NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30 / NN_1992_30.iso / spool / misc / activism / progress / 9439 < prev next >

Wrap

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-21 | 33.8 KB

Xref: sparky misc.activism.progressive:9439 alt.censorship:9709 alt.activism:19691 Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!hri.com!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.censorship,alt.activism Subject: "SECRET FALLOUT, Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to TMI" [1/15] Summary: part 1 of 15: beginning through chapter 1 Keywords: low-level ionizing radiation, fallout, deception, secrecy, survival Message-ID: <1992Dec18.184404.5747@mont.cs.missouri.edu> Date: 18 Dec 92 18:44:04 GMT Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu Followup-To: alt.activism.d Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Lines: 852 Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu The following is reprinted here with permission of the author, Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass who owns the rights to this book. Permission to distribute this book is freely given so long as no modification of the text is made. __________________________________________________________________________ Ernest J. Sternglass SECRET FALLOUT ____________ LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM HIROSHIMA TO THREE MILE ISLAND McGraw-Hill Book Company New York St. Louis San Francisco Auckland Bogota Guatemala Hamburg Johannesburg Lisbon London Madrid Mexico Montreal New Delhi Panama Paris San Juan Sao Paulo Singapore Sydney Tokyo Toronto * * * * * * * From the back jacket and inside cover of the 1982 paperback edition of "Secret Fallout:" Politics/Health SECRET FALLOUT LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM HIROSHIMA TO THREE-MILE ISLAND ERNEST STERNGLASS Introduction by George Wald In "Secret Fallout" Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor of Radiation Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents the evidence he has for twenty years battled to bring before the public--the cumulative, devastating effects of low-level radiation on our health. In the early 1960s, when nuclear testing filled the rains with radioactivity, Dr. Sternglass discovered a related increase in fetal deaths, infant mortality, and certain kinds of cancer. His studies were disregarded, discredited, or suppressed--even though documents available under the Freedom of Information Act make clear that top- level government officials were aware of the accuracy of his findings. Nuclear power plants became the topic of his studies in 1970, and he gathered data showing that nuclear emissions have resulted in increased genetic defects, mental retardation, and death among newborns, as well as death due to lung disease in all age groups. Nuclear power plants have nonetheless proliferated. Dr. Sternglass made headlines in 1979 by a study linking the decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores that has puzzled educators to past atomic testing. Most recently, he has looked at the evidence of the aftereffects of the Three-Mile Island incident and found that, contrary to popular opinion, tragedy was not averted: Infant and fetal deaths rose dramatically in the months following the accident. "Secret Fallout" is the story of a courageous scientist struggling to uncover the dangers of nuclear power; it is a shocking expose of the indifference and neglect of officials of the government and apologists for the nuclear industry. But most of all it is a stern warning that unless we face up to the damage we have already done we cannot prevent our future destruction. "Professor Sternglass's courageous voice has helped keep alive the debate on the health effects of low-level radiation, a debate that the military, the nuclear industry, and even some biologists and physicians have tried to bury. His new book, {Secret Fallout: Low- Level Radiation from Hiroshima to Three Mile Island}, is an important new contribution to that debate and should be required reading for all who are concerned with their own health, the health of their children, and of their children's children." Victor W. Sidel, M.D. Professor and Chairperson Department of Social Medicine Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center Albert Einstein College of Medicine {Dr. Ernest Sternglass} is Professor of Radiology, specializing in radiological physics, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, as well as Adjunct Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is past president of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Federation of American Scientists, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Radiological Society of North America and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. He has testified on low-level radiation before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and many other groups both here and abroad. {Dr. George Wald}, Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, is Professor of Biology at Harvard. Copyright (c) 1972, 1981 by Ernest J. Sternglass All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is an expanded version of {Low-Level Radiation}, first published in 1972 by Ballantine Books. First McGraw-Hill Paperback edition, 1981 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 FGFG 8 6 5 4 3 2 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Sternglass, Ernest J Secret fallout. Ed. of 1972 published under title: Low-level radiation. