(Adapted from Dead Reckoning: A Critical Review of the Department of Energy's Epidemiologic Studies, a report to be released by Physicians for Social Responsibility in May 1992.)
by H. Jack Geiger, M.D. and Daryl G. Kimball
A basic function of government is to protect the health and safety of its citizens. But when a single government agency creates threats to health and safety--and is charged with giving protection from those hazards, the production activity will clash with safety.
Nowhere is this conflict of interest more conspicuous than in the Nuclear Weapons Complex. The Complex produces and handles extremely toxic and radioactive materials, and it has used its immunity from checks and balances to distort and conceal scientific research aimed at understanding the risks it imposes on workers and nearby populations.
Secrecy shields not only the design, manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons--with their clear national security implications--but also basic data on radiation and toxic releases, and on workers' exposures and health. Independent scientific studies of illness and death in potentially affected workers and nearby communities have often been impossible.
For more than 40 years, occupational and public health monitoring at the weapons plants was the duty of DOE and its predecessors, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Energy Research and Development Administration. Much of this responsibility was passed on to the agencies' contractors. An essential component of such an effort is epidemiologic study, which should entail:
-- precise, continuous definition and measurement of radiation and other toxic exposures;
-- careful long-term tracking of the distribution of illness and death among workers and surrounding communities;
-- meticulous comparison with the health outcomes of less-exposed or unexposed individuals;
How well has the government dealt with its responsibility to investigate the health impact of its nuclear weapons activities? Both during and after its worst abuses, the Complex has violated the principles of unfettered scientific investigation as consistently as it has violated environmental and safety concerns.
In official publications, Congressional testimony, and press releases, government assurances about the health impact of the Complex were unvarying. While often lacking data to support their claims, officials of the Complex asserted that all necessary occupational health and safety precautions were in force, that rarely, if ever, had there been serious accidents or hazardous releases to the environment, and that there was no immediate threat to public health.
For example, in the 1950s at the Nevada Test Site, the AEC's radiation safety committee's internal guidelines stated that "we have tried to keep in mind the somewhat delicate public-relations aspect of the affair.... It is felt that figures [on fallout levels] must be used as general guides but that no drastic action which might disturb the public should be taken unless it is clearly felt that such action is essential to protect local residents from almost certain damage. It is assumed that any member of the general public may receive external exposure up to 25 rem without danger." (U.S. District Court Memorandum Opinion, Allen vs. USA, Civil No. C 79-0515-J, May 10, 1984.) This assumption contrasts sharply with U.S. standards at the time for maximum annual radiation exposure. For the general public, 0.5 rem were allowed in 1956, 0.17 rem by 1960. For nuclear workers the standard was 5 rem beginning in 1957.
For the first two decades of nuclear weapons production, although measurements of radiation exposure (for some, not all) nuclear weapons workers were taken, the government failed to do thorough health effects research. The only tacit acknowledgement of risk came in 1963, when atmospheric weapons tests were banned. But this change was opposed, not initiated, by the AEC. Vehement protest over radioactive fallout was the stimulus, and the public was informed by independent scientists who collected their own data on radioactive contamination.
The first comprehensive epidemiologic study of the workforce was initiated in the mid-1960s by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, led by Dr. Thomas Mancuso. His group published evidence of excess cancer risk at Hanford, in a peer-reviewed journal. Their AEC contract was then canceled and they were denied further access to the health data they had collected.
There have been other incidents of intimidation, censure and dismissal of scientists whose results were regarded as harmful to the interests of the Complex. In 1986, Dr. Gregg Wilkinson, an epidemiologist working for the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, circulated the draft of a paper to be submitted to a respected peer-reviewed publication, the American Journal of Epidemiology, showing an excess of brain cancer among Rocky Flats workers.
According to sworn testimony, one supervisor at Los Alamos told Dr. Wilkinson that he should do research "to please the DOE, your sponsors, not satisfy peer reviewers." (Public Hearings before the Secretarial Panel for the Evaluation of Epidemiologic Research Activities, Chicago, IL, October, 1989.) Wilkinson was pressured to withdraw the paper, a request that was canceled only when he threatened to resign. The DOE made no effort to publicize the findings--in contrast to a major public relations effort that had followed publication of a very preliminary Wilkinson paper on Rocky Flats that contained no positive findings.
The past several years have seen a steady stream of reports from DOE and contractor scientists who were treated as hostile "whistleblowers" for reporting findings of unusual health risk, or for questioning DOE methods and assurances. Such practices can do real damage to scientific inquiry and increase public skepticism about reassurances contained in DOE-sponsored scientific studies.
