From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar, 4 July 2024 “…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Are we still questioning the safety of ionizing radiation? Nuclear industry leaders are delighted to remind me that physicians are the leading causes of the radioactive “burden” that most people carry.
Inadvertent research in medicine
What is less well known is that the medical profession has inadvertently conducted research on radioactivity and, after the fact of the exposures, discovered correlations of injury with radioactivity. Only a few are listed here:
1. Radiation-Induced Meningiomas:
In the early 1900’s until after the discovery of topical anti-fungals[2] in the late 1950’s, the treatment of choice for fungal or yeast infections of the scalp was irradiation, especially for Jewish children planning to immigrate to Isreal. The technique exposed the scalp to 5 – 8 Gy to the scalp, and 1.4 – 1.5 Gy to the surface of the brain. Initially it seemed like a safe thing to do.
But then reports of somnolence (sleepiness) lasting from 4 – 14 days in 30 of 1100 children occurred. By the 1930’s side effects included atrophic changes to the scalp, epilepsy, hemiparesis, emotional changes and dilatation of the brain’s ventricles.
The absolute death knell to the practice occurred in 1966 when University Medical Center (New York) published a study showing a dramatic increase in cancers among those irradiated. An increase rate of psychiatric hospitalizations was also noted.
Studies continue to roll in – the latent phase for meningioma is approximately 30 years but metastatic tumours may take over 40 years to develop. No one irradiates scalps for ringworm now.[xvii]
2. Treatment of tuberculosis using chest fluoroscopy:
Between 1925 and 1954, one of the therapies for tuberculosis was collapse of the lung followed by x-Ray fluoroscopy. More than 2500 of these patients were followed for 30 years. Increases in the rate of cancer of the breast was not seen until about 10 to 15 years after first exposure[3]. There were 147 breast cancers in the treated cohort compared to 113.6 in tuberculosis patients that were not treated with fluoroscopy. The researchers concluded that younger women were more likely to develop cancer and that the risk of developing cancer remained high for their entire lives.
The fluoroscopic and x-ray doses were known. Another finding from this study was that fractionated doses had the same risk of developing cancer as the single total dose.[xviii]
3. Irradiation of the thymus gland and subsequent breast cancer
Young children normally have large thymus glands. With the advent of chest x-rays in the 1920’s, this large thymus was viewed with suspicion. Pediatricians feared that a large thymus could lead to respiratory problems. Until 1953[xix]irradiation of the thymus was done to decrease its size.
The rate of breast cancer among woman who were so treated as children was three times that of those that were not treated. The cancers occurred when women were in their early 30’s, more than 25 years after irradiation.
Since the amount of radiation given to the thymus was quite low, researchers have become concerned about the rising tendency for CT scans of the chest either for diagnosis or treatment. Their results “underscored the importance of limiting radiation exposure in the youngest children as much as possible.”
4. CT scans of children’s heads following injuries.
Like many physicians wishing to comfort parents whose child had a concussion, I was pleased to be able to refer the child to a CT scanner when one became available in 1996. We all slept better at night thinking that a normal CT meant that the kid’s brain was ok.
Maybe we should not have.
A Canadian study of children receiving CTs to the head indicated that as few as four CT scans before the age of six could result in doubling the risk of leukemias, lymphomas and intracranial tumours starting about ten years later.[xx]
5, Secondary cancers resulting from radiation treatment for cancer
Until recently second primary cancers were neither given serious thought nor studied. Most patients receiving radiation did not live long enough, the 15 to 20 years after their treatment, to display the side effects of ionizing radiation.
One of the first studies on this population indicated that the number of second cancers caused by radiation was as high as one person in five.
There are many criticisms of this study not the least of which is that the size of their sample was small and, at ten years, the length of time for the development of solid cancers was short, but the researchers still concluded that “an effort toward a reduction in their incidence is mandatory. In parallel, radiation therapy philosophy must evolve, and the aim of treatment should be to deliver the minimal effective radiation therapy rather than the maximal tolerable dose.[xxi]
Arising from their work were estimations of dose associated with harm. They concluded that the incidence increased with the dose even though thyroid and breast cancers were observed following doses as low as 100 mGy and adults developed cancers following treatment doses as little 500 mGy. The risk of developing sarcoma (bone cancer) was 30.6 times higher for doses of more than 44 Gray than for doses of less than 15 Gray.
6. Side effects of ionizing radiation tracers and heart disease.
Research has shown that the lifetime risk of developing fatal cancer from the use of a radioactive tracer as in a PET or MIBI scan is 1 in 2000, in other words, it is lower than the lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident (1 in 108).[xxii]
However, when Canadian researchers focused on their 82,861 patients who had heart attacks, they found that 77% underwent at least one cardiac imaging or therapeutic procedure involving low-dose ionizing radiation. By comparing populations, they found that for every 10 mSv of radiation there was a 3% increase in the risk of age- and sex-adjusted cancer over a follow-up period of five years.
Because five year follow-up is very short for the development of cancers, this is an underestimate, probably by a large factor…………………………………………………………………….. https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/
From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar, 4 July 2024 “…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. That radioactive elements cause cancer is beyond doubt. Increasing their presence in our environment does increase the incidence of cancer. It seems that these elements may cause any number of other problems – auto-immune and cardiovascular diseases, ill-health and chronic tiredness, headaches and benign tumours all have suspicious links. Lowered resistance to bacterial and viral illnesses has been seen.
Funding to do the studies that extend over years is not available.
Even an accident as large as the Three Mile Nuclear Power plant accident received funding for only nine years. When studies done by Joseph Mancuso, Alice Stewart and Geoffry Knean on Hanford workers showed a health effect not only was their funding cut but demands were made that they release all their hard data to the National Research Council. (Mancuso lost his data but Stewart and Knean had taken most of the documentation home with them, to the UK.)
That radioactivity causes chromosomal defects in fruit flies is also not questioned. To show these effects, if they occur in humans, would require centuries.
The specific effects of some radioactive elements have been well studied:
Radon-222: Cancers caused by radon prompted the Canadian government to establish the Canadian National Radon Program using guidelines developed by the International Radiation Protection Association. Various public health offices believe that alpha radiation from radon causes up to 20% of Canadian lung cancers.
Radon is the main decay product of radium. It has a half-life of only 3.8 days so its decay chain is also of concern for health. One of its products is polonium-210, one of the most poisonous elements on earth. Are cancers blamed on radon really caused by polonium?
Radon has found some use as a tracer but, while found naturally, it is still considered part of uranium waste.
Uranium-238: This isotope of uranium is its most common. Forming 99.27% of natural uranium, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It is the starting of a decay chain that includes radium, radon, polonium and ends with stable lead-210. This isotope, uranium-238, is popularly referred to as “depleted uranium” because its uranium-235 has been removed.
Uranium is a heavy metal and as such, its health effects resemble those of lead and mercury, kidney failure being the most common. It seems to have estrogen-mimicking properties and at least one chronic disease has found to be increased, systemic lupus erythematosus, among a cohort of uranium miners.
