Government workers were kept in the dark about their toxic workplace
As US modernizes its nuclear weapons, NCR looks at the legacy of one Cold War-era plant, National Catholic Reporter, May 20, 2019 by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
Editor’s note: As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri.
In a three-part series about the Kansas City Plant on Bannister Road and its successor 8 miles south, NCR reviews hundreds of pages of government reports and environmental summaries, and interviews more than two dozen sources, including five plant workers and their families, three former federal employees who worked nearby, nuclear industry and government officials, health experts, business sources, state environmental regulators and a former city councilman.
This is Part 1.
“………… Debbie blames Bob’s painful and untimely passing on his worksite. For 27 years, he worked as an engineer at the Kansas City nuclear bomb components plant, a proud and dedicated employee of what is now Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies LLC. Sworn to secrecy, Bob never discussed his work assignments with his wife. And she never asked. She is now convinced that whatever he did out there probably killed him.
During the decades of the Cold War, the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies employed hundreds of thousands of Americans in more than 350 secretive, hazardous worksites across the country, according to federal records. Scientists, engineers, machinists and laborers were hired to design, test and construct a stockpile of 70,000 nuclear warheads. Inadequately protected from carcinogens and toxins and often exposed without their knowledge, many nuclear workers became ill and died. They devolved into early dementia, endured high rates of miscarriages, suffered nerve disorders, and succumbed to a host of debilitating respiratory illnesses and cancers.
How many Americans died producing nuclear weapons is not a statistic the government tracks. “Irradiated,” a 2015 investigative series by McClatchy DC, the Washington bureau of the media chain that owns The Kansas City Star, put the total at 33,480, four times the number of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its interpretation of the McClatchy DC data, the Columbia Journalism Review notes 33,480 is the number of American nuclear workers compensated by a government program who have died. “The government has acknowledged 15,000 of those deaths were due to work-related illnesses,” the magazine writes. “The rest only had illnesses linked to their nuclear work and may have died of old age or unrelated causes.”
Wayne Knox, a former industrial hygienist for DOE, thinks the death toll is “much, much higher” than 33,480.
The tally represents a price paid in American lives for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Cities and communities that hosted weapons plants saw other costs: sick workers and their families who felt betrayed by the industry’s indifference, and persistent environmental contamination.
As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Continue reading →
Radiation Model for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Announced by the National CFIDS Foundation, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/radiation-model-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-announced-national-cfids-195900691.htmlNEEDHAM, Mass., May 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/–The National CFIDS Foundation, of Needham, Massachusetts, has provided details regarding its radiation model for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a disease that affects millions in the United States. According to Alan Cocchetto, Medical Director for the National CFIDS Foundation, “Our latest model has now identified two key compounds, known as hydroperoxides, that appear to result from cellular injury due to radiation exposure. We believe this finding is of critical importance to the disease process that is present in our patients.”
The National CFIDS Foundation identified cardiolipin hydroperoxides as the first key target that acts to disrupt proper functioning of the mitochondria, the energy factory within the cell. The second target, phosphatidylserine hydroperoxides, acts to disrupt red blood cell function resulting in altered tissue oxygenation. Basically, these two hydroperoxides act in concert as cellular toxicants to adversely affect normal cell function.
According to Gail Kansky, National CFIDS Foundation President, “As I understand it, these compounds make for the perfect storm from a disease standpoint since they adversely affect the ability of the body to function properly at many levels. We believe this to be a major tipping point in our understanding of this disease and I truly expect this to have a significant impact on our patients with regards to diagnostic testing and future therapies that will result from these efforts. As such, we are very pleased to be moving full steam ahead on this with our research groups.”
Two decades ago, Chernobyl scientists had identified Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a characteristic aftermath of radioecological catastrophe establishing the first link between radiation exposure and the development of the disease. In 2010, the National CFIDS Foundation became the first organization to report the presence of internal radiation and chromosome damage in its own patient cohort.
According to the National CFIDS Foundation, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is also known as Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) as well as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Founded in 1997, the goals of the National CFIDS Foundation are to help fund medical research to find a cause and to expedite appropriate treatments for the disease. Since its inception, the National CFIDS Foundation has provided $4 million dollars in self-directed research grants to global scientists. The National CFIDS Foundation, an all volunteer 501(c)(3) federally approved charity, is funded solely by individual contributions. Additional information can be found on the web at www.ncf-net.org or in The National Forum newsletter. The Foundation can be reached at 781-449-3535.
By North Asia correspondent Jake Sturmer and Yumi Asada in Fukushima nside a laboratory in Fukushima, Japan, the whirr of sophisticated equipment clicks, beeps and buzzes as women in lab coats move from station to station.
