TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072390/0723104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 82 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

There Was Death in the Milk


Maybe in fish too, according to a new study of long-ago
radiation releases from the nuclear reservation in Hanford,
Wash.


    Growing up in Moses Lake, Wash., Vicki Skipper suffered
stomach cramps that continued even after her family moved to
Connecticut in 1962, when she was eight. Later, she reports,
"I got swollen glands under my arms, and I had my thyroid
removed, and they never figured out what it was. I always
thought it was from the plant, but I could never prove it." A
federally sponsored panel of scientists and medical experts
last week, however, indicated that her suspicions -- and those
of thousands of others who, from the late 1940s until well into
the 1960s, lived in eight Washington and two northern Oregon
counties near the Hanford, Wash., nuclear reservation -- are far
from groundless.

    The panel found that between 1944, when it opened, and 1947,
the Hanford weapons plant poured so much radioactive iodine
into the air that 1,200 children living nearby were exposed to
cumulative doses ranging from 15 to 650 rads (one rad is
roughly equal to the radiation from a dozen chest X rays).
About 13,500 people, or 5% of the area's total population, may
have taken in doses of 33 rads or more -- about twice the
three-year dosage the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers
safe for workers exposed to radiation as an occupational
hazard.

    The iodine was released as a gas when fuel rods were
chemically dissolved in acid as the last step in producing
plutonium, the explosive material in some nuclear weapons. It
got into humans mostly because they drank milk from cows that
had grazed on grass contaminated by airborne iodine. In human
bodies the iodine tended to concentrate in the thyroid in
amounts that would have been enough to cause at least some cases
of cancer.

    Though the releases were heaviest between 1944 and 1947 --
one reason the panel picked that period for study -- they did
not stop then. "Regulatory standards were not developed until
the 1950s," the study noted, and not until 1973 did the amount
of radiation in the atmosphere decrease to the point that it
could no longer be directly measured. The panel, funded by the
Department of Energy, also studied releases of radioactive
substances from nuclear reactors into the Columbia River
between 1964 and 1966, when some of the heaviest discharges
occurred. River water was pumped through the reactors to cool
them. Radioactivity -- in lower doses than the airborne iodine
-- entered the bodies of people who swam in the river or lived
or played near it or ate fish caught in it.

    The Hanford plant and reactors were shut down in the late
1960s; milk, fish and vegetables from the area by now ought to
be radiation-free. But that is no consolation to those exposed
to dangerous radiation earlier. A study of health effects of
the radiation by the Centers for Disease Control will not be
complete until 1993. If the government is unwilling to offer
compensation to people who lived near the plant and fell ill
during the time of heavy discharges, or to their relatives if
they have died, Washington Senator Brock Adams promises to
introduce legislation to compel it to do so. Meanwhile, Vicki
Skipper has perhaps the last word: "When Chernobyl hit, I
remember thinking that the U.S. sure had a lot of nerve talking
about Russia when we've been doing the same thing to our
people."


By George J. Church. Reported by Ellis E. Conklin/Seattle and
Rosanne Spector/Washington.