The Eldorado uranium miners study looked specifically for lung cancer and found a doubling effect – but was it due to powdered uranium or gaseous radon?
Uranium-235: This isotope is fissile, the isotope desired for nuclear bombs. “Enrichment” of uranium occurs to increase the percentage of U-235 and there are various percentages required for different tasks.
Most light water nuclear reactors require a concentration of 3 – 5% U-235 to operate, to reach criticality and produce the heat to boil water. It is anticipated that the proposed small modular reactors will require HALEU (High Assay Low Enriched) uranium which contains 19.5% uranium-235.
Aside from nuclear bombs and nuclear power plant fuel, uranium has no other functions. Uranium as an ore, refined to “yellow cake” is not very radioactive.
Radium-226: The most stable isotope of radium with a half-life of 1600 years is radium 226, itself a decay product of thorium-230 in the uranium-238 decay chain. Radium is considered the most radioactive element known. It emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Its glowing colour is the result of ionization of the air around it.
All 34 known isotopes are radioactive. It is found in nature.
Radium’s use has evolved from the dials of watches until the 1970’s and cancer treatments until the 1990’s when it was discarded in favour of less radioactive but still effective elements. It may have been the first element used in brachytherapy where the element is encapsulated and inserted inside a tumour. It is still used for prostate cancer that has spread to bones.
Radium is a relative of calcium and strontium. When it is in the blood, bones and muscles will absorb it and use it in place of calcium. In the bones and muscles, its radiation induces bone cancers, and cancers of the bone marrow (leukemias). Hence the dial workers and the industrialist developed bone cancers, osteosarcomas.
Strontium-90: Strontium (element 38) is found ubiquitously in radioactive fallout from nuclear bombs or nuclear power plants. It is a fission product of uranium.
Natural strontium is not radioactive, nor are its four isotopes. It belongs to the same family of elements as calcium and human biology treats them very similarly, strontium is scooped out of the blood to incorporate it into bones and muscles. It is believed to have a biophysical[4] half-life of 18 years. Because it is very close to blood-forming components in the bones, it is blamed for increases in leukemia, lymphomas and bone cancers. While in situ, it initially weakens bones.
Strontium-90 decays with a half-life of 29 years to yttrium-90 which also undergoes beta decay to zirconium-90 which is stable.
Strontium-90 has no commercial value and is considered entirely an environmental pollutant.
Iodine-131: Radioactive iodine therapy increases the risk of leukemia, stomach cancer and salivary gland cancer, according to the American Cancer Society[xxiii]. On March 27, 2011, Massachusetts Department of Public Health found I-131 in low concentration in rain water, likely originating from the Fukushima accident.
Iodine-127 is the only stable isotope of the element with 53 protons in its nucleus. Of the remaining 26 isotopes, iodine-131 is not only of greatest concern with respect to nuclear bomb testing fallout, nuclear power plant accidents and natural gas production, but of all fission-related radioisotopes, it has also found the greatest medical use. It has a half-life of about 8 days and emits an energetic electron, a beta particle. It is preferentially filtered out of the blood by the thyroid.
Because it is collected by the thyroid, it can be used in high doses to selectively kill hyperactive thyroid cells whether they are benign or malignant. Also, because it is collected by the thyroid, its action can be mitigated by taking normal oral iodine at the time of exposure.
Its short half-life means that it is an insignificant contributor to nuclear waste.
It decays to xenon-131 which is stable.
Tritium: All threehydrogen isotopes are gasses and can form water with oxygen. Hydrogen itself has one proton in its nucleus and one electron circling it. Deuterium is “heavy water” with one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Tritium is radioactive with one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus.
While it is naturally formed by cosmic rays hitting hydrogen in the upper atmosphere, the bulk of today’s tritium is released from nuclear power plants. It is often characterized as a short-lived weakly radioactive radioisotope, but a half-life of 12.3 years is questionably “short” in human terms. The beta particle emitted by tritium is low energy but its presence inside human cells is a major concern.
Getting into human cells is pretty easy for a hydrogen isotope because, combined with oxygen, it forms tritiated water and water enters every cell of almost every biological being. It is very difficult to link specific exposures to cancers and chronic disease but using populations studies, researchers can link the health of populations around nuclear power plants with case-matched[5]populations that are not exposed to tritium releases from power plants.
Tritium has had commercial use as the energy source in radio luminescent lights for watches, gun sights, numerous instruments and tools, and even novelty items such as self-illuminating key chains[xxiv]. It is used in a medical and scientific setting as a radioactive tracer. The past use in exit signs was discontinued because of breakage.
Conclusion:
Does ionizing radiation cause cancer? Cancer seems to be at least one consequence of exposure. While it is difficult to determine whether a person has developed cancer because he/she worked in a uranium mine, had a high amount of radon in their home, got struck by cosmic rays, or had too much glyphosate or benzo(a)pyrene[6] in their diet, wherever the more difficult comparison of populations has been done, those affected by the higher ionizing radiation regardless of the element, show increased incidences of cancer.
We can say with certainty is that ionizing radiation causes ions. When It enters human cells, it can pass straight through or, like a cyclone, wreak havoc on the cell’s internal structure.
Ionizing radiation can break up chromosomes, the things in cells that tell the cell what it is. If it is a skin cell, the chromosome will tell the cell to make more skin cells. If the chromosome has been damaged, it may not be able to tell the cell how to make normal skin cells.
To say that ionizing radiation is safe is fraudulent.
What can you do to limit your exposure to ionizing radiation?
1. Whenever you or a child or someone under your care is asked to have an x-ray, ask the person ordering it how the x-ray result will change or otherwise affect treatment. Often the answer will be that they simply want to assess your progress. If you feel good (or better), you already know your progress.
2. Make sure that you are getting the right imaging for the problem you are facing. When a CT scan was suggested for one of my patients, I realized that he would be better served by an MRI which then revealed the small cyst in a tendon.
3. Don’t succumb to the doctor or other care provider’s “curiosity”. Ask questions.
My patient, call him “John”, told me this story. At 79 years of age, he had Chronic Myelogenous Lymphoma and was told by his specialist to have a biannual CT scan. He was feeling quite well.
He asked the doctor, “What are you looking for?” He was told that the physician was looking for “changes”. John already had one CT scan and hadn’t been told the results.
The specialist said that he hadn’t mentioned the previous CT scan because there wasn’t much to report. John thanked him and refused the new CT scan. He told the specialist he would return if his health changed.
4. There is almost no excuse for “routine x-rays”. At one time everyone who entered a hospital was submitted to chest x-rays.
To these choices that affect you personally, there is another action that we should be taking:
5. Oppose development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. One will not exist without the other. While medical radioisotopes don’t need nuclear power reactors for their use and development nuclear bombs cannot be built or serviced without nuclear power. _…………………….. https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/
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?