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Radioactive pollution--Toxicology. 2. Radiation--Toxicology I. Title. II. Title: Low-level radiation from Hiroshima to Three Mile Island. RA569.S69 1981 616.9'897 80-22390 ISBN O-07-061242-0 Book design by Roberta Rezk The author acknowledges the following sources for permission: {The Washington Post} for Bill Curry's "A-Test Officials Feared Outcry after Health Study." {The New York Times} for James Reston's "The Present Danger." (c) 1978 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. {Harrowsmith Magazine} for Tom Pawlick's "The Silent Toll." {Beaver County Times} for Joel Griffiths' "State Panel Questions, Radiation, Safety." * * * * * * * {The duty to endure gives us the right to know.} --JEAN ROSTAND {For Marilyn, and our children Daniel and Susan} * * * * * * * Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Thunderstorm in Troy 2. The Unheeded Warning 3. A Small Error in the Assumptions 4. A Ray of Hope 5. The Evidence Begins to Emerge 6. The Hidden Tragedy of Hiroshima 7. Death before Birth 8. The Crucial Test 9. Both Young and Old 10. The Clouds of Trinity 11. The Battle for Publication 12. Counterattack at Hanford 13. The Public's Right to Know 14. The Price of Secrecy 15. Fallout at Shippingport 16. The Minds of the Children 17. Incident at Three Mile Island 18. Too Little Information Too Late 19. The Present Danger Bibliography Glossary Index * * * * * * * Acknowledgments THIS BOOK could not have come into being without the understanding, concern and support of many individuals whose help I was privileged to receive during the years in which the events recounted here took place. Although it is impossible to list all those to whom I have become deeply indebted, there are a few individuals whose help went far beyond anything I shall ever be able to acknowledge adequately. First among these is my wife Marilyn, who not only stood by my side throughout these years, but also provided the constant counsel, encouragement and understanding needed in the long and arduous task of writing this book. And it was the great personal dedication of my editor, Joel Griffiths, that shaped the first edition of the book, helping immeasurably in the difficult task of explaining for the non-scientist the complex scientific and technical arguments underlying the events described. Thus, though the responsibility for the accuracy of the facts and their interpretation must remain mine, whatever success this book may have in clarifying the nature of the scientific problem and the dangers arising from the misuse of nuclear radiation will be to a large extent a reflection of his efforts. Among the many others who contributed importantly to bringing this book into being, I must express my indebtedness to Larry Bogart, long-time conservationist and founder of the National League to Stop Environmental Pollution, who together with Leo Goodman of the United Automobile Workers was responsible for first drawing my attention to the full hazard of an unchecked nuclear technology. In these researches, I was greatly aided by two of my colleagues, Dr. Donald Sashin and Ronald Rocchio, who worked out the computer programs that made the analysis of the vast amount of statistical data possible, as well as by Michael Szulman, Diane Gaye, Mitchel Margolis and Debbie Conant, without whose dedication in patiently collecting and analyzing the data the task would have been insuperable. In the collection of the basic data, I was also generously helped by a number of young volunteer student assistants who spent long hours in the library. My gratitude goes to all of them, and in particular to David and Harold Colker, Randolph Strothman, and Gary Harris, whose important contributions were particularly appreciated. Last but not least, I must express my deep appreciation to my secretary, Judy Czachowski, who patiently suffered through the agonies of gathering the data, preparing papers and repeated retyping of the original manuscript, and without whose cheerful help and dedication the task would have been vastly more difficult. The present, greatly expanded edition owes its existence to my new editor, Joanne Dolinar, who persuaded me that it was important to tell the story of the developments in the ten years since the book's original publication. For her persistence in this I am deeply grateful. I am also grateful to my secretary, Nancy Siegel, who greatly eased the task of completing the expanded version of the book with her