US Panel IDs Cancer Risk in Nuke Test Fallout Areas

By Alicia Ault

WASHINGTON Feb 11, 2003 (Reuters Health) - 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, a panel of federal advisers concluded Tuesday.

But there is adequate data to assess risk to the general population in fallout areas, said the 14-member expert panel of the National Research Council (NRC).

The committee determined that it would be too costly and difficult to determine each individual"s risk, mostly because of the lack of precise government data on fallout.

During the testing period, the government only collected information on radioactive debris at about 100 sites around the country, and those were not scientifically chosen, said Sharon Friedman, an NRC panelist and director of the science writing program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Advocates of people exposed to fallout have been awaiting the NRC report, which is the final review of a draft study proposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The NRC panel"s sign-off means the CDC and NCI can move forward with final publication--and public dissemination--of its cancer risk and fallout exposure estimates.

These data are 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 already eligible for government compensation.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) asked the CDC and NCI in 1998 to report on whether it was possible to determine the impact on public health from 1940-1960s-era nuclear testing, mostly in the Nevada desert.

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.

The agencies estimated that fallout caused 11,000 excess deaths in Americans who lived from 1951 to 2000. Americans have a 20% lifetime risk of dying from cancer; for those exposed to fallout, the risk rises to 20.03%, said the CDC.

The NRC panel concluded Tuesday that the CDC and NCI had mostly come to the right conclusions, but asked the agencies to refine risk calculations for iodine-131 fallout in a later report. 

"It was quite clear that we wanted this report out," Friedman told Reuters Health, 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 told Reuters Health.


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