Cancer risks among studies of medical diagnostic radiation exposure in early life without quantitative estimates of dose
Science Direct, 1 August 2022, Mark P. Little a1, Richard Wakeford b1, Simon D. Bouffler c, Kossi Abalo d, Michael Hauptmann e, Nobuyuki Hamada f, Gerald M. Kendall g
Highlights
•There is mounting evidence of cancer risk from low dose radiation in childhood.
•A review was conducted of cancer after exposure in utero/childhood of studies without individual radiation dose estimates.
•There were excess cancer risks associated with radiation exposure in utero.
•There were excess cancer risks associated with radiation exposure in childhood, but also substantial variability in effect.
•These data suggest excess risk following diagnostic radiation exposure in utero, but not after postnatal exposure.
Abstract
Background
There is accumulating evidence of excess risk of cancer in various populations exposed at acute doses below several tens of mSv or doses received over a protracted period. There is also evidence that relative risks are generally higher after radiation exposures in utero or in childhood.
Methods and findings
We reviewed and summarised evidence from 89 studies of cancer following medical diagnostic exposure in utero or in childhood, in which no direct estimates of radiation dose are available. In all of the populations studied exposure was to sparsely ionizing radiation (X-rays). Several of the early studies of in utero exposure exhibit modest but statistically significant excess risks of several types of childhood cancer. There is a highly significant (p < 0.0005) negative trend of odds ratio with calendar period of study, so that more recent studies tend to exhibit reduced excess risk. There is no significant inter-study heterogeneity (p > 0.3). In relation to postnatal exposure there are significant excess risks of leukaemia, brain and solid cancers, with indications of variations in risk by cancer type (p = 0.07) and type of exposure (p = 0.02), with fluoroscopy and computed tomography scans associated with the highest excess risk. However, there is highly significant inter-study heterogeneity (p < 0.01) for all cancer endpoints and all but one type of exposure, although no significant risk trend with calendar period of study.
Conclusions
Overall, this large body of data relating to medical diagnostic radiation exposure in utero provides support for an associated excess risk of childhood cancer. However, the pronounced heterogeneity in studies of postnatal diagnostic exposure, the implied uncertainty as to the meaning of summary measures, and the distinct possibilities of bias, substantially reduce the strength of the evidence from the associations we observe between radiation imaging in childhood and the subsequent risk of cancer being causally related to radiation exposure……………………..
“In the present paper we review studies of early life medical diagnostic exposures, both 61 antenatal and postnatal, in which quantitative radiation dose estimates are lacking, though general indications of the magnitude of the doses are likely to be implicit. The present study complements a parallel and contemporary review that evaluated studies in which quantitative estimates of radiation risk with respect to doses are available (Little et al., 2022b).”…………….. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722018162
Standards don’t protect them and studies dismiss them
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In a peer reviewed article published in the British Medical Journal Pediatrics Open in October, my Beyond Nuclear colleague, Cindy Folkers and I, reviewed the studies currently available that look at the impact on children from radiation exposures caused by the nuclear power sector.
In particular, we looked at the disproportionately negative impact on children living in disadvantaged communities, primarily those of color. As we wrote in the article:
“From uranium mining and milling, to fuel manufacture, electricity generation and radioactive waste management, children in frontline and Indigenous communities can be disproportionately harmed due to often increased sensitivity of developing systems to toxic exposures, the lack of resources and racial and class discrimination.”
At about the same time, and as if to confirm our hypothesis, the story of the Jana elementary school in Missouri began to break.
The school is in a predominantly Black community in northern St. Louis and the US army corps of engineers had been called in to assess radioactivity found in classrooms, playgrounds and on sports fields at the school after findings of unacceptable levels of radioactivity on the premises were revealed in an independent report conducted by Dr. Marco Kaltofen, President of Boston Chemical Data Corporation.
The radioactive contamination found at the school was, as the report described it, “consistent with the radioactive legacy uranium processing wastes notoriously found in the heavily contaminated Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County, MO, and in low-lying areas subject to flooding from the creek.”
The report concluded that “radiological contamination exists at unacceptable levels (greater than 5.0 net pCi/g as alpha radiation) at the Jana School property.”
Those wastes, dating back from the 1940s to 1960s, were produced by a company called Mallinckrodt, which processed uranium from the Belgian Congo as part of the Manhattan Project. The radioactive waste they produced was illegally dumped in what was then surrounding countryside and at the West Lake Landfill. It seeped into creeks and spread into parks and even homes.
A story we ran on Beyond Nuclear International in March 2018 relates the struggle of residents to get their community cleaned up. Atomic Homefront, a compelling documentary about this fight, brings home exactly the toll this environmental crime has taken on people living there, especially women.
Radioactive lead-210, thorium and radium-226 were among the isotopes found at Jana Elementary school, at levels far higher than those considered permissible (but not safe) at Superfund sites. The lead-210 was at levels 22 times what would be considered “expected” in such an environment.
Why had it taken so long to discover this immense and unacceptable risk to children?
Jana’s PTA president, Ashley Bernaugh, believes she knows the answer.
“Jana elementary’s radioactive past looks like a lot of other communities where hazardous waste has been allowed to exist in predominantly minority communities and in lower middle income communities, where it never would have been allowed in upper income level communities because of the public outrage,” she told The Guardian.
By November 9 the corps had declared that radiation levels at the school “showed no levels of radiation higher than ‘the level of radioactivity Mother Nature already provides.’”
“Mother Nature” is a euphemistic reference to “background radiation,” already problematic given the decades of atomic testing and major nuclear accidents that have added to what “background” radiation levels once were but are no longer. Of far greater concern is that these levels, while likely not even safe for adults, are certainly not safe for children.
This determination of what is “safe” is based on a standard that is not only outdated but was wrong from the start. Here is what we wrote about this in our BMJ article.
“Pregnancy, children and women are underprotected by current regulatory standards that are based on ‘allowable’ or ‘permissible’ doses for a ‘Reference Man’. Early in the nuclear weapons era, a ‘permissible dose’ was more aptly recognized as an ‘acceptable injury limit,’ but that language has since been sanitized.”
Reference Man is defined as a nuclear industry worker 20–30 years of age, who weighs around 154 pounds, is 67 inches tall and is a Caucasian Western European or North American in habitat and custom.
“Very early research conducted in the USA in 1945 and 1946 indicated higher susceptibility of pregnancy to radiation exposure. Pregnant dogs injected with radiostrontium had defects in their offspring and yet, complete results of these studies were not made public until 1969,” we wrote.
“By 1960 however, U.S. experts were clearly aware that research indicated higher susceptibility of children, when the Federal Radiation Council (established in 1959 by President Eisenhower) briefly considered a definition for ‘Standard Child’—which they subsequently abandoned in favor of maintaining a Standard Man definition, later renamed Reference Man.”
Reference Man still stands, although our organization, in partnership with the Gender + Radiation Impact Project, are working to get it changed to Reference Girl. (If you are interested in learning more about this, you can join our online classes.)
Why are children, and especially female children, as well as women and especially pregnant women, more susceptible to harm from radiation exposure? This is not fully understood and regulatory practices, particularly in the establishment of protective exposure standards, have failed to take this difference into account.