Key points:
Mothers in Fukushima set up a radiation testing lab because they didn’t trust government results
The women test food, water and soil and keep the public informed about radiation levels
A major earthquake and tsunami caused a nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant in 2011
They are testing everything — rice, vacuum cleaner dust, seafood, moss and soil — for toxic levels of radiation.
But these lab workers are not typical scientists.
They are ordinary mums who have built an extraordinary clinic.
“Our purpose is to protect children’s health and future,” says lab director Kaori Suzuki.
In March 2011, nuclear reactors catastrophically melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, following an earthquake and tsunami.
Driven by a desperate need to keep their children safe, a group of mothers began testing food and water in the prefecture.
The women, who had no scientific background, built the lab from the ground up, learning everything on the job.
The lab is named Tarachine, a Japanese word which means “beautiful mother”.
“As mothers, we had to find out what we can feed our children and if the water was safe,” Ms Suzuki says.
“We had no choice but to measure the radiation and that’s why we started Tarachine.”
After the nuclear accident, Fukushima residents waited for radiation experts to arrive to help.
“No experts who knew about measuring radiation came to us. It was chaos,” she says.
In the days following the meltdown, a single decision by the Japanese Government triggered major distrust in official information which persists to this day.
The Government failed to quickly disclose the direction in which radioactive materials was drifting from the power plant.
Poor internal communications caused the delay, but the result was that thousands fled in the direction that radioactive materials were flying.
Former trade minister Banri Kaieda, who oversaw energy policy at the time, has said that he felt a “sense of shame” about the lack of disclosure.
But Kaori Suzuki said she still finds it difficult to trust the government.
“They lied and looked down on us, and a result, deceived the people,” Ms Suzuki says.
“So it’s hard for the people who experienced that to trust them.”
She and the other mothers who work part-time at the clinic feel great responsibility to protect the children of Fukushima.
But it hasn’t always been easy.
When they set up the lab, they relied on donated equipment, , and none of them had experience in radiation testing. There was nobody who could teach us and just the machines arrived,” Ms Suzuki says.
“At the time, the analysing software and the software with the machine was in English, so that made it even harder to understand.
“In the initial stage we struggled with English and started by listening to the explanation from the manufacturer. We finally got some Japanese software once we got started with using the machines.”
Radiation experts from top universities gave the mothers’ training, and their equipment is now among the most sophisticated in the country.
Food safety is still an issue
The Fukushima plant has now been stabilised and radiation has come down to levels considered safe in most areas.
But contamination of food from Japan remains a hotly contested issue.
Australia was one of the first countries to lift import restrictions on Japanese food imports after the disaster.
But more than 20 countries and trading blocs have kept their import ban or restrictions on Japanese fisheries and agricultural products.
At the clinic in Fukushima, Kaori Suzuki said she accepted that decision.
“It doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. I feel that’s just the decision they have made for now,” she says.
Most results in their lab are comparatively low, but the mothers say it is important there is transparency so that people know what their children are consuming.
Fukushima’s children closely monitored after meltdown
Noriko Tanaka is one of many mothers in the region who felt that government officials were completely unprepared for the unfolding disaster.
She was three months pregnant with her son Haru when the disaster struck.
Ms Tanaka lived in Iwaki City, about 50 kilometres south of the power plant.
Amid an unfolding nuclear crisis, she panicked that the radioactive iodine released from the meltdown would harm her unborn child.
She fled on the night of the disaster.
When she returned home 10 days later, the fear of contamination from the invisible, odourless radioactive material weighed deeply on her mind.
“I wish I was able to breastfeed the baby,” she says.
“[Radioactive] caesium was detected in domestic powdered milk, so I had to buy powdered milk made overseas to feed him.”
Ms Tanaka now has two children —seven-year-old Haru and three-year-old Megu. She regularly takes them in for thyroid checks which are arranged free-of-charge by the mothers’ clinic.
Radiation exposure is a proven risk factor for thyroid cancer, but experts say it’s too early to tell what impact the nuclear meltdown will have on the children of Fukushima.
Noriko Tanaka is nervous as Haru’s thyroid is checked.
“In the last examination, the doctor said Haru had a lot of cysts, so I was very worried,” she says.
However this time, Haru’s results are better and he earns a high-five from Dr Yoshihiro Noso.
He said there was nothing to worry about, so I feel relieved after taking the test,” Ms Tanaka says.
“The doctor told me that the number of cysts will increase and decrease as he grows up.”
Doctor Noso has operated on only one child from Fukushima, but it is too early to tell if the number of thyroid cancers is increasing because of the meltdown.
“There isn’t a way to distinguish between cancers that were caused naturally and those by the accident,” he says.Dr Noso says his biggest concern is for children who were under five years old when the accident happened.The risk is particularly high for girls.
Even if I say there is nothing to worry medically, each mother is still worried,” he says.
“They feel this sense of responsibility because they let them play outside and drink the water. If they had proper knowledge of radiation, they would not have done that,” he said.
