nuclear-news

Industries that can harm the public have “tobacco scientists” and lobbyists to promote their message. The Pilgrim Nuclear plant is no exception, and denies the pattern of radiation-linked cancers and disease around it.

Pilgrim’s spin doctors choose to rely on fiction, not facts. We rely on the National Academies (our nation’s premier scientists). The National Academies’ latest report said there is no safe dose of radiation and that exposure to even very low levels of radiation is three times more dangerous than previously expected – and more so for children and women. We rely also on statistics from the Massachusetts Cancer Registry. In 1982 it began recording data showing a continued increase in radiation-linked cancers in communities around Pilgrim.

A review of Massachusetts Cancer Registry data shows that Plymouth (from 2002-2009) has a statistically significant increased level of leukemia, at a 95% probability level. This means that there is, at most, a 5% chance that the difference between the observed and expected cases of leukemia is due to chance. There also is a statistically significant increased level of prostate cancer, another radiation linked disease.

For the previous two decades, the Massachusetts Cancer Registry shows the “footprints” of radiation linked disease (leukemia, thyroid cancer, multiple myeloma and prostate cancer) in the seven towns most likely to be impacted by Pilgrim – Carver, Duxbury, Kingston, Marshfield, Pembroke, Plymouth, and Plympton. The Cape is downwind from Pilgrim much of the year. It, along with southeastern Massachusetts, has the highest cancer rates in the state. There has not yet been a study to determine if radiation emissions from Pilgrim are the missing variable to explain the high cancer rates there.

A major case-control study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in 1990 (MDPH) found a four-fold increase in adult leukemia the closer one lived to or if one worked at Pilgrim. Pilgrim did not like the results and cut a political deal allowing it to appoint a second peer review panel to re-review the study and write a report. Even Pilgrim’s hand-picked panel concluded that, “The original study team adhered to generally accepted epidemiological principles… [And] …the findings of the study cannot be readily dismissed on the basis of methodological errors or proven biases… [and last]…the association found between leukemia and proximity to the Pilgrim nuclear facility was unexpectedly strong.” http://www.capecodtoday.com/article/2014/05/10/25347-study-increase-radiation-linked-cancers-around-pilgrim