An examination of Navajo babies born between 1964 and 1981 showed that congenital anomalies, developmental disorders and other adverse birth outcomes were associated with the mother living near uranium mines and wastes.
Other studies — among Aboriginal communities in Australia and members of Indigenous tribes in India —showed similar outcomes. But so-called anecdotal evidence is invariably dismissed in favor of “statistical insignificance”.
Even perhaps the most famous study, in Germany, of children living near nuclear plants showing elevated rates of leukemia directly correlated to the proximity of their homes to the nuclear sites, was dismissed with claims that the doses were simply too low to have such an impact.
As we concluded in our BMJ article, which is fully accessible and can be read in its entirety here, “more independent studies are needed focused on children, especially those in vulnerable frontline and Indigenous communities. In conducting such studies, greater consideration must be applied to culturally significant traditions and habits in these communities.”
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.
“The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers”, now published, contains the biographies of 23 radiation scientists who blew the whistle on radiation risks but were victimised by their governments and their nuclear establishments for doing so. Most of these scientists are no longer with us.
Recent epidemiology evidence clearly shows that the denials and obfuscations on radiation risks by successive governments and their nuclear establishment in the past on both sides of the Atlantic were and are wrong and the maligned scientists were right. Radiation is considerably more dangerous than official reports indicate, both in terms of the numerical magnitudes of cancer risks, but also in terms of the new types of diseases, apart from cancer, now shown to be radiogenic.
Written by a former UK government scientist Dr Ian Fairlie and a US anti-nuclear campaigner, Cindy Folkers, the book preserves the memories of the radiation scientists over the previous half-century or so, mostly from the US and UK.
They portray another 15 more recent radiation scientists who have followed in their footsteps but have managed to avoid being victimised. The book also lists over 150 activists in North America, Japan and Europe who have raised their voices against radiation risks and exposures over the past 30 to 40 years.
Radiation and radioactivity and their current risks are explained in easy-to-understand terms. All scientific statements are backed by evidence via hundreds of references, 14 Appendices, 6 Annexes, a glossary and an extensive bibliography.
This is an up-to-date reference book for all academics on the dangers and risks of radiation and radioactivity. The book also serves to help journalists and students counter the misrepresentations, incorrect assertions, wrong assumptions, and untruths about radiation risks often disseminated by the nuclear (power and weapons) establishments on both sides of the Atlantic.
RNZ, By Mar-Vic Cagurangan, Pacific Island Times, 17 June 24
Despite nearly two decades of relentless lobbying, Guam’s hopes to finally be included in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) crumbled anew when the US House Republican leadership let the program expire without extension or expansion.
While the RECA extension and expansion proposal received bipartisan support in the US Senate, House Speaker Mike Johnson shunned its inclusion in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.
Guam Delegate James Moylan said the House Rules Committee ruled his amendment to incorporate the RECA expansion language into the defense spending policy bill “out of order”. As a result, the language didn’t make it to the floor for the House vote.
“The primary reason was that offset costs were not provided, which were estimated at around US$50 billion,” Moylan said in a statement.
“This mirrors the message from House leadership when referencing the RECA measure passed by the Senate, and many in the House, including myself, have been requesting for a vote to take place on the floor.”
RECA, the 1990 legislation that provided financial compensation for atomic test downwinders in three states and pre-1971 uranium miners, expired on June 10.
The expanded version would have added Guam, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana and New Mexico to the list of areas currently included in RECA, namely Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
“The Republican leadership’s policy is that any new spending measure must have an offset provided, to prevent uncontrolled spending or an unfunded mandate,” Moylan said.
“There are others who believe the measure should be passed regardless, and thus allow the executive branch to identify the funds. We believe a combination of both is needed.”
The Pacific Association of Radiation Survivors led by Robert Celestial has been fighting for Guam’s inclusion in RECA, backed by the National Research Council’s 2005 report declaring the territory’s eligibility for compensation under the program.
“Guam did receive measurable fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific between 1946 and 1958,” read the council’s report, which recommended that people living on island during that period be compensated under RECA “in a way similar to that of persons considered to be downwinders.”
Despite the latest defeat, Moylan said the advocacy “is far from over” and “building more support along the way”.
The venting may harm pregnant women and fetuses, advocates say.
SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán 12 June 24
Last fall, the international community rose up in defense of the Pacific Ocean. Seafood and salt purveyors, public policy professors, scientists and environmentalists, all lambasted Japan’s release of radioactive wastewater from the disastrously damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea.
At the heart of the contention was tritium, an element that, by mass, is 150,000 times more radioactive than the plutonium used in the cores of nuclear weapons. Odorless and colorless, tritium — the radioactive form of hydrogen — combines with oxygen to form water. Just one teaspoon is enough to contaminate 100 billion gallons more water up to the U.S. drinking water standard, according to Arjun Makhijani, an expert on nuclear fusion and author of the monograph, “Exploring Tritium Dangers.”
What didn’t make international headlines — but was quietly taking place on the other side of the world — was Los Alamos National Laboratory’s own plans to vent the same radioactive substance into northern New Mexico’s mountain air. Japan’s releases would take place over three decades. LANL’s would include up to three times more tritium — and take place in a matter of days.
There is no hard timeline for the release, but if the plans are approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, LANL is looking at a period with “sufficiently warm weather,” a spokesperson from the National Nuclear Security Administration wrote by email. That could mean as soon as this summer.
Those controversial plans date back to 2016, when LANL discovered that a potentially explosive amount of hydrogen and oxygen was building up in four containers of tritium waste stored in a decades-old nuclear dump called Area G. The safest and most technically viable solution, the lab decided — and the best way to protect workers — would be to release the pressure and, with it, thousands of curies of tritium into the air.
When advocates caught wind of the venting in March 2020, Covid was in its earliest and most unnerving phase. Pueblo leaders, advocates and environmentalists wrote impassioned letters to the lab and the EPA, demanding that they change or, at the very least, postpone the release until after the pandemic. At the same time, Tewa Women United, a nonprofit founded by Indigenous women from northern New Mexico, issued its first online petition, focusing on tritium’s ability to cross the placental barrier and possibly harm pregnant women and their fetuses. Only after a maelstrom of opposition did the lab pause its plans and begin briefing local tribes and other concerned members of the community.
“We see this as a generational health issue,” said Kayleigh Warren, Tewa Women United’s food and seed sovereignty coordinator. “Just like all the issues of radioactive exposure are generational health issues.”
Last fall, the lab again sought the EPA’s consent. A second petition from Tewa Women United followed. Eight months later, the federal agency’s decision is still pending.
The NNSA, which oversees the health of America’s nuclear weapons stockpile from within the Department of Energy, declined Searchlight New Mexico’s requests for an interview.
The crux of the issue comes down to what is and isn’t known about the state of the containers’ contents. Computer modeling suggests they are pressurized and flammable, but the actual explosive risk has not been measured, the lab has conceded.