Mums and doctors fear for future of Fukushima’s children
After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, the incidence of thyroid cancers increased suddenly after five years….
“In the case of Chernobyl, the thyroid cancer rate increased for about 10 years. It’s been eight years since the disaster and I would like to continue examinations for another two years.” …….
“Some children who evacuated from Fukushima living in other prefectures are being bullied [so badly that they] can’t go to school,” Noriko Tanaka said.
“The radiation level is low in the area we live in and it’s about the same as Tokyo, but we will be treated the same as the people who live in high-level radiation areas.”
Noriko is particularly worried for little Megu because of prejudice against the children of Fukushima.
“For girls, there are concerns about marriage and having children because of the possibility of genetic issues.”
5 Weird Things You Didn’t Know About Chernobyl, Live Science, By Laura Geggel, Associate Editor | May 9, 2019 The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded more than three decades ago, in 1986, but you can watch it unfold on HBO’s TV miniseries “Chernobyl,” which premiered earlier this week.
While most people know the general story — that due to human error, the nuclear reactor exploded and unleashed radioactive material across Europe — few know the nitty-gritty details. Here are five weird facts you probably didn’t know about Chernobyl. [Images: Chernobyl, Frozen in Time]
1. Similar to Hiroshima
About 30,000 people were near Chernobyl’s reactor when it exploded on April 26, 1986. Those exposed to the radiation are thought to have received about 45 rem (rem is a unit of radiation dosage), on average, which is similar to the average dose received by survivors after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, according to the book “Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008) by Richard Muller, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
While 45 rem is not enough to cause radiation sickness (which usually occurs at about 200 rem), it still increases the risk of cancer by 1.8%, Muller wrote. “That risk should lead to about 500 cancer deaths in addition to the 6,000 normal cancers from natural causes.”
However, a 2006 estimate from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is associated with the United Nations, calculated much higher cancer fatalities. The IAEA looked at the total distribution of the radiation, which reached across Europe and even to the United States, and estimated that the cumulative radiation dose from Chernobyl was about 10 million rem, which would have led to an additional 4,000 cancer deaths from the accident, Muller wrote…… https://www.livescience.com/65450-weird-chernobyl-facts.html
“Anthropocene Nuclear Legacy” –Melting Glaciers Could Unleash Radioactive Fallout https://dailygalaxy.com/2019/05/anthropocene-nuclear-legacy-melting-glaciers-could-unleash-radioactive-fallout/May 9, 2019“These materials are a product of what we have put into the atmosphere. This is just showing that our nuclear legacy hasn’t disappeared yet. It’s still there,”said Caroline Clason, a lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Plymouth of a study published in Nature that surveyed 19,000 of Earth’s glaciers and found their total melt amounts to a loss of 335 billion tons of ice each year, more than measurements of previous studies.“When it was built in the early 1900s, the road into Mount Rainier National Park from the west passed near the foot of the Nisqually Glacier, one of the mountain’s longest,” reports the New York Times. “Visitors could stop for ice cream at a stand built among the glacial boulders and gaze in awe at the ice. The ice cream stand (image below) is long gone.”
The glacier now ends more than a mile farther up the mountain, and they are melting elsewhere around the world too.
This scary scenario of our nuclear legacy was explored by an international team of scientists who studied the spread of radioactive contaminants in Arctic glaciers throughout Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, the European Alps, the Caucasus, British Columbia, and Antarctica. The researchers shared their results at the 2019 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna.
It found man made radioactive material at all 17 survey sites, often at concentrations at least 10 times higher than levels elsewhere. “They are some of the highest levels you see in the environment outside nuclear exclusion zones,” said Caroline Clason
Fallout radionuclides (FRNs) were detected these sites. Radioactive material was found embedded within ice surface sediments called “cryoconite,” and at concentration levels ten times greater than the surrounding environment.“ They are some of the highest levels you see in the environment outside nuclear exclusion zones,” Clason, who led the research project, told AFP.
The Chernobyl disaster of 1986—by far the most devastating nuclear accident to date—released vast clouds of radioactive material including Caesium into the atmosphere, causing widespread contamination and acid rain across northern Europe for weeks afterwards. “Radioactive particles are very light so when they are taken up into the atmosphere they can be transported a very long way,” she told AFP. “When it falls as rain, like after Chernobyl, it washes away and it’s sort of a one-off event. But as snow, it stays in the ice for decades and as it melts in response to the climate it’s then washed downstream.”
The environmental impact of this has been shown in recent years, as wild boar meat in Sweden was found to contain more than 10 times the safe levels of Caesium.
“We’re talking about weapons testing from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, going right back in the development of the bomb,” Clason said. “If we take a sediment core you can see a clear spike where Chernobyl was, but you can also see quite a defined spike in around 1963 when there was a period of quite heavy weapons testing.”
