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The Task Force
ists revealed records of past accidents, melted fuel,
radioactive contamination, and violations of safe oper- .
ating procedures. Major environmental and safety vio- |
lations, and evidence ofwidespread contamination, were
found at almost every major DOE facility. The agency
admitted that it had been “imbued with a dedication
to the production of nuclear weapons withouta real
sensitivity for protecting the environment.” Our concerns about the DOE’s epidemiologic studies—the
bulwark of its assertions that there was
no serious excess risk to nuclear weapons workers—
intensified.
PSR’s Physicians Task Force on the Health
Risks of Nuclear Weapons Production
In response to growing concerns about the DOE?’s
weapons complex, Physicians for Social Responsibility
formed a Task Force ofphysicians, epidemiologists and
other scientists, both from within and outside PSR
membership. This Task Force had three mandates:
l.to examine the AEC/ERDA/DOE record of
epidemiologic studies of health, safety and environmental issues in the nuclear weapons production
complex, and to identify and explore problems of
medical and public health concern;
2.to review DOE managementpolicies and evaluate
the conduct of promised reforms; and
3. to make recommendations to the medical andscientific communities and to the general public on the
management,activines, proposed reconfiguration and
“cleanup” of the complex.
The present report addresses the first of these
objectives.
epidemiologic work or prepare a report on ail the
methodological, analytic and interpretive issues raised
by each publication. Instead, it undertook a search for
overall patterns in this research—the systematic pat-
terns that might be found in its methodologies,its
procedures for acquiring and tecording basic surveillance data,its inclusions or exclusionsof data,its selec-
tion of problemsfor study, and its modesof inference,
interpretation and emphasis in reaching conclusions.
This is a search for generic or systematic strengths and
faults in the way the entire process of epidemiologic
investigation has been designed and conducted by the
DOE and its predecessor agencies. The objective was
to reach a judgment on a central issue: the adequacy of
the DOE program in relation to the goals of worker
and public health protection, and in relation to the
development of further scientific knowledge of the
effects on human health of low-level ionizing radiation. The Task Force focused on studies of workers in
the nuclear weapons complex. The intended audience
of its report is an informed general public.
Major Findings of the Task Force Review
The Task Force reviews identified five major patterns or problem areas in the AEC/ERDA/DOE
epidemiologic studies ofthe nuclear weapons workforce,
involving:
1. the accuracy and reliability of radiation dosimetry,
the measurementand recording of exposures;
2. the coverage of the nuclear weapons workforce and
of plant and laboratory sites by the studies;
3. the length of follow-up to determine the health
outcomes of cohorts of nuclear workers;
Methods and Objectives
Over the past 30 months, the Task Force con-
structed a relevant bibliography ofAEC/ERDA/DOE
sponsored or contracted epidemiologic publications,
developed and applied a standardized protocol for review, and critically analyzed 124 published AEC/
ERDA/DOE epidemiologic studies on nuclear weapons workers. We reviewed related scientific publications and controversies on the biologic effects of
low-dose ionizing radianon and consideredtheir implications for the DOE workforce. We examined the
work of earlier investigations of DOE epidemiologic
research by independent committees and panels. The
Task Force also assessed the adequacy of recent policy
changes in the control and conduct of research. This
report summarizes the Task Force’s findings and its
epidemiologic and public policy recommendationsfor
the future.
10
did not attempt a formal meta-
analysis of the published AEC/ERDA/DOE
4. the consequences of the “healthy worker” effect,
and of the focus on deaths rather than on disease
incidence; and
5. the reliance on tests ofstatistical significance in the
interpretation of studies necessarily involving relatively small numbers of subjects, and the resulung
pattern of interpreting as benign—or dismissing—
findings of excess cancer mortality.
Radtation Dosimetry
There appear to be major inaccuracies, and serious
questions as to consistency and reliability, in the measurement and recording of the radiation exposures of
nuclear weapons complex workers. Yet these are essen-
tial elements on which occupational epidemiology studies depend. Methods ofcollecting and recording expo-
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