Critics have requested that the contents be sampled first to determine whether there is any explosive risk and whether venting is even needed. The EPA says that sampling would require going through the same red tape as venting. The lab, for its part, plans to sample and vent the contents in one fell swoop.
But why, critics wonder, are these containers in this state in the first place? Were they knowingly over packed and left for years to grow into ticking time bombs?
“I do not like the position we’re in,” James Kenney, cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department, told the Legislature’s Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee in 2020. The containers, he said, had been “neglected for so long by both DOE and the Environment Department” that NMED potentially faces a lose-lose situation: Vent the tritium drums and try to prevent the emissions from being released into the air or “run the risk of leaving those drums onsite knowing that they are pressurized and could rupture, meaning an uncontrolled amount of tritium would go out.”
Venting and vexing
State and federal documents paint a kind of chicken-and-egg dilemma. The containers can’t be moved until the pressure is vented. But the movement itself may cause more pressure to build up, requiring a second, third or even fourth venting……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Tritium 101
Plutonium and uranium are familiar to most people, if by name only. But few know anything at all about tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is used to make watch dials and EXIT signs glow bright neon. Tritium’s other, lesser-known use is as a “boost gas,” which, when inserted into the hollow core of a plutonium pit, amplifies a nuclear weapon’s yield. Globally, hundreds of atmospheric weapons tests dispersed tritium into the atmosphere, steeping rain, sea, and groundwater with the element and, ultimately, lacing sediment worldwide.
Tritium is widely produced at nuclear reactors and is today tested, handled and routinely released at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Criticisms of this venting have always centered on two of the element’s key characteristics: First, it travels “tens to hundreds of miles,” according to lab documents. Second, when tritium is in the form of water, it becomes omnipresent and easy for bodies to absorb.
“Tritium is unique in this,” wrote Makhijani. “It makes water, the stuff of life, most of the mass of living beings, radioactive.”
Years of LANL reports depict tritium’s ubiquity in the lands and ecosystem within its bounds, a palimpsest of radioactive decay. This is measured in curies, a basic unit that counts the rate of decay second by second.
The lab’s first environmental impact statement, published in 1979, estimated that it had buried close to 262,000 curies of tritium at Area G and released tens of thousands more into the air from various stacks over the decades. The lab had two major accidental releases of tritium around the same time — 22,000 curies in the summer of 1976 and nearly 31,000 curies in the fall of 1977.
Today, trees have taken it into their root systems on Area G’s southeast edge. Rodents scurrying in and out of waste shafts are riddled with the substance, owing to tritium vapors from years past. A barn owl ate those rodents and had 740 times more tritium concentration in its body than the U.S. drinking water standard, the common reference value for indicating tritium contamination. The lab’s honeybee colonies — kept to determine how radioactive contaminants are absorbed — produced tritiated honey up to 380 times more concentrated than the drinking water standard, reports show.
The EPA set the current standard for radioactive emissions at DOE facilities in 1989, but that didn’t stop the lab from releasing thousands of curies of tritium into the air shortly afterward. In 1991, the EPA issued a notice of non-compliance to the lab for not calculating how much of a radiation dose the public received. Another notice followed in 1992.
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety filed a lawsuit two years later alleging that the DOE hadn’t properly monitored radioactive emissions, as required by the Clean Air Act. At the time, a former lab safety officer, Luke Bartlein, observed what he described in an affidavit as a “pattern and practice of deception at LANL with respect to the radionuclide air monitoring system.” It was routine for lab staffers and management to vent glove boxes and other materials contaminated with tritium outside so that the contamination would deliberately “not register” on the stack monitors, he recounted, leading to false emissions reports.
The lab settled in 1997; a consent decree followed and would stay in effect until 2003. The lab says it has maintained low annual emissions ever since…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
In 1999, Makhijani and more than 100 scientists, activists and physicians across the country and worldwide signed a letter to the National Academy of Sciences. Their ask? To evaluate how radionuclides that cross the placental boundary, including tritium, impact the fetus, a request Makhijani renewed in 2022.
As he put it, tritium — the “most ubiquitous pollutant from both nuclear power and nuclear weapons” — has largely escaped regulatory and scientific scrutiny when it comes to matters of pregnancy.
Cindy Folkers, the radiation and health hazard specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a national advocacy organization, believes the reason is rooted in the radiation establishment’s fear of liability. “You get layers and layers and layers and layers of denial.”
The scant research that does exist comes from pregnant women who survived atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1986, the International Commission on Radiation Protection concluded that exposing a fetus to ionizing radiation, the kind that tritium emits, has a “damaging effect…upon the development of the embryonic and fetal brain.” The area most at risk of harm, it went on, is the forebrain, which controls complex and fundamental functions like thinking and processing information, eating, sleeping and reproduction.
Ionizing radiation damages the cell in two ways. On the one hand, it breaks apart the building blocks from which humans are made, causing rifts in DNA. On the other, it fundamentally changes the chemistry of the cell, breaking apart its water molecules and upsetting its metabolism.
That’s what makes it different from, say, an X-ray, Folkers said. “A machine can be shut off,” but “a radioactive particle that’s inside your body will continue irradiating you.” For a pregnant woman, this adds up to “cumulative biological damage,” the kind that cuts across generations.
“We’re dealing with a life cycle,” Folkers said. “And females are an integral part of that life cycle. Not only are they more damaged by radioactivity, and their risks are higher for cancer, but they are also carrying in them the future generations. So when you’re dealing with a female baby who’s developing in the womb, you are dealing with that child’s children at the very least.”
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has formally apologized for multiple false assurances from its staff that a major leak of radioactive tritium from Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear reactor had not reached the Mississippi River — the drinking water source for 20 million people, including, 3.7 million in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.
In opening remarks to an NRC-sponsored public hearing at the Monticello (Minn.) Community Center May 15, 2024, senior NRC Branch 1 Environmental Project Manager Stephen Koenick, made jaws drop around the room when he quashed and corrected the NRC staff’s oft-repeated claims that 820,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-contaminated cooling water, that leaked from the 53-year-old reactor, had not been detected in the Mississippi.
Koenick said, “I would like to take a moment to address and clarify some miscommunication regarding the presence of detectable tritium in the Mississippi River. I know we … reported there [was] no indication [that the] tritium leak made it to the Mississippi. However, … in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement we … conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.” In this extremely rare and incriminating confession, Koenick went on: “So we apologize for this miscommunication.” (Transcribed from cellphone recording of the hearing.)
This official U-turn and apology from NRC managerial staff over its use of routinized PR-driven claims of “no danger to the public” — in this case regarding a major radioactive leak — should ravage the credibility an arguably industry-captured commission. Nothing it says should be taken at face value.
The NRC’s about-face nullifies months of repeatedly saying to the press, which then duly reported, that no detectable tritium had been found by Xcel’s testing of the Mississippi River. On March 18, 2023, NRC spokesperson Victoria Mitlyng even told the press, “There is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.” Absurdly, even an official NRC email message sent to Nukewatch the same evening of the May 15 public hearing, states: “As far as the Mississippi River, samples taken from the river so far have not shown increased tritium concentrations.”