Weapons tests can fling radioactive detritus up to 50 miles in the air. Smaller, lighter materials will travel into the upper atmosphere, and may “circulate around the world for years, or even decades, until they gradually settle out or are brought back to the surface by precipitation,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Fallout is comprised of radionuclides such as Americium-241, Cesium-137, Iodine-131, and Strontium-90. Depending on a material’s half-life, it could remain in the environment minutes to years before decaying. Their levels of radiation also vary.
Particles can return to the immediate area as acid rain that’s absorbed by plants and soil, wreaking havoc on ecosystems, human health, and communities. But radionuclides that travel far and wide can settle in concentrated levels on snow and ice—large amounts of radioactive material from Fukushima was found in 2011 on four glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau, for example.
One of the most potentially hazardous residues of human nuclear activity is Americium, which is produced when Plutonium decays. Whereas Plutonium has a half-life of 14 years, Americium lasts 400.
Americium is more soluble in the environment and it is a stronger alpha (radiation) emitter. Both of those things are bad in terms of uptake into the food chain,” said Clason. While there is little data available on how these materials can be passed down the food chain—even potentially to humans—Clason said there was no doubt that Americium is “particularly dangerous”.
As geologists look for markers of the epoch when mankind directly impacted the health of the planet—known as the Anthropocene—Clason and her team believe that radioactive particles in ice, soil and sediment could be an important indicator.
The team hopes that future research will investigate how fallout could disperse into the food chain from glaciers, calling it a potential “secondary source of environmental contamination many years after the nuclear event of their origin.”
(Reuters Health) – Cancer patients usually get written consent forms to sign before radiation that are supposed to clearly spell out the treatment risks, but a new U.S. study suggests these forms are too complex for most patients to easily understand.
While radiotherapy has become more precise in recent years, it can still damage some healthy cells and tissues in addition to destroying the cancer. Common short-term side effects can include fatigue as well as skin problems like itching, blistering and peeling. Lasting side effects depend on the type and location of radiation therapy and can include more serious problems like new malignancies elsewhere on the body.
In theory, informed consent is a cornerstone of modern cancer treatment. But the study results suggest that paperwork patients receive to explain radiation is falling short of this goal.
Researchers have discovered that crustaceans that live at the bottom of the ocean are eating radioactive carbon that has passed through the food web.
A study detailing the findings was published in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“Although the oceanic circulation takes hundreds of years to bring water containing bomb [carbon] to the deepest trench, the food chain achieves this much faster,” said Ning Wang, the lead author of the new study.
Nuclear bomb tests in the 50s and 60s released radioactive carbon-14 into the atmosphere. Once nuclear tests ended, the amount of carbon-14 or “bomb carbon” in the atmosphere dropped, and the carbon left the atmosphere to settle on the ocean’s surface. In a new study, researchers used bomb carbon to study and analyze organisms that thrive in the deepest parts of the ocean.Samples were collected from as deep as seven miles below the surface where temperatures are freezing and pressures high.
Amphipod specimens, which are crustaceans that scavenge along the deep ocean floor and eat waste and dead organisms, collected in 2017 from the Mariana, Mussau, and New Britain Trenches in the tropical West Pacific Ocean were analyzed for the study.
The amphipods had unusually high levels of carbon-14 in their stomachs and muscles, and the levels were similar to those found in surface marine organisms, suggesting that deep ocean organisms are eating carbon-14 contaminated waste and dead organisms that sink from the surface.
Radioactive carbon from nuclear bomb tests found in deep ocean trenches, Phys Org, by American Geophysical Union 8 May 19, Radioactive carbon released into the atmosphere from 20th-century nuclear bomb tests has reached the deepest parts of the ocean, new research finds.A new study in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the first evidence of radioactive carbon from nuclear bomb tests in muscle tissues of crustaceans that inhabit Earth’s ocean trenches, including the Mariana Trench, home to the deepest spot in the ocean.
Organisms at the ocean surface have incorporated this “bomb carbon” into the molecules that make up their bodies since the late 1950s. The new study finds crustaceans in deep ocean trenches are feeding on organic matter from these organisms when it falls to the ocean floor. The results show human pollution can quickly enter the food web and make its way to the deep ocean, according to the study’s authors.
“Although the oceanic circulation takes hundreds of years to bring water containing bomb [carbon] to the deepest trench, the food chain achieves this much faster,” said Ning Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, China, and lead author of the new study.
