For the week of March 13 - 19, 2002

Downwinder effect 
back in news

Nuclear fallout study ranks 
Blaine County high

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By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

Blaine County received relatively high amounts of radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons testing compared to other counties in the United States, according to a new report from the federal government.

(click on graphic to enlarge) 

Above-ground nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site before 1962 spread the radioactive isotope, Cesium-137, across the country with some areas of higher concentration, including Blaine County, the report states. Only about 20 other counties received more Cesium-137. Exposure to radiation from the isotope would be equal to about one chest X-ray a year.

The federal government studied the prevalence of 20 other radioactive isotopes spread by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom and United States during atmospheric testing across the globe before the testing was banned in 1963.

Preliminary estimates show that Blaine County was in an area where the total radiation dose to the red bone marrow of children born after Jan. 1, 1951 from global fallout was among the highest.

The report does not estimate the health effects of the fallout on local populations. However, fallout from tests across the globe probably caused 15,000 cancer deaths in U.S. residents after 1951, according to the report.

The federal government began assessing the effects of all forms of fallout radiation for the first time after a 1997 report from the National Cancer Institute indicated widespread prevalence of radioactive Iodine-131 from fallout during the 1950s and ’60s.

Blaine County was one of five counties in the United States with the highest levels of Iodine-131, the cancer institute stated.

The new report’s cancer estimates add an important new link between atmospheric nuclear testing and human health, said Arjun Makhijani, a researcher for the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

The federal government should help spread public awareness of the risks, and provide special training for doctors, in such "hot spots" as Blaine County, Makhijani said, but so far that hasn’t happened.

"Right here in Idaho, we know the news is grim. Now the job—the U.S. government’s job—is to take the news to small towns all over this region and help unsuspecting people whose health has been damaged by nuclear weapons," said Margaret McDonald Stewart, development director of the Snake River Alliance.

The report does not link individual cancer cases to fallout. But accurate general information can help people in high-fallout areas like Kenneth Strickler, who was born in Challis in 1954 and learned in 1998 that he had thyroid cancer, according to the IEER. Iodine-131 has been linked to thyroid cancer.

The cancer institute report "indicates that some farm children…in high fallout areas were as severely exposed as the worst exposed children after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident," Makhijani said.

Dr. Scott Earle, who was a surgeon based in Sun Valley from 1959 to 1971, however, said he does not remember encountering a single case of thyroid cancer during that time. He said it’s "not likely" that people exposed to Iodine-131 before 1962 would develop thyroid cancer decades later.

Iodine-131 loses its radioactivity only a few days after a nuclear test. So, people born after the tests would not likely be exposed to radiation from it. Other isotopes from the testing, however, retain their radioactivity much longer.

For the new report, researchers for the Department of Health and Human Services used complex computer systems to analyze weather patterns, population trends and other data to determine general public exposure to radiation.

Western states containing counties with the highest Cesium-137 fallout include Idaho, California, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, the report states.

The IEER, combining data from the new and old reports, estimates that 80,000 people who lived in the United States from 1951 to 2000 will contract some form of cancer due to fallout.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who pushed the Department of Health and Human Services for further study after the 1997 report, criticized the department last month for "stalling and obstruction" in releasing the full results of its research.

The new report is a 15-page synopsis of a 600-page document that the department completed last summer but has so far declined to release publicly.

The 15-page document is dated August 2001, but Harkin’s office stated it did not receive it until last month.

 

 

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