Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years Oral History of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine L. Bustad

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Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years Oral History of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine the U.S. Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Operated for the U.S. Department of Energy

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This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor Battelle Memorial Institute, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibilityfor the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof, or Battelle Memorial Institute. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY @ The document was printed on recycled paper.

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Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years Oral History of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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ORAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR OF VETERINARY MEDICINE The interview was conducted on November 13, 1995,at Leo 3 home in Pullman, Washington, by Frank Hungate from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Leo Bustad war selected for the oral history project because of his early and prolonged involvement in animal studies at Hanford. He also interacted with many people, both professionally and in his community activities. Dr. Bustad was born January 10, 1920, in Stanwood, Washington. He received a B.S. in 1941, an M.S. in 1948, and DVM in 1949 from Washington State University. Dr. Bustad earned his Ph.D. in 1960 from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Bustad joined the General Electric Health Instrument division in 1949. The division later became the Leo, could you please summarize your pre-Hanford history pointing out features and individuals you consider relevant to choosing Hanford as a place to work. My first introduction to the area was as a student in the Irrigation Practices at Washington State University in their Ag [Agriculture] Engineering Department. They had a course I thought would be useful to know since we depend a lot on irrigated land for our whole being in this state. We were on a trip to review the various irrigation projects. We went to Prosser and the Yakima Valley and came back on a road that went by Hanford and White Bluffs. One of the cars in our entourage was having trouble so we stopped-it was in June, as I recall, or late May and it was one of those very hot days and I wasn’t used to living in a hot climate-and I said I’d have a hard time working in this kind of atmosphere. It was out in the desert too, without any experience in the desert at that time. It turns out that [starting] in 1949, I spent about 15 years within a mile from where I said these words in 1938. So, that’s my introduction to Hanford; how it first [At that time] I was a student in the DVM program at WSU and was working on a masters degree in Animal Nutrition in the department directed by M. E. Ensminger, who later became one of the best known animal scientists in the world, having published more books in more languages in Animal Science than any person in history. The General Electric Company or the Atomic Energy Commission engaged him as a consultant on any animal problems. They had a complaint from some horse owners living west of the project (200 Area). They said it’s probably that smoke that came out of the 200 Areas. Dr. Ensminger came to visit me about the complaints. In those days, of course, everything was classified. But, arrangements were made so that I could examine some of the samples from the problem area. We already had interest in and some information on radiation effects. I had reviewed much of the pertinent literature. We

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examined thyroids from dead animals who were grazing in the area. It was a hard winter and they were out there trying to make a go of it. The thyroids looked normal. If there was radiation from radioiodine (which some thought was involved); but if there is damage to the thyroid gland, it stays there forever. Damaged thyroid cells are replaced by fibrous tissue (which we later defined in several species). So that was the nature of my introduction to the Hanford Dr. Harry Kornberg was engaged to start the Biology unit out in the 200 Areas. But in order to bleed the sheep, I had to go through about three security gates since we were in a production area. They were having trouble bleeding sheep. Karl Herde was the one who gave me an orientation-I probably had a more intense orientation to the Hanford works than anyone. Because they hadn’t built our facilities yet, Karl Herde had time to introduce me to all areas and activities and he had experience and knowledge about who was doing what. The plans for the experimental animal farm were made available to us. We closely observed the construction and made design changes. The point I was going to make was that I had an unusually good review of the whole plant because Herde had been there in production, so he knew all the production phenomena and the development of the testing methods of the radiation effects. That was going to be high on their priority list since we were going to address many of the environmental issues. We interviewed critical people in the production facilities and what the plans were for new methodologies and helped add people to address problem areas. That’s one reason that Frank Hungate was recruited. So, we built an excellent research laboratory. I say I had this unusually good introduction because Karl took off the time to tell me everything he knew about what was going on, and he had probably a better comprehension of the whole production activity than most people. HUNGATE: Karl was extremely well versed. BUSTAD: He really was. But, he wasn’t fully appreciated. HUNGATE:I believe that’s right. Was the animal farm still going at that time-the one across the river? Excuse me, I said the animal farm [I meant] the farm, the crop farm. BUSTAD: At that time, right across from where we were located in the 100 F was a farm producing hay and also fruit of various kinds, as I recall. You and your associates, Jack Cline, and also Archie Selders, were very much involved. We have pictures and slides of them out there farming. My involvement over on that side of the river-across from us-was with the wildlife people to look at what kind of wildlife was there, including some cormorants. The people at the fisheries and aquatic biology were interested in collecting samples and it was hard to obtain fish and other organisms. It was very tedious, so the biologists decided to get some young cormorants and train them to catch fish as they do in Japan. That experiment didn’t work out. But, we did examine to see if they would catch fish. We had them at Dr. Dick Foster’s facilities, in Aquatic Biology. They had some ponds there. They tried to see if they would catch any fish-they didn’t seem to. But, they went out on an evening requisition and got a few small trout and released them in the cormorant pen and it didn’t take them long to exhaust the

