2.2.2
Results.
The NNTPR has identified and assigned external gamma doses to virtually
all of the Navy test participants.
The summaries in this section detail its
fulfillment of assigned responsibilities.
Response to File A Personnel.
As of 1 May 1986, the NNTPR had mailed nearly
20,000 File A letters with final statements on participation and radiation
dose to Navy personnel who had called in on the DNA toll-free number (5).
Approximately 300 additional letters will be sent as dose reconstructions are
completed.
The NNTPR has also mailed more than 1,500 final letters to
Hiroshima/Nagasaki occupation troops and to callers who did not participate
either in the occupation or the nuclear tests (9).
Assignment of Doses.
The NNTPR has a recorded or a calculated radiation dose
for nearly 99 percent of all Navy test participants.
The team and its
contractors assembled this information by searching through medical and
historical records, by using film badge information, and by reconstructing
doses when film badges were not available.
The NNTPR has reviewed over 99 percent of the participants’ medical
records (more than 105,000 records).
Researchers accomplished most of this
work during a 1-year period, when they examined about 1,700 records a week
(6).
Doses had to be reconstructed for more than half the Navy participants
since only about 45 percent of these personnel in all the test series had
recorded data on exposure.
The effort was even greater for Operation
CROSSROADS, conducted in 1946 at Bikini as the first postwar nuclear test
series.
Reconstructed doses were needed for all of the approximately 37,000
Navy participants in this operation.
The NNTPR spent more time determining
the doses for its CROSSROADS personnel than it did for Navy participants in
all the other series combined.
Commander R.T. Bell, present NNTPR Project
Manager, acknowledged the challenge of CROSSROADS when he referred in an
interview to the "massive effort" expended by the NNTPR and its contractors on
dose reconstruction (6).
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