unwavering patience in tackling the never-ending pages with their illegible revisions. * * * * * * * Preface WHEN I UNDERTOOK to write the first edition of this book, originally published in 1972 under the title {Low-Level Radiation}, my primary concern was with the health effects of worldwide fallout from nuclear weapons, particularly on the developing infant in the mother's womb. At that time I also discussed the first evidence for possible health effects of routine releases of radioactivity from nuclear reactors in their ordinary day-to-day operation. In the ten years that have intervened since then, my concerns about the safety of nuclear plants have unfortunately been reinforced far more than I could have anticipated. Not only in the accident at Three Mile Island, whose likely effects on human health are discussed in the present book, but also in the normal operations of many other nuclear plants, there is now growing evidence for rising infant mortality and damage to the newborn. In the decade that has passed, cancer rates increased most sharply in areas closest to the nuclear reactors whose radioactive gas releases were found to rise most strongly, following the earlier pattern of death rates among the newborn described in the original book. The first fourteen chapters have been left nearly unchanged, while the rest of the present book brings the story up to the present time. It deals with the newly disclosed evidence that the possibility of serious health damage from weapons testing was long known to our government. It also presents the evidence for widespread damage to the learning abilities of the children born in areas of heavy fallout during the period of massive nuclear weapons testing. What emerges is that in order for major governments to be able to continue threatening the use of their ever-growing stockpiles of weapons to fight and win nuclear wars rather than merely to deter them, they must keep from their own people the severity of the biological damage already done to their children by past nuclear testing and the releases from nuclear reactors near their homes. It is to focus attention on the need to end this hidden threat to the future of human life on this globe that this new edition has been prepared. Ernest J. Sternglass Pittsburgh July 1980 * * * * * * * Introduction I SHOULD LIKE TO START with a few words concerning the human condition, and go on with a little of the special problems of the author in writing this book. As a scientist I take a long view of history: 20 billion years of this universe; 6 billion years of the solar system; 4.7 billion years of the planet Earth; 3 billion years of life on Earth; something like 3 million years of something like human life; 10,000 years of civilization; and then--something happened. In 1976 we celebrated the bicentennial of American independence. That independence was an interesting event, but not nearly as important even to Americans as something else that was happening at the same time. That was the Industrial Revolution. At first it promised humanity endless leisure and abundance. But a half-century ago it turned life-threatening on the grand scale; and now killing and destruction are the biggest business in the world. Military expenditures worldwide in 1979 were over $460 billion, and rising rapidly. The simple reality is that a trivial two hundred years of the Industrial Revolution have brought the human species to the brink of self-extinction. Nuclear war is the most immediate threat. Just the "strategic" nuclear weapons--the big ones, in the megaton range*--now stockpiled by the U.S. and the Soviet Union add up to the explosive equivalent of about 16 million tons of TNT. There are just over four billion persons on the Earth, so about 4 tons of TNT for every man, woman and child in the world. In addition each superpower has stored tens of thousands of so-called "tactical" nuclear weapons, and the material to make hundreds of thousands more. So I had better say what a tactical nuclear weapon is. The bomb that in a moment leveled the city of Hiroshima and by the end of that year--1945--had killed 140,000 persons rates in the present arsenals as a pitifully small "tactical" weapon, a mere 12.5 kilotons. For comparison the Titan missile whose fuel recently blew up in its silo in Arkansas had perhaps 100 times that explosive power. But the explosive power--the blast and heat and radiation--are just the immediate release of nuclear weapons. There is also the mushroom cloud of radioactive fallout that enters the atmosphere and stratosphere and eventually covers the entire globe. This goes on showering the Earth with potentially lethal ionizing radiation, and every rain and snowfall brings down radioactive elements to be inhaled, and by entering the food chain, ingested. And that goes on and on, from the comparatively short-lived iodine-131 and strontium- 89, dangerous for 6 months to a year, to plutonium-239, perhaps the most toxic substance known, whose half-life--the time it takes