A week before the formal disavowal, on May 7, 2024, NRC presenters at an NRC-sponsored public hearing, held in the same Monticello community center, repeated on the record that Xcel had found “no detectable levels” of tritium in the Mississippi. Since the massive leak was disclosed in March 2023, Xcel has claimed, as it does in a company website posting (“Monticello Groundwater: Progress on the recovery and treatment of tritium in the groundwater….as of Nov. 18, 2023”): “We test the river regularly for tritium and have not found any, indicating that if it is present, it is at such low levels, and is dispersing so quickly, that it cannot be detected by highly sensitive instruments.”
Xcel’s tritium contamination of the Mississippi has been confirmed by the NRC’s April 2024 “draft Site-specific Environmental Impact Statement” (Draft EIS) regarding Xcel’s request for an extended operating license, and by Xcel’s own 2023 “Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report”, which says on page 2: “Tritium was detected in newly developed MW-33A [monitoring well-33A] and MW-37A which resulted in MNGP [Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant] reporting an abnormal discharge to the Mississippi River.” Monitoring wells 33A and 37A are the two closest to the river.
Xcel has now, and for a second time, applied to the NRC for an extended operating license which, if granted, would allow the achey, breaky Monticello jalopy to run until the age of 80. No power reactor on earth has ever done so. Such official lying and its protection of corporate contamination of drinking water ought to be scandal enough to cancel any consideration of Xcel’s license extension. Public denunciations or “comments” on the NRC’s Draft EIS on the application are being accepted until June 25. To send yours, see: www.nukewatchinfo.org.
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.
Two workers at a Samsung Electronics chip plant in South Korea have been treated for exposure to radiation.
A notice posted on Wednesday by South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission revealed that it is investigating an incident that occurred May 27 at Samsung’s Giheung campus.
The notice states that two workers’ fingers were exposed to radiation, leading to their hospitalization. Abnormal symptoms have been detected in the pair, but the Commission revealed their blood tests have delivered normal results and no chromosomal abnormalities have been detected.
The Nuclear Commission points out that Samsung holds a license to employ X-ray fluorescence, a non-destructive technique used to analyze semiconductor wafers.
Local media report the workers reported swollen fingers and red spots on their hands, and that Samsung immediately offered appropriate assistance and reported the situation to the Commission.
Just what went wrong has not been revealed. The regulator also plans further investigation of Samsung’s Giheung campus.
The campus is a sprawling affair, located around 40km south of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. In 2022, Samsung announced it would host a new semiconductor research and development facility, alongside the existing manufacturing center.
Samsung operates at least three foundries in its home country, and fifteen R&D centers.
Even if this incident disrupts the Giheung facility it may not, therefore, have wide supply chain implications. Indeed, at the time of writing Samsung appears not to have made any public statements about disruptions to its operations as a result of this incident.
It does, however, highlight the complex and risky processes involved in production of advanced semiconductors. According to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the industry presents at least 26 classes of known hazards.
OSHA’s guidance suggests X-ray exposure is a risk during mask alignment and photo exposure – a part of the semiconductor manufacturing process during which patterns are etched onto a silicon substrate. ®
We should also honor many thousands of Americans who did not enlist yet also sacrificed for our national security.
These patriots of the Manhattan Project and Cold War were unknowingly poisoned by their own government in the creation of our nuclear arsenal, and they deserve our support. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which aims to address those harms, will expire Friday unless Congress acts immediately.
This is urgent: Congress has only a few working days left to act before RECA expires.
As we mined uranium and built and tested nuclear weapons that defended our country, we exposed countless service members and communities across the country to dangerous, often deadly levels of radiation without their knowledge or consent. In some cases, we’re only just learning the full extent of that harm, with impacted Americans succumbing to new cancers every day.
RECA was created in 1990 to provide an apology and a small reimbursement for critical medical care for some victims. It is a valuable program, but it has excluded far too many Americans who were harmed, and nearly 35 years later, it is still woefully inadequate despite years of studies and reports proving the need for improvement.
In Guam, for example, a 2005 report determined that residents during nuclear testing in the Pacific received substantial unwarranted radiation and should be eligible for RECA. Yet nearly 20 years later, they are still awaiting recognition and support.
Additionally, uranium workers are only eligible for RECA if they were employed through 1971, despite a flood of studies showing that they faced just as grave health impacts after that year. This means that patriotic Americans like Mr. Begay have been suffering for decades with no avenues for support.
Uranium miner lost both lungs due to radiation exposure
Mr. Begay was born and raised in the Navajo Nation. After serving in Vietnam, he came home and spent eight years mining the uranium that built our nuclear weapons. He was given a hard hat and no mask, was never told he was being poisoned, and he ended up losing both lungs due to radiation exposure. Given just a month to live, he received a double lung transplant. As he recovered, he decided to dedicate his remaining years to helping his people and improving RECA.
As lucky as he feels to have a new set of lungs, his health issues are far from over. With no cancer center or veterans’ hospital on the Navajo Nation, he had to move away from his wife and grandkids to live near a hospital in Mesa, Arizona, so that he could attend almost weekly medical appointments. He is on 22 medications that he’ll take for the rest of his life – and they don’t come cheap.
He has had to sell all his cattle to pay for these expenses, and sometimes he and his wife don’t know where the money will come from to cover his next medical bill. Even worse – he’s just had a biopsy because of a possible new cancer diagnosis.
The people of Guam and miners like Mr. Begay are far from alone.
Across the West, communities living downwind of nuclear testing – including those downwind of the very first nuclear test in New Mexico – were excluded from RECA seemingly arbitrarily.
US creation of nuclear arsenal sacrificed our own people
The United States asked its people for a great deal of sacrifice to win the Cold War – some willingly as part of their service and many thousands unknowingly.
We have a duty now to take care of everyone sickened by their own government in the creation of our nuclear arsenal. It’s long past time that Congress does its job and improves RECA so these patriotic Americans can get the recognition and help they so richly deserve.
Some have called for a plain extension of RECA as is, but we know that would only be an extension of injustice. We must not blindly extend such an obviously flawed program, knowing that it would leave so many Americans behind.
On May 16, we stood together with dozens of advocates who had traveled to Washington, D.C., from across America to fight for RECA. They traveled on behalf of their loved ones – many of whom are sick and dying – and pleaded with Congress: Don’t let us go home without good news; don’t keep letting our people die.
In March, armed with new information about the true scope of Americans harmed by our Cold War nuclear program, the Senate passed a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support to hugely improve RECA.
Now, that bill is sitting on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s desk waiting to be brought to a vote.
Speaker Johnson: Please hear our prayers. It’s time to finally support these patriots, harmed by their own government, and get them the justice they deserve.
Mr.Leslie Begay is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and a resident of Coyote Canyon, New Mexico. He is a post-1971 uranium miner, Vietnam War veteran and volunteer member of the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee. He previously worked at Fort Wingate Army Depot.
