Time to confront the cover-up of the harm of low-level radiation.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar, 4 July 2024 “………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. The ways in which scientists can be harassed might be subtle, for example, their research doesn’t get published or their funding is cut off. It can also be blatant as in public ridicule, not merely their research but also their person. A mighty industry highly subsidized by government and the fascination with big bombs not unsurprisingly had control of much of the media. Scientists could spend inordinate amounts of time defending their positions in industry or in colleges and universities but, in fact, many cannot afford to dissent or even publish critical material.

Dr. Ernest Sternglass defended his research before a US Senate hearing in favour of a ban on atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. The “400,000 dead babies’ theory” was simple mathematics. Every year starting well before atmospheric atomic testing counties had public health numbers for the numbers of babies born and the numbers of babies that reached their first birthday. As health care, vaccinations and antibiotics became widespread and better food became available, there were more children reaching their first birthday. Then suddenly when atmospheric testing started to occur, the number of one-year-olds decreases. It flat lines until the first limited voluntary Test Ban Treaty occurs in 1958 when the healthy trend is resumed. After a brief flurry – including the headlines in Esquire magazine – his work was mothballed.

Dr. Linus Pauling received a Nobel Prize for much of the same results. And then there is the little known exchange between Dr. Kathyrn Behnke who saw an increase in newborn deaths in August 1945 after the Trinity atomic bomb test and the project physician Dr. Warren Spafford who denied her findings, his assistant saying, “we can find no pertinent data concerning infant deaths”^[xii]Furthermore, he “wanted to assure you that the safety and health of the people at large is not in any way endangered.”

Several other studies claiming the role of radiation in disease occurred in quick succession. Dr. Alice Stewart in the UK had uncovered a link between x-rays in the mothers and leukemia in the offspring. She found such a strong link that she says, “by the time we reached 32 pairs^[xiii], it was there”.

In the USA, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiologist working on the Tri-State Leukemia Survey – a project founded to determine why a rare disease in children was suddenly becoming more common. The researchers had found that the use of x-rays on the mothers in their pregnancies was associated with a two-fold increase in leukemias in the so-exposed offspring. What was surprising was that these children continued to show increased leukemias throughout their lives.

The medical profession and the nuclear industry desperately wanted to believe otherwise. A third study out of Harvard done by a male researcher, Dr. McMahon, found the same results

The nuclear industry, if it acknowledged Drs Pauling and Sternglass’s findings, did so dismissively stating that more research must be done. With respect to Drs Stewart, McMahon and Bertell, they strongly emphasized that x-rays are not gamma rays.

It was only a decade later, in my medical class in 1976 at the U of Saskatchewan, the obstetrics professor taught us how to do pelvimetry, the art of calculating the size of a pregnant woman’s pelvis with x-rays, but also said without explaining why, that the practice was “now frowned upon”.

In 1979, Dr. Bertell had become obsessed with radiation and the human body. She was invited to meet with workers at Erwin, Tennessee who were striking – not for higher wages but for the right to retire at age 55 and collect a pension. They didn’t believe that they would live to age 65. One man asked her what was meant by blood in his urine. At a show of hands, every single man present had the same complaint. Rosalie says, “Out of a hundred workers, a hundred had experienced gross blood in the urine.”^[xiv]

She tried to get blood samples to do a limited survey of several workers but the union doctors failed to get the sample or deliver them promptly. After Rosalie contacted the doctors, the union leaders were jailed and the men forced back to work.

This small seemingly inconsequential Catholic nun was not to be deterred and kept trying to proceed with a health study of workers at Rocky Flats, Colorado and at Paducah, Kentucky. Officials who supported her were fired or departments “reorganized”. The industry was not about to risk real statistics.

Sometimes, however, they had to accept real statistics. In Canada, a study of uranium miners in Northern Saskatchewan established a connection between uranium mining and lung cancer. The original Eldorado study (named for the mining company) was published in 1986. It counted lung cancer deaths among miners from 1948 to 1980 who had been working at Beaverlodge and Port Radium mines^[xv] concluding that there were almost double the cancer deaths among miners than among a cohort of non-miners. They also found, not surprisingly that the higher the exposure to radioactivity, the greater the risk of lung cancer.

Kikk Study

Although several English and French studies had shown a link between radioactive emissions and children’s leukemia (a cancer of the blood), there was huge resistance to accept their findings. The industry found fault, legitimate or otherwise, with all of them.

However, enough people in Germany were concerned about the increase in leukemia in children living close to nuclear power plants that they endeavoured to do the “definitive study”.

The research panel included people of every political bent and various backgrounds with respect to nuclear power – they tried to create a research board that could not be criticized as “biased”. They chose children living within different distances, 5, 10, up to 25 km from the plant and paired them with children outside of those areas.

They used the data from the nuclear power plants to calculate the average amount of radiation that each child likely received.

They concluded that there was a distinctive increase in leukemia that also increased the closer the child was to the nuclear power plant. The researchers said that they didn’t know why.^[xvi]

Closer examination reveals what happens. Nuclear power plants average their releases of radioactive gasses over three months although they are actually released intermittently as “puffs” of gasses. What looks like a steady low dose release of tritium is actually a bunch of radioactive puffs of tritium.

In 1976, a professor in the College of Medicine, Dr. Sylvia Fedoruk tossed a well-protected glass vial at me, “Catch” she said. I caught it at which she announced that it contained radioactive iodine. I was hugely pregnant. As I returned the vial, she said, “See, it didn’t hurt you.”^[1]

I knew that it was an alpha emitter and that I was well-protected by the glass, but my classmates may not have known. Dr. Fedoruk was deeply invested in developing nuclear medicine, but the incident whetted my interest as well. I wanted to know why there was such aggressive interest in promoting the safety of radioactivity.

The 1962 physics professor’s question had stayed with me, “What about the nuclear waste?”. I was unclear about health risks. I became a member of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Its early iteration did not oppose nuclear power.

Committing to activism in the 1970’s was hardly in the cards. I was in my final year of medical college, mother of two children, partner to someone who was already an activist.

But now it is 2023, and I no longer have babies but I do have a grandchild. I am appalled that we are still spewing ionizing radiation into their atmosphere. And pretending that it is ok. Maybe that generation will be fine but what of the next?

As Dr. Gordon Edwards says, “Who is speaking for our grandchildren?” https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/