“There’s a very strong interaction between the surface and the bottom, in terms of biologic systems, and human activities can affect the biosystems even down to 11,000 meters, so we need to be careful about our future behaviors,” said Weidong Sun, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, China, and co-author of the new study. “It’s not expected, but it’s understandable, because it’s controlled by the food chain.”……
Thermonuclear weapons tests conducted during the 1950s and 1960s doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere when neutrons released from the bombs reacted with nitrogen in the air. Levels of this “bomb carbon” peaked in the mid-1960s and then dropped when atmospheric nuclear tests stopped. By the 1990s, carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere had dropped to about 20 percent above their pre-test levels.
This bomb carbon quickly fell out of the atmosphere and mixed into the ocean surface. Marine organisms that have lived in the decades since this time have used bomb carbon to build molecules within their cells, and scientists have seen elevated levels of carbon-14 in marine organisms since shortly after the bomb tests began……..https://phys.org/news/2019-05-radioactive-carbon-nuclear-deep-ocean.html
ANI May 6, 2019, Prolonged exposure to low-dose radiation could increase the risk of hypertension.Washington: A study has revealed that prolonged exposure to low-dose radiation could increase the risk of hypertension, a known cause of stroke and heart ailments. The study published in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association was conducted on workers at a nuclear plant in Russia.
“It is necessary to inform the public that not only high doses of radiation but low to moderate doses also increase the risk of hypertension and other circulatory system diseases, which today contribute significantly to death and disability. As a result, all radiological protection principles and dose limits should be strictly followed for workers and the general public,” added Tamara Azizova, lead author of the study. Uncontrolled hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, can lead to heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other serious health problems. Earlier studies linked exposure to high doses of radiation to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and death from those diseases.
This study is the first to find an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years.
The study included more than 22,000 workers. The workers were hired between 1948 and 1982, with an average length of time on the job of 18 years. Half had worked there for more than 10 years. All of the workers had comprehensive health check-ups and screening tests at least once a year with advanced evaluations every five years.
The researchers evaluated the workers’ health records up to 2013. More than 8,400 workers (38 per cent of the group) were diagnosed with hypertension, as defined in this study as a systolic blood pressure reading of 140 mm Hg, and a diastolic reading 90 mm Hg. Hypertension incidence was found to be significantly associated with the cumulative dose.
To put it in perspective, the hypertension incidence among the workers in the study was higher than that among Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II but lower than the risk estimated for clean-up workers following the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
The differences may be explained by variations in exposure among the three groups, according to the researchers.
Following the atomic bombing, the Japanese experienced a single, high-dose exposure of radiation, the Chernobyl workers were exposed to radiation for a short time period (days and months), while the Russian workers were chronically exposed to low doses of radiation over many years.
While the development of cancer is commonly associated with radiation exposure, “We believe that an estimate of the detrimental health consequences of radiation exposure should also include non-cancer health outcomes. We now have evidence suggesting that radiation exposure may also lead to increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, as well,” said Azizova.
A long-term study of Russian nuclear plant workers suggests that prolonged low-dose radiation exposure increases the risk of hypertension. This study is the first to associate an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years. The higher the cumulative dose of radiation, the greater the risk, the study showed.
Prolonged exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation increased the risk of hypertension, according to a study of workers at a nuclear plant in Russia published in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.
Uncontrolled hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, can to lead to heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other serious health problems.
Earlier studies linked exposure to high doses of radiation to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and death from those diseases. This study is the first to find an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years.
The study included more than 22,000 workers at the first large-scale nuclear enterprise in Russia known as the Mayak Production Association. The workers were hired between 1948 and 1982, with an average length of time on the job of 18 years. Half had worked there for more than 10 years. All of the workers had comprehensive health check-ups and screening tests at least once a year with advanced evaluations every five years.
The researchers evaluated the workers’ health records up to 2013. More than 8,400 workers (38 percent of the group) were diagnosed with hypertension, as defined in this study as a systolic blood pressure reading of ?140 mm Hg, and a diastolic reading ? 90 mm Hg. Hypertension incidence was found to be significantly associated with the cumulative dose.
To put it in perspective, the hypertension incidence among the workers in the study was higher than that among Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, but lower than the risk estimated for clean-up workers following the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
The differences may be explained by variations in exposure among the three groups, according to the researchers. Following the atomic bombing, the Japanese experienced a single, high-dose exposure of radiation, the Chernobyl workers were exposed to radiation for a short time period (days and months), while the Mayak workers were chronically exposed to low doses of radiation over many years.
While the development of cancer is commonly associated with radiation exposure, “we believe that an estimate of the detrimental health consequences of radiation exposure should also include non-cancer health outcomes. We now have evidence suggesting that radiation exposure may also lead to increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, as well,” said Tamara Azizova, M.D., lead author of the study at the Southern Urals Biophysics Institute in Russia.
Azizova pointed out that in recent years, the number of people exposed to radiation in everyday life, such as during diagnostic procedures, has increased. “It is necessary to inform the public that not only high doses of radiation, but low to moderate doses also increase the risk of hypertension and other circulatory system diseases, which today contribute significantly to death and disability. As a result, all radiological protection principles and dose limits should be strictly followed for workers and the general public.”
