since early last summer while a host of local health officials, citizens groups and researchers have been clamoring to see it. "The process seems aimed at slowing down information release and minimizing the consequences," says Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a coalition of local and national citizens groups.
"This study can help identify people at risk, and that could save lives if those people can get screening or early treatment for some of these cancers," says Schaeffer. Portions of the still-unreleased study were obtained by USA TODAY. It was prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. Its release has been delayed for "internal reviews" at the Department of Health and Human Services, which controls the two research institutions. Officials say the scramble to deal with terrorism-related duties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks also has held up the study's release. That has done little to assuage those waiting to see it, including members of Congress. "Some federal government bureaucrat has been holding onto this information for the past months and years," says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who was instrumental in launching the study in 1998. "No more stalling. We need to fully assess the threats posed by the radioactive (fallout)." The study's delay is straining the already tense relationship between the agencies responsible for producing the study and the groups and public officials waiting to see it. And the resulting distrust could have a significant bearing on the debate over what the government should do in response to the study's findings. The roots of the conflict stretch back to 1997, when the government first acknowledged that fallout from nuclear weapons trials at its Nevada Test Site had spread across much of the country. The admission came in the form of an initial study that focused on the spread of iodine-131, one of many radioactive elements in the fallout. That study estimated that the iodine had caused tens of thousands of thyroid cancers among people born after 1951, when the Nevada tests began. Because of the low fatality rate of thyroid cancer, it is estimated that about 2,500 of those cases were fatal. But that study sat unreleased for years before it was issued in 1997. The delay sparked a congressional probe and a barrage of charges that federal officials had suppressed the iodine data. The study also raised more questions than it answered: What about all the other radioactive elements in the fallout, many of which are longer-lived and more dangerous than the iodine? What about fallout from the many tests not done in Nevada, such as those in the former Soviet Union or the Pacific? What was the human toll? Congress ordered a sweeping follow-up study that would lay the groundwork for answering those questions and others. The first phase of that investigation yielded the study now at issue. New findings Portions obtained by USA TODAY contain some startling findings. Among them: A wide range of highly radioactive elements, some of which remain dangerous for hundreds of years, fell over large swaths of the country. "Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout," the study reports, "and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure." In the most-affected counties, the fallout exposure for an average person would be roughly equivalent to receiving one chest X-ray for every year of residency since 1951. Just one such X-ray is more radiation than doctors typically recommend for infants and pregnant women. Many areas that weren't thought to have suffered much fallout from the nuclear trials at the Nevada Test Site, including parts of California and the Pacific Northwest, now appear to have suffered significant fallout from nuclear tests in the Pacific and the former Soviet Union. Moreover, some areas that suffered substantial amounts of fallout from the Nevada tests, such as parts of north and central Idaho, actually were hit with additional fallout from the tests in other parts of the world. Seth Tuler, a member of the federal Advisory Committee on Energy-Related Epidemiological Research, says the panel was supposed to be given a chance to review the new study. However, the committee has yet to receive a copy or be invited to meet with researchers on the project. Tuler says risks from the fallout are ongoing because many of the isotopes remain radioactive for so many years. "From a public-health perspective, it's important to identify where these contaminants fell," says Tuler, a researcher at the Social and Environmental Research Institute in Worcester, Mass. "It allows people to take steps to limit their risks. If they think they might have a problem or if they're worried, they can ask their doctors." The question is whether the government should be advising people to do just that � or whether federal money should be spent to actually go out and screen people proactively. Cancer and public policy The problem is that it is essentially impossible to identify specific individuals who may have gotten cancer from the fallout. There are too many confounding factors � genetic predisposition, behavioral risks such as smoking, exposure to chemicals or any number of other unpredictable risks � to pinpoint the cause of any particular cancer. Therein lies the problem for government officials. The uncertainties surrounding the cancer figures in the new study are substantial. The cancer estimates are generalized, averaged across the entire country. The study's conclusions about where fallout was heaviest are not necessarily a good predictor of which people are most likely to have developed cancer. "Hard numbers don't exist in this kind of world," says David Rush, a Tufts University professor of community health and board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group pushing for a federally sponsored public education campaign to alert at-risk populations to the danger from fallout. "The disease estimates (in the study) have a rapid possibility of change," Rush adds. "The implications of those (radiation) doses may be very different five years from now. We don't know a lot about the relationship between low-dose exposure and cancer." Even so, Rush, like many pushing for a fuller global accounting of the health risks tied to nuclear testing, says that a debate on what the government should do is healthy. And that seems likely: The new fallout study is essentially a feasibility study to determine what other research is possible to better define the health threats of fallout. There's an urgent need for follow-up, scientists say, particularly when it comes to honing researchers' ability to more accurately predict cancer risks from fallout exposure. "It's important," Rush says. "God didn't make this problem. We did." Front Page News Money Sports Life Tech Weather ShopTerms of service Privacy Policy How to advertise About us � Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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