Nearly 50 years after the government's Cold War atomic bomb tests scattered radioactive fallout across the nation, the questions still burn: Did it make people sick? And if so, what should the government do about it?
Today, the Senate holds a hearing on those questions, reignited by the disclosure that the fallout reached far more people than previously thought The release of initial data from a long-delayed federal study suggested that the bomb tests may have caused 10,000 to 75,000 thyroid cancers.
The 100,000-page National Cancer Institute study, to be released in its entirety at today's hearing puts a new human tally on the govemment's push to win the Cold War.
It raises policy questions so deep the Clinton administration commissioned an independent scientific panel, convened Tuesday by the Institute of Medicine, for advice.
"What should the government do now?" says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who called for hearings. "I have no doubt this caused a lot of cancers. I don't know if we'll ever know how many. But the government bears a heavy responsibility."
It will be tough, perhaps impossible, to answer the big question: How many people got thyroid cancer from the iodine 131 that blanketed the nation as the main radioactive component fallout from the bomb tests?
USA TODAY analyzed national cancer data and found that thyroid cancer rates in areas where people got big doses of radioiodine are about the same as in low-dose areas.
"If there's an increase in risk for thyroid cancer, it appears small enough that you can't detect it with these fairly crude statistics" that are available, says Roy Shore, a professor at New York University medical school.
Too much time has passed since the fallout rained down across the country. Too many people have moved into and out of the most affected areas. Too many other health hazards skew patterns of illness.
"These confounding factors kind of smear over what you're looking for in this type of analysis," Shore says.
And there's virtually no meaningful data at all on other ills, mostly noncancerous thyroid disorders, that may be related to the fallout.
For millions of Americans who may have absorbed high doses of iodine 131 from the bomb tests, the revelations may create more questions than they answer.
Facing a wave of calls from concerned citizens, officials in Idaho, Montana and other affected states scrambled to review local cancer registries. But like the national cancer data, the records offer no evidence of the fallout's health effect.
"I've always thought there was more cancer in this area than there should be," says Gail Gardiner, 52, who works at a medical clinic in Meagher County, Mont, where people got the highest average iodine 131 doses. "This has just raised my questioning of why people here are getting sick."
People 'should have been toldToday's Senate hearing reflects the public angst sparked by the fallout study.
In addition to considering options for federal action, such as follow-up studies and subsidized medical checkups for potential fallout victims, lawmakers also will ask why the study, ordered by Congress in 1982, took so long. Many critics note that researchers had data several years ago that identified at-risk populations. But it wasn't released.
"It's totally irresponsible that this information wasn't made public," says Tim Conner of the Military Production Network, a coalition of nuclear watchdog groups. "People who were at risk should have been told."
The fallout study Ands that everyone in the country got at least some iodine 131 exposure from the 100 above-ground atomic bomb tests the government staged from 1951 to 1962.
In 23 counties, radioiodine doses hit levels once thought to have been confined to "downwinders" living next to the Nevada Test Site. Most high-dose counties were in Rocky Mountain states and the Farm Belt, but people got significant doses as far away as the East Coast.
The iodine 131 got to humans mainly via milk from cows and goats that ate tainted greenery. Children of that era are most likely to suffer related health problems because they drank more milk and were still developing.
Iodine 131 is linked to various thyroid disorders, including thyroid cancer, which is found in 15,000 people a year. In estimating that up to 75,000 thyroid cancers could be fallout-related, researchers say 70% remain undiagnosed.
"The estimate depends on what assumption is made about the cancer-causing potential of I-131," the National Cancer Institute reported. "Uncertainties about the relationship ... make more precise estimation difficult"
Answers difficult to nail downUSA TODAY used the cancer institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results data (SEER), the nation's biggest uniform cancer registry, to look for correlations between thyroid cancer rates and fallout exposure. The data suggest rates are no higher in counties where people got big iodine 131 doses.
But the analysis is handicapped by shortcomings in available data:
- Migration: Too many people have moved since the bomb tests. In many cases, the SEER data notes only where cancer victims lived at the time of their diagnosis.
- Other radiation sources: At the time of the atomic bomb tests, radiation was a common medical treatment for everything from acne and head lice to glandular problems and infections. Some cancers might be related to those treatments.
- Spotty records: The SEER data covers cancen in only 14% of the population. Few of the highest-dose counties are covered, so an analysis of the data doesn't account for some areas most likely to have been affected.
"The next step is to do an epidemiological study," says Owen Hoffman, a scientist who studies radiation's ties to cancer. "You round up people who lived in those (high-exposure) counties, ascertain what their (iodine 131) dose was and check for a relationship" to medical problems.
The question of whether the government should do such a survey will be among those considered by the Institute of Medicine's panel of scientists. The panel also will consider whether the government should offer medical screening for people likely to have absorbed large radioiodine doses.
A report on the panel's $558,000 review is to be sent to the administration by June 30, 1998.
USA TODAY data analysis by Barbara Hansen
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