How radiation exposure may increase the risk of hypertension is still a question, according to Azizova. “So far, the mechanisms remain unclear, not only for certain cohorts but also for the general population. One of the main tasks for the coming decade is to study the mechanisms of hypertension and heart and brain atherosclerosis occurring in people who are — and who were exposed — to radiation.”
The authors note that their study is a retrospective one, and while many health conditions and behaviors were documented in the medical records of the workers (such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index), other factors, such as stress and nutrition, were unavailable for researchers to be taken into account in this study.
Tamara Azizova, Ksenia Briks, Maria Bannikova, Evgeniya Grigoryeva. Hypertension Incidence Risk in a Cohort of Russian Workers Exposed to Radiation at the Mayak Production Association Over Prolonged Periods. Hypertension, 2019; DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.118.11719
Atomic veteran wonders at radiation’s effects, PostStar, Will Doolittle will@poststar.comMay 2, 2019, GLENS FALLS— Bill Jones went to paradise for 13 months in the mid-1950s, and it wasn’t until many years later, when he and others were finally released from their vows of secrecy, that he found out what a hell it really had been…….
Two of his children have suffered from skin cancer, as he has, and one of his grandchildren had multiple birth defects, and he worries that his military service more than 60 years ago could have something to do with all that.
But he doesn’t know for sure, and the government isn’t telling, which is what really bothers him.
“This stuff accumulates in your body. It can cause birth defects. That’s what frosts me. They never told us about this,” he said.
Bill and Charlotte were sitting at the dining room table in their cozy house and talking about the atomic bomb testing the U.S. government performed in the 1950s on the Marshall Islands, a collection of atolls far out in the Pacific Ocean.
Jones had enlisted with three buddies from Glens Falls, going through basic training with them before he was sent to Technical Intelligence School in Aberdeen, Maryland. It was the depth of the Cold War and a search for soldiers with security clearances swept him up for an unexplained assignment. In the fall of 1956, he disembarked on Enewetak Atoll………
The U.S. had dropped 12 bombs already that year on Enewetak, each one named after an American Indian tribe (Seminole was dropped on June 6, for example, and Mohawk on July 3). The testing wouldn’t resume until after Jones left, in April 1958, but over time (even as he kept his secrets), he would learn the radiation lingered in the air and water, planting seeds in many of the soldiers that would bloom into cancers and kill them……..
He has scars on his scalp from having growths removed, but at 84 considers himself fortunate.
Benefits are available for atomic veterans, and Jones called the Department of Justice about qualifying for them.
He was told, “As soon as I get a terminal illness, call back.”
Others, after years of keeping quiet, never seek out help they might qualify for.
“There’s not an awful lot of these atomic veterans left. There’s a lot that don’t know about the program, so they waste away, shall we say,” he said.
Fred Schafer, an officer with the National Association of Atomic and Nuclear Veterans, says the soldiers were guinea pigs.
“They wanted to see what happened,” he said, referring to the U.S. military establishment, which was monitoring the soldiers’ reactions to nuclear radiation. “They wanted to see how fast they could get in after using these bombs.”
The organization has the names of about 1,500 veterans in its database who were part of the nuclear testing program, but Schafer estimates at least 40,000 are still alive who don’t know about the organization. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers participated, but many have died.
Jones wasn’t allowed to tell Charlotte what he was doing on Enewetak. He couldn’t take photos, he could make only one phone call every two or three months, and his letters were reviewed. Anything he sent home, like a sea shell scooped up from the sand, had to be checked with a Geiger counter first.
“They were aware,” he said. “I can’t prove it, but they knew the radiation caused birth defects.”…….It wasn’t until 1996 that the Defense Department allowed atomic veterans to talk about taking part in the testing of the most destructive weapons in history. Bill and the others sent to the Marshall Islands considered it a tropical vacation at the time, but they didn’t know — and no one told them — the exposure could be deadly…….. https://poststar.com/news/local/column-atomic-veteran-wonders-at-radiation-s-effects/article_178156a0-052d-5306-9100-49cf686d954a.html
Hard duty in the Chernobyl zone, Life as a liquidator after the 1986 nuclear disaster
Cathie Sullivan, a New Mexico activist, worked with Chernobyl liquidator, Natalia Manzurova, during three trips to the former Soviet Union in the early 2000s. Natalia was one of 750,000 Soviet citizens sent to deal with the Chernobyl catastrophe.Natalia is now in her early 60s and has long struggled with multiple health issues. She was treated last year for a brain tumor that was found to be cancerous. A second tumor has since been found and funds were recently raised among activists around the world to help with the costs of this latest treatment. Natalia and Cathie together authored a short book, “Hard Duty, A woman’s experience at Chernobyl” describing Natalia’s harrowing four and a half years as a Chernobyl liquidator. What follows is an excerpt from that book with some minor edits.
