Fact Sheet - the Department of Energy's Openness Initiative

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Human Studies Project Team Fact Sheet Los AlamosN AT IONAL LABORATORY The Department of Energy’s Openness Initiative Background On December 7,1993, Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary announced a new effort to open Department of Energy (DOE) operations to the public. ‘The Cold War is Over-We’re Coming Clean” was her theme. As the first step in the openness initiative, O’Learyreleased formerly classified information on the nation’s plutonium stockpiles, unannounced underground nuclcar tests, fusion energy, spent nuclear fuel, and human radiation studies conducted throughout the country for several decades after World War 11. The Secretary’s revelations have stimulated requests for more information, and most of the inquiries rehte to human studies and related issues such as intentional release of radiation into the atmosphere. Response We at Los Alamos National Laboratory support DOE’Sopenness initiative. I t is the Laboratory’s policy to be honest in our dealings and be as open as security regulations allow. We believe that trust between citizens and the Laboratory can only be achieved if the Laboratory is open and uuthful. To locate and review Laboratory records on past exposures of individuals or the envuonment to radiation, the Laboratory recently established the Human Studies Project Team. Heading the team will be Alan McMillan. The team’s fist task will be to determine how best to locate and review Laboratory documents pertruning to human studies. The next step will be to make this information easily available to the public. The Records Search Neither the Laboratory nor DOE will release unpublished information about human studies until more records can be located and reviewed for completeness and until privacy and ethical issues are examined. Although some of the studies, performed were carried out in secrecy, many of the study results have since been published in medical and scientific Location of the documents pertaining LO these studies is the frrst task for the Human Studies The studies were conducted decades ago and some of the records will not be easy to find or may have been desmyed. Records of the studies are scattered among the universities, hospitals, and facilities that Some studies were collaborative, so records involving a single study may exist in several places. All records must be found and reviewed and permission obtained to release them. All records must be reviewed in accordance w i h privacy act and security regulations.

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Human Studies Project Team Fact Sheet Some records must be reviewed and approved for release by several government We must ensure that all the information available about each study has been located. Declassification Many of the documents on human studies have already been published. However, any document recording a study conducted at a national security facility must go through a review for security reasons before it can be published. The document is determined to be classified or unclassified; if it is classified, it may not be released u) the public. Environment. safety, and health information is unclassified, but it may be conlained in a document that also contains classified information, and therefore the entire document is To be declassified, regulations require that a classified document be reviewed by two document declassifiers and verified as no longer containing classified information. In some cases, final dctermination of declassification comes from DOE headquarters. Many documents exist that were never intended for publication or release outside the Laboratory, such as memos and internal reports. These documents have never been reviewed for classification; a classifier must review and approve them as unclassified before release to For Information If you or any family member participated in a past study of the effects of radioactive materials on humans at Los Alamos or in any other pan of the country, contact the DOE Human Experimentation Hotline at 1-800-493-2998(8:30-4:30EST, M-F). This information will help identify where records may be located. As the Human Studies Project Team locates, reviews, and releases documents, the Laboratory will place them in the Los Alamos National Laboratory Community Reading Room on Cenual Suet in Los Alamos for public review. For information on what documents are available, call he Reading Room at 665-2127. For general information, contact Ihc Human Studies Project Team at 667-1948. LA LP-94 -4 The Department of Energy’s Openness Initiative Page 2