Bush Kills Nuclear fallout Study, More Cover-ups Options

[theroyprocess]

Bush Administration Kills Nuclear Fallout Study
Downwinders Be Damned

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
March 30, 2005 Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03302005.html

Just as the Bush administration contemplates ordering up a new generation of nuclear weapons, which may in turn spark a new round of nuclear testing in the high deserts of Nevada, the Center for Disease Control, a federal outpost in Atlanta charged with supervising the nation's physical well-being, pulled the plug on a long-term study into the dire health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest.

The study, which has been underway for seven years, has been tracking the thyroid conditions of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada in 1965, at the height of testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site. The lead researcher, Dr. Joseph L. Lyons, a professor at the University of Utah, was informed via a curtly worded letter on March 21 that funding for the study had been inexplicably yanked.

The letter terminating the research in midstream was written by Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects. McGeehin claimed the study was killed because of financial considerations. "The CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period," McGeehin wrote. "We recommend that you take measures to close out this study by the end of the current budget period, which will occur on August 31, 2005."

The Utah Thyroid Disease Study hardly seems like a financial burden on the federal purse. In seven years, the investigation into thyroid cancers linked to radioactive fallout has cost the federal treasury only $8,049,988, roughly the amount the Pentagon spends every two hours in Iraq. Or consider this: from 1990 to 1995, the federal government spent more than $90 million in legal fees to fight off claims from downwinders and workers at nuclear weapons plants over the health consequences of bomb-making and testing.

Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Deseret News.

The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977.

Located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established in 1951, sprawls over 1,500 square miles of desert basin and range country. Between 1951 and 1992, the Pentagon and Department of Energy conducted at least 925 nuclear blasts at the site, more than 100 of the explosions were above ground, open-air tests, which cast a radioactive pall over much of the American West. Even the underground tests vented plumes of radiation.

A 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute reported that the fallout from the blasts deposited large amounts of radioactive iodine across the lower-48 states. The report concluded that the contamination was so severe that it may cause as many as 70,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone. By way of comparison, that's 65,000 more casualties than Saddam Hussein is alleged to have caused in his poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988.

It was Lyons's groundbreaking study in 1979 for the New England Journal of Medicine which proved that radioactive fallout from the open-air nuclear tests in Nevada had lead to increased incidents of cancer in communities downwind of the blasts. A subsequent study demonstrated that those same downwind communities faced an increased likelihood of leukemia deaths. These two reports prompted Congress to finally enact a fallout compensation measure for downwinders.

In 1993, Lyons and his colleagues began studying the thyroid conditions of former school children who lived downwind of the blasts. That research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the schoolchildren exposed to the highest levels of radiation were 3.4 times more likely to suffer from thyroid tumors than would be expected.

These same students had been monitored by federal researchers until 1970, who, unsurprisingly, claimed not to have found any link between exposure to fallout and thyroid tumors. But Lyons and his colleagues began examining those students as adults and found that 58 of the former downwinders had nodules on their thyroids. Of those, 8 were malignant tumors and 11 were benign tumors.

This initial study buttressed the theory held by Lyons and many other scientists that there is a lifetime risk to fallout exposure and that thyroid problems in particular develop very slowly across a span of decades. These results prompted Lyons to apply for funding from the CDC for a larger study that would examine the thyroid conditions of all 4,000 former schoolchildren in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, who were originally identified in 1965 as being exposed to the most extreme levels of fallout from the blasts. The incidence of thyroid problems in those students was to be compared to a control group in Safford, Arizona.

One of the initial problems Lyons ran into was the realization that the radioactive fallout extended farther than he anticipated, meaning that most of the population of Safford had also been exposed to radiation, though in much smaller doses. Fallout has gone global. When it comes to thermonuclear weapons, we all live downwind.

By the end of last year, the researchers had tracked down more than 90 percent of the former students, most of whom agreed to be examined for the study. "We've already reported that there's an excess of tumors of the thyroid gland," Lyons said. "And we've got pretty strong indications that there are other disease problems that ought to be looked at."

Originally, Lyons planned to have the study completed within five years. But he encountered continual meddling and roadblocks from the CDC that consumed both time and much of the grant money. "The federal government put all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles in our path that were not part of the original agreement," Lyons contends.

The agreement called for Lyons research to be overseen by the University of Utah. Then the CDC said that the study needed to be scrutinized by an institutional review board at the CDC, a requirement that delayed the research by two years. Next the CDC informed Lyons that he had to submit the plans for his study to a panel at the National Academy of Sciences, an inquisition that lasted another two years. Then the CDC called for a yet another review of Lyons's methodology by a three-person panel at the Department of Energy.

