No Increase in Death Rate "downwind" (Spokesman-Review)

Page 1

releas& may have produced. The committee has been bampred by too few records from 1944 and 1945, and much of its work has been to try to determioe the potential amounts of radiation that were released and the possible doses toi in death rate , ‘downwind’ IRICHLAND (AF’)- Cancer death rates in a portion of Franklin County downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are similar to other counties in Eastern Washington, state Epidemiologist Sam Milham told a panel investigating Hanford’s health efMilham said his “quick and dirty micro-study” in the area was done because he was unable to find increased cancer rates in a larger study of Eastern days of presentations on radiation releases and doses at the facilitv. Hanford Health Er‘fects Panel, which concluded two The grou -plans to spend today and Thursday in deliberations kfore issuing recommendations w possible studies of health effects. Milham said his study looked at death &tificatea Eastern Washington worries about listing C a m of death for the area between 1970 and 1984. The rates were compared to U.S. and statewide rates and suggested M) increased numbers in &e H l s studies would have said. He asked the panel to recommend the s h e Haspital Commission be requested to allow him access to The author of numerous Hanford reports was called on to explain early environmental moaitoring p w Joe Soldat, a Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory scientist who was in charge of environmental monitorin reports,said early radiation dose estimates were cafculated, rather than measured. It wasn’t until after 1957 that instruments sensitive enough to measure specific isotopes were developed, Soldat said he didn’t in working at Hanford Until 1945 during wartime production of plutonium for nuHe dechned to speculate on the potential doses those 1948, after the major ra9..iation releases of 1944 and Ita work may not have been helped by conflicting conclusions from @e same seta of numbers reached by Dr. Ethel Gilbert of Battelle’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory concluded her study could find no correlation, either positive or negative, between radiation exposures and Hanford worker deaths. Cancer death rates for 13,500 males who worked at Hanford for two years or more are lower per 100,OOO than the US.rate, she said. The difference reflects the “healthy worker effect,” which results because Hanford workers must be , healthy to be eligible for a job, she mid. The Hanford mortality study provides little infor- ’ mation about thyroid cancer risks, she said and sugham’s Cancer Epidemiology Research Unit, suggested 1 reading between the lines of health and mortality . dan emu work at Ifanford,” because of the healthy ’ worfer effect, she said. t The effect tends to skew mortality ut.atiStia, &e Most Hanford worker studies re1 too heavily on ; ‘ istration, possibly resulting in hidden workers wbo don’t apply for benefits, she said.