Research that looked at 53 million births says Black and Hispanic mothers and those in lower socioeconomic groups most at risk
Heatwaves increase rates of preterm births, which can lead to poorer health outcomes for babies and impact their long-term health, a new study found. Black and Hispanic mothers, as well as those in lower socioeconomic groups, are particularly at risk of delivering early following heat waves. Extreme heat events are happening more frequently, lasting longer, and increasing in intensity due to the climate crisis. Last year saw record-breaking temperatures, with July 2023 bringing about the hottest day ever recorded for four days in a row globally. Additionally, pregnant people are among the most vulnerable to heat stress and are more likely to experience heat stroke and heat exhaustion, according to the CDC. This can adversely affect their unborn babies.
Radiation and medical isotopes are routinely and increasingly used to diagnose and treat many diseases. However, these medical uses do not depend on nuclear power reactors in any essential way.
No doubt some medical isotopes can be produced in a nuclear reactor, but it doesn’t have to be a power reactor. Even if all the power reactors were shut down, the supply of medical isotopes would still be met by traditional alternative means.
From the beginning, all medical needs for artificial (human-made) isotopes have been met by particle accelerators and a handful of research reactors scattered around the world, including those in Canada.
Nevertheless, nuclear proponents argue nowadays that new nuclear power stations are “necessary” to ensure that the medical profession has all the diagnostic and therapeutic tools it needs. It’s a new sales pitch, and it’s not true.
For starters, X-rays and CT scans have nothing to do with nuclear reactors. Moreover, for the last 125 years – and for decades before the first power reactors were built in the late 1950s – medical isotopes have been (a) extracted from natural sources (e.g. radium needles, radon seeds), (b) produced in particle accelerators like cyclotrons (e.g. for PET scans), or (c) harvested from “target materials” irradiated in research reactors (e.g. technetium-99m).
None of these modes of production depend on nuclear power reactors, which are designed specifically to produce bulk electricity. Anything non-electrical is an afterthought.
It is true that one isotope, cobalt-60, has been produced in Canadian power reactors for both medical and industrial use, but the direct medical usage could be fully satisfied by research reactors.
None of these modes of production depend on nuclear power reactors, which are designed specifically to produce bulk electricity. Anything non-electrical is an afterthought.
It is true that one isotope, cobalt-60, has been produced in Canadian power reactors for both medical and industrial use, but the direct medical usage could be fully satisfied by research reactors.
To improve its public relations image, the nuclear industry has seen fit to diversify its operations by beginning to produce medical isotopes in power reactors, implying that it is providing an indispensable service to the medical community. Again, untrue.
The defense spending bill for 2024 was signed into law on Dec. 22 by Biden, but the RECA expansion was cut from the final bill before it landed on his desk.
Navajo Nation urges Congress to act on RECA expansion bill
Kathleen Tsosie remembers seeing her dad come home every evening with his clothes covered in dirt. As a little girl, she never questioned why, and she was often more excited to see if he had any leftover food in his lunchbox.
“We used to go through his lunch and eat whatever he didn’t eat,” Tsosie said, recalling when she was around 4 years old. “And he always had cold water that came back from the mountain.”
Tsosie’s father, grandfather, and uncles all worked as uranium miners on the Navajo Nation near Cove, Arizona, from the 1940s to the 1960s. The dirt Tsosie’s father was caked in when he arrived home came from the mines, and the cold water he brought back was from the nearby springs.
In the late 1960s, Tsosie said her grandfather started getting sick. She remembers herding sheep with him and how he would often rest under a tree, asking her to push on his chest because it hurt.
Tsosie said she was about 7 years old when her uncles took her grandfather to the hospital. At the time, she didn’t know why he was sick, but later on, she learned he had cancer. Her grandfather died in October 1967.
Over a decade later, Tsosie’s father also started getting sick. She remembers when he came to visit her in Wyoming; she was rubbing his shoulders when she felt a lump. She told him to get it checked out because he complained about how painful it was.
Her father was diagnosed with cancer in 1984 and went through treatments, but died in April 1985.
“When my dad passed away, everybody knew it was from the mine,” Tsosie said. He was just the latest on a long list of Navajo men from her community who worked in the uranium mines and ended up getting sick and passing away.
Because of that history, Tsosie became an advocate for issues related to downwinders and uranium mine workers from the Navajo Nation, including the continuation of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, provides a program that compensates individuals who become ill because of exposure to radiation from the United States’ development and testing of nuclear weapons.
RECA was initially set to expire in 2022, but President Joe Biden signed a measure extending the program for two more years. Now, it’s set to expire in less than a month…………………………………………………………………………………
In July 2023, the U.S. Senate voted to expand and extend the RECA program, and it was attached as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the Department of Defense.
It could have extended health care coverage and compensation to more uranium industry workers and “downwinders” exposed to radiation in several new regions — Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, and Guam — and expanded coverage to new parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah.
The defense spending bill for 2024 was signed into law on Dec. 22 by Biden, but the RECA expansion was cut from the final bill before it landed on his desk.
When she heard that the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act amendments failed to pass, Tsosie said it really impacted her, and she cried because so many people deserve that funding.
“I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like to suffer,” she said.
The sunset of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is approaching fast, and leaders from the Navajo Nation are urging Congress to act on the expansion bill that has been waiting for the U.S. House of Representatives to take it up for more than two months.
“Time is running out,” Justin Ahasteen, the executive director of the Navajo Nation Washington Office, said in a press release.
“Every day without these amendments means another day without justice for our people,” he added. “We urge Congress to stand on the right side of history and pass these crucial amendments.”
The bill passed through the U.S. Senate with a bipartisan 69-30 vote on March 7. But since being sent to the House on March 11, the bill hasn’t moved.
The RECA expansion bill would include more communities downwind of nuclear test sites in the United States and Guam. It would extend eligibility for uranium workers to include those who worked after 1971. Communities harmed by radioactive waste from the tests could apply for the program, and expansion would also boost compensation payments to account for inflation.
“The Navajo Nation calls for immediate passage of S. 3853,” Ahasteen said in a press release. “This is to ensure that justice is no longer delayed for the Navajo people and other affected communities.”
Ahasteen told the Arizona Mirror in an interview that congressional leaders holding the bill back due to the program’s expense is not a good enough reason not to pass it.
“They keep referencing the cost and saying it’s too expensive,” he said. But, he explained, the RECA expansion is only a sliver of U.S. spending on foreign aid or nuclear development.
And it shouldn’t even be a matter of cost, Ahasteen said, because people have given their lives and their health in the interest of national security.
“The bill has been paid with the lives and the health of the American workers who were exposed unjustly to radiation because the federal government kept it from them and they lied about the dangers,” he said.
From 1945 to 1992, the U.S. conducted a total of 1,030 nuclear tests, according to the Arms Control Association.
Many were conducted at the Nevada Test Site, with 928 nuclear tests conducted at the site between 1951 and 1992, according to the Nevada National Security Site. About 100 of those were atmospheric tests, and the rest were underground detonations.
