Cancer Risk in Nuke Test Fallout Areas

On Tuesday a panel of federal advisers concluded that Americans who lived in areas exposed to nuclear fallout from above-ground tests prior to 1962 may never be able to determine whether they have an increased risk of cancer.

However the 14-member expert panel of the National Research Council (NRC) said there is adequate data to assess the risk to the general population in fallout areas. The committee decided that it would be too costly and difficult to determine each individual’s risk, due to the lack of precise government data on fallout. According to Sharon Friedman, an NRC panelist and director of the science-writing program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, during the testing period, the government only collected information on radioactive debris at about 100 sites around the country, which were not scientifically chosen.This data is likely to be used by people seeking compensation for cancers and other conditions developed as a result of the fallout. Uranium miners, workers at testing sites, and people who lived in certain areas of Nevada, Arizona or Utah during specific time periods are eligible for government compensation. In a March 2002 draft, the agencies said that fallout was more widespread than previously thought, and that there were ‘hotspots,’ especially for iodine-131 fallout. Excess of 11, 000 deaths were caused by the fallout in Americans who lived from 1951 to 2000, the agency estimated. Americans have a 20% lifetime risk of dying from cancer; for those exposed to fallout, the risk rises to 20.03%, said the CDC. ‘It was quite clear that we wanted this report out,’ Friedman said, adding that, ‘it’s been delayed and people have been depending on it for some time.’ However, she did not expect much to change from CDC and NCI’s 2002 draft, which is already on the agencies’ Web sites. The panel also urged Congress to prohibit destruction of any pertinent fallout data or documentation, and to try to interview people with first-hand knowledge of test procedures while they are still alive. Critics have charged the government with trying to cover up misdeeds related to nuclear testing, but that’s not why the NRC committee made the recommendations, Friedman said. The panel wanted there to be as much preserved information as possible in case testing methods developed later can further quantify risk, she said. Arjun Makhijani, a fallout researcher, said the government should focus its efforts on informing people who lived in the hotspots of their elevated risks, and train physicians how to screen people who may have been exposed so that potential cancers could be treated early. ‘These studies have identified real hotspots where people got pretty high exposures,’ said Makhijani, president of the Takoma Park, Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. ‘Those people need to be identified and informed,’ he said.(Source: Reuters Health)