Seek. bedraeag”ro
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A Critical Review of
the Department of Energy’s
Epidemiologic Research
THE U.S. NUCLEAR weaponsindustry is now approaching its 50th year—a half-century of experience
that has cumulatively involved more thana half-million
workers. In the years since the Manhattan Project began, some nuclear weapons workers have been exposed
to internal and/or external ionizing radiation in doses
that are high by any standard. Much larger numbers of
these workers have been exposed to low-dose, low-rate
external and/or internal ionizing radiation. During
those years there were also numerousreleases of radioactive and other toxic materials—someaccidental, some
deliberate—into the air, soil and groundwater of unsuspecting populationsliving near the nuclear weapons
research, production and testing sites. The profound
environmental contamination created by the nuclear
weapons complex, revealed only within the last few
years, after decades of official denial, has become a
‘National scandal.
Yet today there is far less knowledge of the health
risks to workers, and far less certainty in the estimates
of risk that do exist, than might have been expected
from this vast body of experience. There is evidence of
environmental contamination at most,ifnotall, nuclear
weaponssites. But even less is known about the impact
of weapons complex contamination on the health of
surrounding communities. The protection of workers
and the public, as well as scientific understanding of
the biological effects of low-dose ionizing radiation,
has therefore suffered immeasurably.
A Wall of Secrecy
From the first days of the Manhattan Project onwards, the Department of Energy (DOE) andits predecessor agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC) and the Energy Research and Development
Administration (ERDA), have been responsible both
for the creation of threats to health and safety consequent to their work and for protection against those
hazards. There is an inescapable conflict between the
goals of nuclear weapons production and those of pub-
lic, occupational and environmental health.
Historically, the DOE,its predecessors, and associated agencies such as the Transuranium Registry, have
operated behind a wall of secrecy. They had a virtual
monopoly on the collection and analysis of data on the
radiation exposures and health outcomesofthe nuclear
weapons workforce and on radioactive and toxic releases from weaponsfacilities. In the nameof “national
security,” access to these data was generally denied to
scientists not directly employed by the AEC/ERDA/
DOEand their contractors. The scientific commu-
nity—and the public—knew little beyond what the
agencies chose to publish, in a policy that violated
the fundamental principle of free and open sciennific
inquiry.
For the first two decades of nuclear weapons pro-
duction, although measurementofradiation exposures
(of some, not all) of the workers was ongoing, the
governmentfailed to initiate research adequate to e¢s-
tablish the effects of exposures on health. The first
adequate epidemiologic study wasinitiated in the mid1960s, and it produced disturbing indications of excess
risks of several types of cancer. These study findings
were disputed, and their authors were denied further
access to the nuclear weapons workforce health data.
From that time on, even as the nuclear weapons complex grew enormously and epidemiologic research expanded, the AEC/ERDA/DOErepeatedly maintained
that the necessary health and safery precautions were in
effect at all facilities, chat their nuclear operations were
safe, that there rarely had been serious accidents, that
few significant radioactive or toxic releases to the environment had occurred, and that there was no immi-
nent threat to the health of the workforce or the public.
Althoughthere werecriticisms and inquiries during
the 1970s, the wall of secrecy did not really begin to
crumble until 1986, when a cascade of investigations
by other governmentagencies, scientific and congressional oversight committees and investgative journal-
DEAD RECKONING
UN ELAS CT =D
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