By Natalia Manzurova
When I tell people that I was at Chernobyl they often ask if I had to go. My training is in radiation biology and I was born in a city that was part of the secret Soviet nuclear weapons complex, much like Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first A-bomb was built. People from my city considered it a duty to go to Chernobyl, just as New York City firefighters went to the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Because of the radiation danger to women of child-bearing age, those under 30 did not go, but being 35 in 1987, I began my 4.5 years of work at Chernobyl. ………..
Sad experiences
In 1987, when I first arrived at Chernobyl, my group of about 20 scientists from the Ozyersk radio-ecology lab started a Department of Environmental Decontamination and Re-Cultivation. We used a 10-acre greenhouse complex for our plant studies, built before the accident, and for office space we used an empty, nearby kindergarten……..
Like many liquidators I ‘wear’ a ‘Chernobyl necklace’, the scar on the lower throat from thyroid-gland surgery.* While working in the exclusion zone I experienced slurred speech, memory loss and poor balance. One of my bosses and I realized that we were forgetting appointments and obligations and agreed to help each other remember who, what, where and when. I had severe amnesia for a time and read letters I wrote my mother to help fill in forgotten years.
The Chernobyl accident is not over, in fact its damaging effects on people and the land will only taper off slowly for generations—lingering harm that is almost certainly unique to nuclear accidents.
Natalia Manzurova, with fellow Russian activist, Nadezhda Kutepova, was awarded the 2011 Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Resistance.
The legacy of nuclear power is checkered at best, Delware State News, Apr 18th, 2019 · by Alan Muller
Forty years ago, on March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in central Pennsylvania — about 95 miles northwest of Dover — partially melted down and experienced at least one explosion.
Many of us living in Delaware at the time were very concerned about being downwind and somewhat downstream of a nuclear accident of unknown magnitude.
The causes were a combination of equipment failures, design defects and operator errors. The operators did not have accurate indications of what was going on in the reactor, so they couldn’t make the right decisions. Reportedly, more than half of the radiation monitors in the area were broken, so there was not adequate indication of how much radioactivity was released and where it went.
Days afterwards: “[Pa.] Governor Thornburgh advised pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice. This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.”
Ever since the TMI meltdown, nuke industry sources and public health authorities have claimed that too little radioactivity was released to harm people’s health…….
Failure to investigate TMI health effects was published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2004. This included failure to investigate, media blackouts and the firing of Pennsylvania Health Commissioner Gordon MacLeod by Gov. Thornburgh after he pointed out increases in infant mortality and other health problems near TMI.
Jane Lee, a local farmer, with others, went door-to-door and said they had found and documented many acute health problems. I knew Jane towards the end of her life. She’d been unable to arrange publication of her work, and wasn’t online A deposit of Jane Lee Papers at Dickenson College (Carlisle, Pa.) may hold some of this information.
More recently in 2017:
“A new Penn State College of Medicine study has found a link between the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and thyroid cancer cases in south central Pennsylvania. The study marks the first time the partial meltdown can be connected to specific cancer cases, the researchers have said. The findings may pose a dramatic challenge to the nuclear energy industry’s position that radiation released had no impact on human health.” …….
All nuclear plants release radiation to air and water during normal operation, as do other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle such as uranium mining. Many nuclear plants have tall stacks intended to disperse “noncondensible” radioactive emissions. See one in pictures of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant — three of this same General Electric design melted down in Japan in 2011. Evidence is accumulating that these releases from normal operations may have health impacts.
Some reports claim the only health effects from TMI were mental health impacts from stress, as if “mental health impacts” were unimportant.
The TMI meltdown ended expansion of the U.S. nuclear power industry — after TMI, no new reactors were ordered in the U.S. and many projects were stopped.
Now, 40 years later, the remaining industry is collapsing, largely because wind and solar have become cheaper. The remaining TMI unit is to shut down this year. But the nuke industry isn’t going down without a fight, trying to rebrand itself as a climate change solution. In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle releases less climate-changing carbon dioxide than fossil-fuel burning but much more than wind or solar (per unit of electricity generated).
It is timely to think about TMI as Delaware is surrounded by nuclear power reactors. About 10 percent of all those in the U.S. are within 50 miles of Delaware. The Salem/Hope Creek reactors, the nearest, have recently received an enormous subsidy from the state of New Jersey to stay open. On the other hand, the Oyster Creek, N.J., reactor has closed.
This contraction of the nuclear power industry won’t be easy for people working in it, or for some of the nuclear host communities. But it will happen regardless and ultimately we will be safer and healthier for it.
To ignore the human impacts of the nuclear industry is a moral failure.