When Lyons and his colleagues finally got out into the field and began to get results, the CDC pulled the plug. "Essentially, they said, 'Tough luck, we don't want your study'," said Lyons. "I've been working on this now since 1977. I'm about to retire and I'd really like to finish up this thyroid study and get some definitive answers."

Those answers might prove to be unsettling for the Bush administration as it pursues a new generation of nuclear weapons and grooms the killing grounds of the Nevada Test Site for another go-round of nuclear blasts.

People are getting sick and dying the American Southwest and the Bush administration doesn't want them to learn why.

Downwinders be damned.

For more information on visit: http://www.downwinders.org


* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *

[theroyprocess]

More Chernobyl revelations. Nuclear power IS NOT clean power. It is without
a doubt, the most dangerous technology of the industrial age.
==========


French Authorities Didn't Disclose Extent of Chernobyl Radiation - Experts

BBC Monitoring International Reports, March 27, 2005
Source: Radio France Internationale, Paris, in French 1600 gmt 27 Mar 05

(Presenter) Almost 20 years after the Chernobyl (nuclear) disaster, a report says the French authorities lied by omission at the time. In 1986 the authorities were aware of the degree of radioactivity of the Chernobyl cloud but didn't say everything on this issue. These are the first conclusions of an experts' report ordered by the judge in charge of the investigation in France. These pieces of information, which were revealed yesterday, do not surprise Roland Desbordes, the president of the Criirad, the Commission for Research and Independent Information on Radioactivity. The Criirad brought a civil action in 2001. It accuses the authorities of not having reacted sufficiently:

(Desbordes) Minimum measures, which were taken in all neighbouring countries, were not taken. On the contrary, people were encouraged not to change their habits, while in neighbouring countries some countermeasures were taken, that is to say in relation to children. Some products were withdrawn from consumption. Perhaps this wasn't satisfactory, perhaps this wasn't completely satisfactory, but in any case people tried, governments tried to do things. People here did exactly the opposite.

But today what is most distressing today for us is that, from the point of view of the authorities, people continue to say that things were managed well in 1986, that is to say panic was avoided. And if tomorrow there were to be another accident, things would be reproduced and done again in exactly the same manner. For us this is obviously absolutely not satisfactory. For the time being in France people have learnt no lessons from Chernobyl, except that it would be necessary to communicate better, which is indeed a minimum requirement, but it's not sufficient.

(Presenter) That was Roland Desbordes, the president of the Criirad, the Commission for Research and Independent Information on Radioactivity. His remarks were recorded by Marie-Morgane Le Moal (name phonetic)-by RFiles.

* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *

:nuke:

[Freedom4all]

The French people have been educated about nuclear radiation; they are not easily swayed by emotional claims that have no basis in fact.

"In France, unlike in America, nuclear energy is accepted, even popular..."
Why the French like Nuclear Energy

The French knew that the health risks from the radiation reaching France from Chernobyl was less than the health risks from the radiation reaching you right now, from your computer monitor while you are reading this... I hope this helps explain why the French government did not act hysterical... like the anti-nuclear groups.

The French also know that there is no scientific evidence that shows low-level radiation in the range of natural background radiation to be harmful. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that low-levels of radiation may be beneficial: Radiation thresholds
Low level radiation hormesis health effects

Chernobyl, the real story

Natural Nuclear Reactors

A DOSE OF NUCLEAR RADIATION

Nuclear Radiation — How Toxic is it?

Nuclear power should be central. Despite its outstanding record, it has instead been relegated by its opponents to the same twilight zone of contentious ideological conflict as abortion and evolution. It deserves better. Nuclear power is environmentally safe, practical, and affordable. It is not the problem—it is one of the best solutions.
Back to the Nuclear Future

"Environmental opposition to nuclear energy is the greatest misunderstanding and mistake of the century..."
Dr. James Lovelock

[WHIGHF]

More Chernobyl revelations. Nuclear power IS NOT clean power.

That is not necessarily a correct conclusion. I would agree that Chernobyl, Ignalina, Sosnovy Bor and other reactors of the same design are not a shining example of safety. However, these are machines that have been designed a long time ago. Improvements have been made since.

It is without
a doubt, the most dangerous technology of the industrial age.

Sure. Many things are dangerous when used irresponsibly.