for its radioactivity to half-decay--is 24,400 years. That remains dangerous, in human terms, forever. * Nuclear weapons are graded in terms of the equivalent explosive power in tons of TNT: kilotons, which are thousands of tons; or megatons, millions of tons. An interesting dialogue taking place in the Atomic Scientists Bulletin raises the question: would anyone survive? If the present stockpiles of nuclear weapons were used, would any human beings be left on the Earth? That is at least questionable, and we would take a lot of the rest of life on this planet with us. Directly out of the business of nuclear weapons came the business of nuclear power, heralded in our country with the slogan, {Atoms for Peace}. Even that innocent-sounding slogan is part of the endless pattern of public deception that surrounds the entire nuclear enterprise. Let me interject a present example that poses the relationship nicely. In our country the entire hydrogen bomb enterprise--both R and D and production--is not under the Department of Defense, but the Department of Energy. It goes, not into the Defense budget, but the Energy budget. It is by far the largest item in that budget, consuming well over one-third of it. The next largest item in it is nuclear power. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin. Nuclear power is life-threatening in three independent ways, each in itself formidable. First is the threat of accident in nuclear power plants. This book tells in some detail the story of the accident at Three Mile Island. But one didn't have to wait for that to know that nuclear power plants--unlike what the public has been told--are thoroughly accident-prone. Those great realists, the American insurance companies, refused from the beginning to insure nuclear power plants. Hence we have the Price-Anderson Act, renewed by Congress every 10 years since 1957, which lays the bulk of the liability in the event of nuclear accident on "the government"--i.e., on the taxpayers. The second life-threatening property is that every nuclear reactor now in operation produces the artificial element plutonium-239 as by- product. This is not only, as already said, perhaps the most toxic substance known. It is also the most convenient material from which to make fission bombs. The "trigger quantity"--the smallest amount from which one can make a workable atom bomb--is 2 kilograms, 4 2/5 pounds. You could carry that, and safely, in a grocery bag. To make a Hiroshima-size bomb would take 6-7 kilograms, say about 14 pounds. You'd need a shopping bag for that. Every nation that now possesses a nuclear reactor can, if it chooses, begin to make nuclear weapons. It is expected that within the coming decade perhaps a dozen more nations than now possess them will exercise this option. It should be added that plutonium provides the trigger at the core of all hydrogen bombs, and in some also the shell. The third life-threatening aspect of both nuclear power and weapons involves the disposal of nuclear wastes. No one knows what to do with them. The periodic meetings of international experts have so far yielded no credible solution. In my opinion the entire nuclear enterprise, both power and weapons, represents a wrong turn for humanity, a development that cannot be tamed, that remains life-threatening not only in all its present manifestations, but all future developments that have been contemplated. Meanwhile the public is subjected to a continuous barrage of propaganda and misinformation designed to reconcile it to an increasingly problematical and expensive support of both nuclear power and weapons. The weapons, ostensibly for our security, are of course the principle source of our insecurity; and the nuclear power, that we are told we need for energy, supplies in 1980 only about 12% of our consumption of electricity, hence only about 2% of our total energy consumption, at a still unreckonable cost in both health and money. The author of such a book as this is under constant attack, not only from the expected sources in industry and government, but from certain quarters in the science establishment. I have heard at times from fellow scientists, some indeed on the same side as Professor Sternglass in opposing the spread of ionizing radiations, the somewhat querulous comment, "I don't like his statistics." That would impress me more if I had ever met anyone who liked anyone else's statistics. That's the way with statistics: they are highly individual. Sternglass has an exuberant way with them. At times in this book I had the feeling he was going a little far. But then I never could be sure, once I had read over carefully what he was saying, that it was *too* far. The truth is that once one starts down this path, it's hard to know where or whether to stop. And on the fundamental issues, Sternglass is dealing with a very strong case. I think that it is by now beyond doubt that ionizing radiations at all levels involve serious risks to health, causing increased chances of cancers, leukemia