Atomic bombs, Chernobyl,Fukushima—radiation has traveled and frozen all over the world. Global warming is changing that.
Melting could be one of the most important phenomena of the 21st century. Thanks to man-made climate change, Arctic ice levels have hit a record low this year. Among the many profound changes that could stem from ice melting across the world, according to a new study from an international group of scientists, is the release of deeply buried radiation.
The international team studied 17 icy locations across the globe, including the Arctic, the Antarctic, Iceland, the Alps, the Caucasus mountains, and British Columbia. While radiation exists naturally, the scientists were looking for example of human-made radiation. It was common to find concentrations at least 10 times higher than levels elsewhere.
“They are some of the highest levels you see in the environment outside nuclear exclusion zones,” says Caroline Clason, a lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Plymouth, speaking in a press statement.
After Chernobyl, clouds of cesium traveled across Europe. Radiation spread without regard for borders, reaching as far as England through rains. But when rain freezes, it takes the form of ice. And within ice, it can lay trapped.
“Radioactive particles are very light so when they are taken up into the atmosphere they can be transported a very long way,” Clason tells the AFP. “When it falls as rain, like after Chernobyl, it washes away and it’s sort of a one-off event. But as snow, it stays in the ice for decades and as it melts in response to the climate it’s then washed downstream.”
What does that response look like? Humanity is starting to find out, Clason says. She points to wild boar in Sweden, who in 2017 were found to have 10 times the levels of normal radiation.
Traces of human-made radiation last a famously long time. Ice around the globe contains nuclear material not just from accidents involving nuclear power plants, but also man’s use of nuclear weapons.
“We’re talking about weapons testing from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, going right back in the development of the bomb,” Clason says. “If we take a sediment core you can see a clear spike where Chernobyl was, but you can also see quite a defined spike in around 1963 when there was a period of quite heavy weapons testing.”
Elements within radiation have different life spans. Perhaps the most notorious of these, Plutonium-241 has a 14 year half-life. [ed. most plutonium isotopes have half-lives of many thousands of years] But Americium-241, a synthetic chemical element, has a half life of 432 years. It can stay in ice a long time, and when that ice melts will spread. There isn’t much data yet on its ability to spread into the human food chain, but Clason called the threat of Americum “particularly dangerous”.
A term popular in science these days is the Anthropocene, which refers to the idea that humans have permanently altered the very core of how the Earth functions as a living ecosystem. Looking for radiation buried within icy soil and sediment could offer stronger proof of those changes.
“These materials are a product of what we have put into the atmosphere. This is just showing that our nuclear legacy hasn’t disappeared yet, it’s still there,” she says.
“And it’s important to study that because ultimately it’s a mark of what we have left in the environment.”
Brittany Crocker, Knoxville News Sentine April 12, 2019 Sick and injured Cold War nuclear workers are likely to see delays in their health care claims because the Department of Labor has added dozens of steps to the process, according to a home care provider that helps the workers.
The program provides medical care to former nuclear and uranium mine workers who were exposed to radiation and other toxic substances without their knowledge was established by Congress in 2000.
New rule changes to the program — called the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program — will increase the nine-step home health care preauthorization process to 36 steps, said Emily Baker, a spokeswoman for Professional Case Management, a home care provider for nuclear and uranium workers. Those additional steps could add two months to the process, she said.
Baker said the changes also prevent health care providers from helping patients submit the paperwork.
The Department of Labor has not responded to requests made Thursday and Friday for information regarding the purpose of the changes.
Professional Case Management sued the Department of Labor last month to try to stop the changes from going into effect, and more than 2,000 wrote and called the Department to protest the changes, according to the provider.
“These sick people can’t navigate all this red tape,” said Harry Williams, a 73-year-old former Oak Ridge nuclear security officer who helped lobby for the program’s creation.
“We’re old and dying and sick and they expect us to accurately fill out and navigate all these forms and send them to the right places by ourselves. It’s wrong to put these workers through that after all we sacrificed.”
Williams, a military veteran, went to work in 1976 at the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Oak Ridge because it offered good pay and benefits.
He stayed there until 1994, when he moved to the Y-12 National Security Complex. Two years later he had to go on disability.
“I never realized I was being poisoned all the time I was working in Oak Ridge,” he said. “If someone had told me how hazardous it was I never would have worked there.
Harris has chronic beryllium disease, an incurable illness common among nuclear workers who inhaled dust or fumes of beryllium, a material that was commonly used at Y-12 and less often at K-25.
Harris said he developed heart disease, asthma, sinusitis and hypothyroidism because of the disease.
He has diabetes, has had six heart attacks, and has brain lesions he believes are also related to his work at the Oak Ridge nuclear sites. “I’m fortunate because I’ve never smoked or drank and have stayed fairly active with this illness, but I’ve been sick for a long time,” Harris said.