The credibility of DOE-supervised health research was eroded further in 1986--again with an outside impetus. Public concern following the Chernobyl accident led Secretary of Energy John Herrington to ask the National Academy of Sciences to assess the safety of DOE reactors (some of them similar in design to Chernobyl) that produced nuclear weapons materials. The resulting report described major accidents, melted fuel, radioactive contamination, serious structural defects, gross violations of safe operating procedures, and inadequate DOE oversight of contractors. (Committee to Assess Safety and Technical Issues at DOE Reactors.) Major environmental and safety violations, and evidence of contamination, were found at almost every major DOE facility.
Trust in the government's 40-year record of assurances that no threats to human health had ever occurred was severely damaged by this series of revelations. Current Energy Secretary James D. Watkins' admitted that the Complex had been "cloaked in secrecy and imbued with a dedication to the production of nuclear weapons without a real sensitivity for protecting the environment".
Watkins, facing a lawsuit against DOE calling for release of the Mancuso health data, and with pending Congressional legislation that would transfer health research from DOE to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), appointed a panel to investigate the DOE epidemiology program. The Secretarial Panel for the Evaluation of Epidemiologic Research Activities (SPEERA) held public hearings from September 1989 to March 1990. SPEERA strongly backed full public participation in epidemiologic research on the Complex. In its final report, SPEERA advocated removing some epidemiologic functions from DOE control through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of HHS. (Report to Secretary, Secretarial Panel for the Evaluation of Epidemiologic Research Activities for the U.S. Department of Energy, March 1990.)
However, this is a flawed and incomplete solution, and its implementation to date suggests that there is much less change than meets the eye. The MoU gives responsibility to HHS for long-range, analytic studies, but leaves DOE responsible for data collection, quality control, descriptive epidemiology and the occupational health surveillance and safety programs to protect workers. Through the MoU, funding for these epidemiologic research activities, even for HHS work, still comes from DOE. Budgetary discretion permits control over the scope and direction of research, and in this case, the HHS research effort will be limited by DOE's budget. In Fiscal Year 1992, for example, DOE allocated only 15.9 million dollars for the research activities that will be transferred to HHS.
The MoU also fails to determine which agency ultimately directs health research activities related to the Complex. An uncoordinated array of eight federal sub-departments, (These agencies include DOE's offices of: Defense Programs; Nuclear Safety; Environment, Safety and Health; and Environmental Restoration and Waste Management. Under HHS: Centers for Disease Control; National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health; Center for Environmental Health and Injury Control; and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.) plus more than 12 state health departments, are involved in the epidemiology, but DOE maintains control over dollars and data.
DOE recently interpreted the MoU to mean that it need not collect any new radiation and worker health data for the HHS analyses. The DOE plans to put only existing data into the Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource (CEDR), and has indicated that it will not survey its own facilities to prepare an accurate inventory of the data it has, to determine what might be useful for research. (For a more detailed description and critique of the CEDR program, see: Jay Olshansky and Gary Williams, "A Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource," The PSR Quarterly: a Journal of Medicine and Global Survival, 1: 145-156, 1991.)
Finally, the MoU does not have the force of law. It can be altered or canceled by private agreement between the two current Secretaries--or future Secretaries--and it fails to decisively remove DOE involvement in monitoring, analyzing and reporting on the human health consequences of its own activities. There has been some change--but much more remains the same. The situation is not irremediable, and the following steps are within short-term reach:
1. Establish a new Office of Radiation and Toxins Health Assessments. DOE supervision of epidemiologic research should be ended entirely and replaced by an aggressive and coordinated investigatory process. This should be mandated by Congress, within HHS or EPA, superseding the present DOE-HHS MoU. Expanded funding from DOE's "050" defense production accounts should be used to support the office, which would coordinate research with DOE, other HHS offices and institutes, EPA, and state health departments.
2. Ensure worker and public participation. Health research should involve oversight by non-governmental panels of qualified independent scientists and representatives of DOE workers and surrounding communities.
3. Unrestricted access to data. Access to DOE and contractor records, and to all other relevant epidemiologic data, must be guaranteed to HHS and to non-governmental scientific researchers, with no restraint on publication or presentation of findings other than the normal processes of peer review.
4. Fully fund an improved CEDR program. Adequate funding should be provided for a Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource available to scientists, with the assurance that all relevant data from the Complex and its planned health surveillance system will be entered.
5. Enhance regulatory power of OSHA and EPA. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and EPA should have the authority to impose fines or shut down operations at DOE facilities that violate safety and environmental standards or otherwise pose an unacceptable public health threat.
6. Consider negative impacts of nuclear weapons activities. The putative benefits of nuclear weapons should be weighed against the health and safety risks before any production is resumed.
A project of The Tides Foundation, May 1992