From: PATBNAAV@aol.com
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999
Subject: Public release of 5-series Report
Well, finally, it's only two years late.
I received a call today from the National Academy of Sciences. I was
requested to contact Rudy and Boley because they didn't have their numbers.
There will be a public release of the 5-series report on 20 October, 11:00
a.m., at the National Academy of Sciences Lecture Room office off of "C"
Street, 2101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC. If any of you can be
there, please do so--and please post this information on your website for any
others who may be interested. Those five series are: Castle (1954),
Plumbbob (1957), Upshot-Knothole (1953), Greenhouse (1951),and Redwing (1956).
The reason for this new study is:
In July 1989 the Defense Nuclear Agency completed consolidating and
refining the individual military services' data bases and compared its new
data base with the data base used in the 1985 National Academy of Sciences'
study. As a reault of this comparison, the Defense Nuclear Agency discovered
that almost 15,000 of the 47,435 individuals assessed in part of the 1985
mortality report did not participate in the tests. The Defense Nuclear
Agency also identified about 28,000 participants who were present at the
tests but not included in the Academy's study....The Academy's researchers
discovered the inaccuries between 1977 and 1983 during the course of their
review of the exposure data and placed a caveat in the Academy's May 1985
report cautioning that the exposure data should be taken as approximations
only....Still, until August 1991, the Defense Nuclear Agency continued to
provide information on the study's conclusions to requesters of the
information without telling them that the inaccuracies in the participant
data may affect the validity of the study's findings.
The study pointed out that identifying military personnel who
participated in the nuclear atmospheric tests, a process begun in 1977, was
still not complete. Therefore, the Academy's mortality study included only
those participants identified in the selected operations by the services as
of March 1983--a total of 47,435 participants. Not until 1989, 4 years after
the study was issued, did questions arise over the accuracy of the
participant data.
"Close examinationn of the data concerning individual badge readings
leads to the conclusion that the readings are not necessarily accurate.
Mispunching of dates, service numbers, names and even dose readings occurred.
The doses, therefore, must be taken as only approximately accurate.
According to one of the principal authors of the study, film badges were
not sensitive to neutron radiation and also did not measure internal
radiation doses received from ingested or inhaled radionuclides contained in
fallout or neutron-activated materials. Therefore, the National Academy of
Sciences considered the film badge data to have a low bias. Although
reconstructed dose estimates purposely overestimated these sources of
exposure, the Academy's study cautioned that the true radiation doses could
be underestimated and should be taken as approximations only...
From the GAO Report to the Chairman, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, U.S.
Senate, August 1992, NUCLEAR HEALTH AND SAFETY, MORTALITY STUDY OF
ATMOSPHERIC NUCLEAR TEST PARTICIPANTS IS FLAWED.
Let's hope they do a better job than they did on the Crossroads re-study.
PAT BROUDY
Legislative Advisor