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supply. So, we knew that they could catch fish. Some staff members felt that it wasn’t a good use of cormorants to catch the fish and not get to eat them. BUSTAD: It really happened. Wayne Hanson was involved in it. They also set up a system for orientation into the whole radiation field. By the time I came to Hanford, I’d read much of the material available on radiation effects and the nature of radiation. Herde went over all that with me, how he had approached it. Then, the first International Radiation Congress was held in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1950. It was an outstanding meeting because they brought in just about everybody that had anything to do with radiation effects up to that point. It was an outstanding experience for me. BUSTAD: Were you really? HUNGATE: Yes, my brother was teaching at Oberlin and I went to the meeting’while I was at Reed College before I joined Hanford. That’s interesting. Yes, that brought together an outstanding group. BUSTAD: It is important to meet the leaders. That proved very valuable to me. Kornberg contacted Shields Warren (a world authority on radiation pathology) and said we got a guy here that has been interested in radiation effects and wondered if he could spend some time in your lab. So, in the fall of 1950 I worked in his laboratory in the Deaconess Hospital-a Harvard teaching hospital. I graduated in June 1949 and went straight [to Hanford]. It was another hot day in June when I got here. I wasn’t too sure it was the right choice. In 1953, I went to the International Congress of Veterinary Medicine in Sweden. I took my wife along, saved up money for the trip So I could visit Norwegian relatives. It was an unusually good’experience because I was able to visit a lot of radiation groups not only in Norway, where I gave a speech-part of it in Norwegian, in fact. I’ll never do that again. It was their National Meeting after the International Meeting in Sweden and they were going to have a program and a . big banquet. It was in a very nice resort. They invited me to speak to’them. I gave the first half of the speech in Norwegian, and then finished off the last part in English. Of course, after my talk, they all told me what a good job I did. But, by about eleven o’clock, when they had drunk quite a bit of aquavit they told me all the things I mispronounced. I was at a disadvantage because as they stated in the leading newspaper in Oslo that this guy from the U. S . had never been to Norway but his folks immigrated from Norway, and gave this dissertation in a

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fresh Gudbransdalen dialect which in this country was like saying he gave a scientific paper in a fresh Ozark twang! It was an interesting experience too, for I was introduced to the research there. I also stopped in Holland and in England; places where great work was being done. I tried out plans for our experiments, and got a lot of the estimates of what kind of levels we should use. So, that too was very helpful to me. I also went to the National Institutes of Health and the Naval research group. They were very much involved during the war. They also were a help to me. I went to Yale and one of the students at Yale was involved in the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission early and was one of the first people on site in Japan. I had read their various reports so it was fun meeting them. After about four years, I knew most everybody involved in radiological work at the major health centers of the HUNGATE:Oh, it certainly would. Let’s see, you joined shortly after the so-called Green Run. Do you have any recollection of any aftermath of that relevant to your work? That was I think in 1949. BUSTAD: The only thing the Green Run did, it raised background radiation temporarily in our control animals. We had some of them at the Prosser experiment station. There was a slight rise in the background radiation in the hay that was there (on the top of the hay). And, in counting the sheep, even though we always did this to see that the controls got counted the same way when we measured it; it was up slightly, but lower than in our lowest 1-131 levels. The other interesting thing about it, they fired what they called the atomic gun down on the test site in Nevada. It was a cannon, an artillery piece. BUSTAD: Well they tried it out. Some of the fallout of radioactivity fell on the Tri-Cities area. Two kinds of interesting incidents occurred. The local newspaper interviewed some people that found some dead sparrows in the Pasco area. We were called in on that too. I called a friend in the extension and asked him if they had put out any poison recently and he reported some strychnine had been placed in the area. The dead birds (house sparrows) brought to us had strychnine in their bodies. That, we concluded, was what killed the birds, it wasn’t the radioactive HUNGATE:One of my earlier remembrances was within a year or so after I joined we had that rain out of one of the tests where we walked into the labs and somebody discovered their shoes were. hot. BUSTAD: That’s the same thing. BUSTAD: Yes, I believe so.

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HUNGATE:We had to protect the lab against radiation, not the reverse. BUSTAD: Another part of it was they were on the radio scaring-everybody. One guy called home and asked them how things were and they said fine. And they asked, what shall we do? He said, oh, build yourself a tent in your living room. He got home and they had a tent in their living room. So that was that. We now shift to addressing our main sheep study with radioiodine. Sheep were picked out as the appropriate animal for the study because they were grazers, in fact, they were the chief grazing animal in the environs. There were some large feed lots, so that was an important consideration. So we went out and the first thing I did was to hire somebody who knew more about sheep than I did, and that was pretty easy. I like sheep and goats. I once had a pet goat. But, it turned out that the fellow I picked was a Scotsman, named Malcom Kerr, who had been with sheep all his life. He was highly recommended by all kinds of people. He worked for Coffin Sheep Company, which was the biggest Suffolk [sheep] breeder in the area. We hired him and went through Coffin’s.whole flock and Malcom picked out the best ones; tried to get uniformity. So, they hauled those in and got them used to their new quarters. All of the design features didn’t work very well because these were yearling ewes we were going to breed and study their offspring too. What they [the architects] had done to control any contamination, on the cement, they put in solid rubber matting in all of runs for the sheep, which worked all right to an …