Edward A. Martell
Atomic Scientist

Some time ago I was given this letter by Bill Bires, atomic veteran of Buster/Jangle and a long time advocate for a kinder US government. This letter was sent by Atomic Scientist, Edward A. Martell, LTC, ret., to Hazel O'Leary then in charge of the DOE. O'Leary is the one who cracked opened the tightly sealed doors of atomic secrecy. HREX, the Opennet database and the secret films about the atomic testing are a part of her Openness Initiative policy. Martell died in July 1999. A memorial published by the National Center for Atmospheric Research where Ed Martell worked, rightfully notes Martell's military history and radiation work at Nevada and Castle Bravo. --Keith Whittle

9 February 1994

The Honorable Secretary Hazel O'Leary
United States Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue S.W.
Washington, DC 20585

Dear Ms. O'Leary:

Your recent disturbing disclosures during your Tuesday, December 7,1993 press conference--human experiments with injected plutonium, 204 unannounced underground nuclear tests in Nevada, an estimated 300 to 700 pounds of plutonium in the ductwork of the Rocky Flats plutonium plant in west Denver--were surprising and shocking. However, your openness in making these disclosures was like a breath of fresh air from an unexpected source. Your promise that this new openness on the part of the DOE is just beginning and that further information will be forthcoming prompted me to write to you and direct your attention to two major problem areas in the radiation health field: (I) the tragic plight and long term fallout exposure of the downwinders of Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and throughout the United States, and (2) the serious neglected aspects of radiation-induced cancer risks and plutonium exposure standards which the AEC, DOE, ICRP, and even the BEIR committees, have successfully contrived to minimize or ignore for more than 40 years.

The Downwinders:

The unfortunate plight of the downwinders, many of whom suffered radiation injury and wrongful death at the hands of negligent government representatives who conducted the Nevada tests, has been fully described and documented in Howard Ball's Justice Downwind (Oxford University Press, 1986), in Philip Fradkin's Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy (University of Arizona Press, 1989), and elsewhere. A more recent, highly disturbing account is that by Carole Gallagher, American Ground Zero: the Secret Nuclear War (MIT Press, 1993), reviewed by J. M. Jasper (Nature 36d, 25 Nov. 1993, pp. 369-370). Gallagher describes the nuclear war that the U.S. government perpetrated against its own citizens and the personal experiences of a representative sample of its victims--downwinders, atomic veterans, and employees of the Nevada test site. I must agree with the reviewer's comment that "Gallagher's book leaves the reader in baffled outrage" !

Convincing evidence of elevated cancer incidence due to radioactive fallout from Nevada tests is provided by the childhood leukemia study of Joseph Lyon et al. (N. Engl. J. Med. 300, 397-402. 1979; Fradkin, Fallout, 217-223, 1989). Of a total of 52 excess childhood leukemia deaths in Utah between 1959 and 1967, the incidence was 3.4 times higher than expected levels in the five southern Utah counties closest to the Nevada Test Site. Although the numbers of excess leukemia deaths appear to be small we should note that leukemia is a very low incidence cancer that accounts for only about 2.5 percent of cancer deaths in the United States (NCl Monograph 57, 1981). The Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivors, exposed only to moderate doses of whole body gamma radiation, experienced a life-time incidence of deaths for all cancers except leukemia per unit of radiation exposure that was 13.5 times that for leukemia (Rotblat, J. Radiol. Prot 8, 39-46, 1988). on this basis, an excess of 52 childhood leukemia deaths translates to a total of 754 excess deaths from all cancers including leukemia, for external gamma radiation exposure alone. However, downwinders in Utah and elsewhere were also heavily exposed to numerous inhaled and ingested fallout radionuclides. This includes iodine-131 which concentrates in milk and in the thyroids of children and gives rise to thyroid cancer. Radiation doses to infant thyroids in St. George, Utah, from the 1953 Shot Harry tower burst alone were an estimated 120 to 240 rads (Knapp, Nature 202, 534-537, 1964). A Lawrence Radiation Laboratory report dated May 1966, entitled "Estimation of Dosage to Thyroids of Children in the U.S. from Nuclear Tests Conducted in Nevada During 1952 Through 1957" showed surprisingly high radiation doses in downwind areas throughout central and eastern United States.

Note that this LRL report and the Lyons leukemia study restricted their attention to the short period of atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada, between 1951 and 1962. However it was well established that vented underground tests released iodine-131 and other volatile and gaseous radionuclides to the lower atmosphere and contributed to high levels of radioactive fallout in downwind areas (see, for example, Martell "Iodine-131 fallout from underground tests," Science 143, 126-129, 1964). Of the very large number of underground tests in Nevada, between 1962 and 1992, a surprisingly large fraction were not contained and contributed periodically to high levels of radioactive fallout in downwind areas. It is evident that the total number of excess cancer deaths in local and remote downwind areas must have exceeded thousands. This does not include the added toll of stillbirths, birth defects, chromosome--aberration diseases, and other adverse radiation induced health effects other than cancer (see below).

In the historic trial, Irene Allen et al. vs. United States. 1982, and in the landmark opinion of Judge Bruce Jenkins, it was evident that AEC operatives who conducted the Nevada tests were highly negligent in their responsibilities for the health and safety of U.S. citizens in offsite areas (see Ball, Justice Downwind, p. 158). Despite Judge Jenkins decision to grant compensation to only 10 of the plaintiffs--eight leukemia deaths and two cancer cases--his decision was subsequently overturned by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the case. Thus, not even a token small number of victims of wrongful death and cancer received justice or compensation. As Philip Fradkin notes in his closing remarks "Sovereign immunity had prevailed, but at a terrible cost"!

The grand total of 1,051 nuclear tests in Nevada raises some additional, unanswered questions. Were all of these tests necessary and in the national security interest? Could not the number and yields of such tests have been drastically reduced without serious compromise of our nuclear weapons capability? Could not underground tests be contained adequately to avoid frequent ventings and the consequent downwind contatnination? The AEC Plowshare cratering experiments, which clearly cannot be defended on the basis of national security interests, is a glaring example of completely unjustified nuclear tests in Nevada.

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