and genetic effects. There is no threshold: a little, however little, causes some increased risk, and more causes more risk. There is no level that fails to be potentially harmful. From that point of view the existence of an official so-called "permissible level" is misleading. A "permissible level" of radiation only has meaning in cost benefit accounting; and that would mean more if the costs and benefits involved the same parties. Unfortunately they usually do not: one group--workers, general public--commonly bear the costs; and another, quite different group--ownership, management, government--shares the benefits. Having to deal with a lot of official talk about "permissible levels" of radiation at the time of Three Mile Island, I took to saying, "Every dose is an overdose." I believe that to be true as a statement, not necessarily of overt effect, but of risk. GEORGE WALD Paris, October 28, 1980 * * * * * * * 1 Thunderstorm in Troy ON MONDAY MORNING, April 27, 1953, the small group of students in Professor Herbert Clark's radiochemistry class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute walked into the metal shack that served as their laboratory, located high on a hill overlooking the city of Troy in upper New York State. The students set about making preparations for the day's experiments, but then Professor Clark interrupted to draw their attention to something unusual. All the Geiger counters were registering radiation at many times the natural rate. Since instruments nearest the outer walls were giving the highest readings, several students immediately went outside with a portable Geiger counter. At once they found that wherever they walked, the count rate on the ground was far above normal, in some places a thousand times as high. In particular, beneath the spout of the gutters that carried the rainwater down off the roof of the shack, the needle gave a disconcertingly high reading. Evidently the previous night's heavy rains had brought down large amounts of radioactivity. Dr. Clark quickly guessed the source. Such high readings could only have come from heavy deposits of fallout, the drifting clouds of radioactive debris created by the explosion of a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere. To verify his guess, he phoned John Harley, a friend and former colleague who now worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Health and Safety Laboratory in New York City. As one of Dr. Clark's students recalled the story many years later, Harley's first reaction was that Clark must be kidding, and, expressing amused disbelief, he hung up. But a few minutes later, New York called back. Dr. Clark summarized the details of the morning's measurements: how the count rate from the gamma radiation on the ground was anywhere from ten to five hundred times normal, how the activity from beta rays had gone up even more, and how "hot spots" beneath rainspouts and in puddles on the pavement showed still higher readings, much higher than he had ever observed after other nuclear tests, when it had been hard to measure any additional radioactivity at all. Thoroughly alarmed, the director of the New York Laboratory, Dr. Merrill Eisenbud, promised to check personally into the situation, to send some of his top people to make their own measurements on the spot, and to take any steps that might be called for to protect the public health. For, as Dr. Clark had just learned, there had indeed been a recent atomic bomb test, conducted by the AEC in Nevada two days earlier. The bomb, code-named Simon and equivalent in power to 43,000 tons of TNT, had been detonated in the atmosphere some 300 feet above the desert. The upper portion of the mushroom cloud had reached an altitude of about 30,000 or 40,000 feet and then drifted 2300 miles across the United States in a northeasterly direction, passing high over Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania before it encountered a severe thunderstorm in progress over most of upstate New York, southern Vermont, and parts of Massachusetts. The storm was an extraordinarily violent one, accompanied by extremely high winds, hail, and torrential rains that flooded streets and basements, undermined foundations, and caused heavy damage to trees and houses. It was one of the heaviest flash storms Dr. Clark could remember. The sudden cloudburst, he surmised, had probably brought much of the fallout down in concentrated form. Dr. Clark quickly put his students to work in an effort to determine just how serious and widespread the danger might be. Students set out with portable radiation detectors and began measuring the radioactivity on the pavement, on pieces of cloth, on asphalt roof shingles, on burdock leaves and other vegetation--any place it would be likely to collect and adhere. Samples were also taken of water from reservoirs and household taps. Within a matter of hours the students were reporting back from such nearby towns and cities as Watervliet, Mechanicville, Saratoga