According to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, atmospheric tests involved unrestrained releases of radioactive materials directly into the environment, causing the largest collective dose of radiation thus far from man-made radiation sources………………………………………………………………………
The legacy of uranium mining has impacted the Navajo Nation for decades, from abandoned mines to contaminated waste disposal.
From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands, according to the EPA, and hundreds of Navajo people worked in the mines, often living and raising families in close proximity to the mines and mills.
Ahasteen said those numbers show exactly how large the uranium operations were on the Navajo Nation and the impact it would have on the Navajo people.
“There are photos on record to show Navajo people being exploited, not given any proper protective equipment, but (the federal government) knew about the dangers of radiation since the ’40s,” Ahasteen said. “They were given a shovel and a hard hat, and they were told: Go to work. You’ll earn lots of money. You’ll have a nice life, and we did that, but it didn’t work so well for us.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
WHAT YOU CAN STILL DO BEFORE JUNE 7TH
Urge your U.S. Representative to push for a House floor vote on, and to vote in favor of, extending/expanding RECA, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. And urge House Speaker Mike Johnson to allow the vote on the House floor, on the Hawley version of RECA (the most expansive). There is likely enough support to pass the bill. Johnson’s phone is: 202-225-4000.
Shondiin Silversmith is an award-winning Native journalist based on the Navajo Nation. Silversmith has covered Indigenous communities for more than 10 years, and covers Arizona’s 22 federally recognized sovereign tribal nations, as well as national and international Indigenous issues. This article was first published by the Arizona Mirror, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/05/26/time-is-running-out-2/
New Brunswick Power’s Point Lepreau nuclear reactor on the Bay of Fundy emits much higher levels of radioactive tritium than other nuclear reactors in Canada. Ingesting and breathing in tritium increases the risk of cancer in humans and other animals.
Tritium is the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and international agencies recognise it as an unusually hazardous radioactive substance. One of its properties is to bind with carbohydrates, proteins and lipids in cells to form organically-bound tritium (OBT) which sticks inside the body for years.
These alarming findings will be tabled on May 10 by the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group in Saint John during Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) hearings on the application by NB Power for an unprecedented 25-year extension of its licence to operate its Lepreau reactor. The CNSC is the regulator of all nuclear activities in Canada.
Although industry scientists in Canada claim tritium has low toxicity and does not bioaccumulate, official reports show tritium is twice to three times more radiotoxic compared to external gamma radiation. And many studies indicate OBT levels increase the longer people are exposed to tritiated water.
Considerable evidence exists – from many epidemiology studies around the world, that children who live near nuclear plants emitting large amounts of tritium are more likely to get leukemia than those living further away. References to all these studies are included in the appendix to the CNSC submission by the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group.
The problem is that Canadian CANDU heavy water reactors emit much larger amounts of tritium than US or European reactors, so the health effects here are very likely to be greater. However the industry and CNSC avoid any studies that could spell trouble for them.
Mainly because of pressure from Canada’s powerful nuclear lobby, safety levels for tritium here are very lax compared to other countries. For example, acceptable levels for tritium in drinking water in Canada are 70 times those in the EU, and approximately 400 times higher than in some US states.
High emissions
In my expert report for the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group, I found that annual tritium releases from the Point Lepreau reactor are very large in comparison with all other nuclear reactors in Canada and indeed in the world.
In 2020, its tritium air emissions were 290 terabecquerels, that’s 290,000,000,000,000 becquerels – which is a huge amount of radioactivity. Worryingly, these releases have been increasing in recent years.
It is well understood that the older a reactor the higher the tritium levels in its moderator and cooling circuits. As well, various operations and maintenance activities increase tritium releases. Without a means of removing tritium, its inventory and releases will continue to increase each year.
These worries are exacerbated by NB Power’s proposed 25-year relicensing from 2022 to 2047. The reactor started operations 40 years ago in 1982 (with retubing between 2008 and 2012). The CNSC has recommended the NB Power nuclear facility is re-licensed to operate for another 20 years to 2042, see the CNSC’s response.
However, this would mean that Lepreau would have operated for 60 years which is unacceptably long as it was originally designed with a 30-year lifespan. This is arguably an unsafe proposal and it flies in the face of the Precautionary Principle, which states that “complete evidence of a potential risk is not required before action is taken to mitigate the effects of the potential risk.”
How does tritium get inside people?
When tritium is emitted from Point Lepreau, it travels via multiple environmental pathways to humans including through air. It cycles in the environment, because tritium atoms swap quickly with stable hydrogen atoms in the biosphere and hydrosphere.
This means that all open water surfaces, rivers, streams and all biota, local crops and foods in open-air markets, animals and humans will become contaminated by tritiated moisture up to ambient levels – that is, up to the air concentrations of the emitted tritium.
According to New Brunswick Power’s environmental assessments, local residents will receive radiation exposures from these tritium emissions, from the tritium in food and water, from the tritium breathed in, and from the tritium absorbed through their skin.
For example, NB Power already admits that people are exposed to radiation from tritiated water vapour in the air, drinking water in local wells, diving for sea urchins, harvesting clams and dulse, and eating local seafood. But local people will also get doses from eating wild foods such as mushrooms, berries and other fruits, gardening vegetables, honey hives, and the harvesting of seaweed for fertiliser.
These are all important matters for Indigenous peoples who take pride in living close to their lands and sea. The continued radioactive poisoning of their lands and sea is deeply offensive to them.
These intakes increase their risk of getting cancer and other radiogenic diseases, but NB Power does not measure tritium levels in people near its Lepreau reactor, nor does it carry out epidemiology studies into ill-health levels in nearby populations.
Nevertheless epidemiology studies at other Canadian facilities which emit tritium all indicate increases in cancer and congenital malformations. In addition, evidence from cell and animal studies, and radiation biology theory, indicates radiogenic effects occur from tritium exposures.
New studies show increased risks
Recent, large, statistically powerful, epidemiology studies of nuclear workers in UK, US and France have increased our perception of the radiation risks of low-level radiation, including tritium. The new studies show a 47% increase in solid cancers and a 580% increase in leukemias. This evidence is directly applicable to tritium’s radiation exposures from Point Lepreau.
These high and increasing tritium emissions, high levels of radioactive contamination, and increased estimates of cancer risk together mean that tritium poses worrying health risks to workers and to people near Lepreau and in the direction of the prevailing winds, including in Saint John.
There is already a long history of NB Power ignoring tritium dangers at Lepreau.
The conclusion from my report for the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group, is that Point Lepreau should not be granted any extension of its operating license, far less a 20 year one. As shown by experience around the world, much safer, healthier, less expensive alternatives exist for generation electricity, such as wind turbines, solar panels and tidal schemes.
Dr. Ian Fairlie is an independent citizen scientist based in the UK who has specialised on radioactivity in the environment with degrees in chemistry and radiation biology. His doctoral studies at Imperial College, UK and Princeton University, US examined nuclear waste technologies. One of his areas of expertise is the dosimetric impacts of nuclear reactor emissions, in particular tritium.