Springs, Albany, and Schenectady that everywhere the radiation levels were about the same as on the campus. Typical readings were twenty to a hundred times normal, with hot spots up to ten times higher than that. Now knowing the radiation levels as well as the source and age of the fallout, Dr. Clark could calculate that during the next ten weeks the total gamma radiation dose to the population from the radioactivity in the environment would be, on the average, roughly equivalent to that received from a typical diagnostic X-ray exposure. This was reassuring, since such a dose was not very different from what most people in the world receive each year from the naturally occurring cosmic rays that penetrate the earth's atmosphere. And it was well below the maximum permissible dose limits set by government agencies. However, there was also the high radioactivity in the rainwater, which was certain to contaminate the reservoirs and thus the tap water. The samples of rainwater collected from a puddle on the campus had shown a radioactivity level of 270,000 micromicrocuries per liter, thousands of times higher than the maximum levels then permitted by AEC standards, which were set at 100 micromicrocuries per liter. Normal drinking water usually had an activity of about 1 micromicrocurie per liter. There was, accordingly, much apprehension among the students until the samples of actual drinking water from the taps and reservoirs could be analyzed early the next day. When this was done, the first of the tap water samples, taken Monday night, showed an activity of 2630 micromicrocuries per liter--not as great as was feared, yet still well in excess of the limit. But by that evening, the same tap gave a sample with a greatly decreased activity of 1210 per liter, while samples from nearby Tomhannock Reservoir ranged from 580 to 960. The radioactive rain was evidently becoming heavily diluted in the reservoir before reaching the taps in the households of Troy. Thus, all concerned were greatly relieved that the total radiation doses received by the populace would probably turn out to be relatively small. It would not be necessary to filter the drinking water or decontaminate the streets and rooftops by means of elaborate and costly scrubbing procedures, a monumental task in view of the tenacity with which the radioactivity had been found to cling to rough surfaces such as pavement, asphalt shingles, and burdock leaves, and especially to porous materials like paper and cloth. Dr. Clark and his students found that even treatment with hot, concentrated hydrochloric acid--an extreme method--was only partially effective in removing the radioactivity from the objects to which it clung. The class also conducted tests to determine the strength of this radioactivity. Surprisingly, they found that it was comparable to that reported the previous year by the AEC's New York Laboratory for fallout in desert areas only 200 to 500 miles from the point of detonation at the Nevada test site itself. But the possible health effects of any internal doses that might result from eating, drinking, or breathing the radioactivity were considered negligible by the New York State Health Department and the AEC. And so it was decided that nothing further need be done. An editorial in the local newspaper expressed some concern, but soon the whole incident was forgotten. Meanwhile, however, Dr. Clark, under contract to the AEC, continued to monitor the levels of radioactivity in the reservoirs, while AEC physicists, using an extremely sensitive gamma-ray detector mounted in an airplane, conducted extensive surveys of the entire region. Detailed reports on the findings were written by the staff of the New York Lab, but, since they were classified "secret," the public never learned of their contents. All that appeared was the following brief statement in the 14th Semi-Annual Report of the Atomic Energy Commission for the first half of 1953: After one detonation, unusually heavy fallout was noted as far from Nevada as the Troy-Albany area in New York. Following a heavy rain in that area on the second day after the detonation, the concentration of radioactivity was from 100 to 200 curies per square mile. It is estimated that this level of radioactivity would result in about 0.1 roentgen exposure for the first 13 weeks following the fallout. The exposure has no significance in relation to health. One fact the AEC did not announce, and the general public did not learn, since it was later published by Dr. Clark in the obscure, highly specialized {Journal of the American Water Works Association}, was that, as the AEC continued its nuclear testing in Nevada during the spring of 1953, further rainouts repeatedly raised the radioactivity in the reservoirs serving Troy to levels comparable to those measured by Dr. Clark and his students the morning after the "Simon" rainout in April. * * * * * * * -- daveus rattus yer friendly neighborhood ratman KOYAANISQATSI ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.