RACHEL's Hazardous Waste News #185

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #185
—June 13, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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HUMAN HARM FROM LOW-LEVEL EXPOSURE.

The federal government is proposing to allow large quantities of
“low level” radioactive wastes to be declared non-radioactive
(“below regulatory concern,” or BRC, is their phrase for it; see
RHWN #183). These radioactive wastes would then be handled like
ordinary household trash; they would be transported, landfilled,
incinerated, reused (for example, radioactive tools) or recycled
(for example, radioactive metals) along with everything else we
discard each day. Such a change would expose Americans randomly
to more ionizing radiation than they are exposed to today.
Government and industry both argue that this is acceptable.
Industry uses one justification, government uses another. Many
people in the nuclear industry argue that small increases in
ionizing radiation aren’t dangerous at all. They argue that there
is a threshold dose of radiation, below which no effects occur,
and above which people may be harmed (see RHWN #184). They say
the BRC program will not expose anyone to a dose of radiation
greater than the threshold dose, and therefore the BRC program
will cause no harm.

Government approaches the matter differently. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) argues that any amount of
radiation causes some damage to a large population of exposed
individuals; they subscribe to the “linear theory” of radiation
damage (see RHWN #184). They have set limits for radiation
exposure based on the moral premise that it is acceptable to kill
one citizen out of every 100,000 citizens by exposing them to
radiation. Since the BRC program will not cause exposures that
would kill more than one in every 100,000 citizens (and the
linear theory tells them that, in reality, the program will kill
many fewer people than one in every 100,000), the government
argues that the BRC program is acceptable because it will save
billions of dollars for the nuclear power industry (which must
soon dismantle its aging nuclear reactors and put them “away”
somewhere) and for the government itself (which must eventually
clean up millions of pounds of radioactive contamination lying
around near weapons factories).

Unfortunately, there is now very substantial evidence, from
studies of human beings exposed to radiation, that both industry
and the government have misunderstood (intentionally or not) the
dangers of low levels of ionizing radiation. (By “low levels” we
mean within the range 0 to 5 rem [centi-Sievert].)

The most compelling evidence comes from studies of 91,231 people
who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
Japan in 1945. Contrary to popular belief, most of these
survivors received only very low exposures to ionizing radiation.
Their health has been continuously monitored by international
scientific organizations, so they represent the best available
information on the effects of low levels of ionizing radiation on
humans. The bomb survivor data now shows without doubt that there
is no safe dose of radiation and, furthermore, that the lowest
doses have caused the greatest cancer increases per unit of
radiation. (In other words, the shape of the dose-response curve
is supra-linear; see RHWN #184.) This means that both the
industry assumption (threshold theory) and the EPA’s assumption
(linear theory) seriously underestimate the dangers from exposure
to low levels of ionizing radiation. Furthermore, the Japanese
data reveal another important fact about low-level radiation:
young humans (children and infants) are more sensitive to the
effects of low levels of ionizing radiation than are older
humans. We will discuss the Japanese data in detail at another
time.

Here we will discuss more recent human data provided by accidents
that released large amounts of ionizing radiation at Chernobyl
(Soviet Union, 1986), Three-Mile Island (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.,
1979), and Savannah River (Georgia, U.S.A., 1970). These
accidents are the subject of a shocking new book: Jay Gould and
Ben Goldman, DEADLY DECEIT, cited in our last paragraph. Page
numbers inside parentheses in our text refer to this book. Like
the Japanese bomb survivor data, these three accidents indicate
that the lowest doses of ionizing radiation cause the greatest
human damage per unit of radiation. This provides confirmation
that the government’s estimate of the hazards of low-level
radiation is low; that is to say, today’s allowable limits for
human exposure to ionizing radiation will allow more deaths than
our government officially admits. How many more is the question.
Bomb survivor data indicate 30 times more, but even this may be
low, according to Gould and Goldman.

The three accidental releases of large quantities of radiation
also confirm what the bomb survivor data are showing: that
infants and children are the most sensitive to damage from low
levels of ionizing radiation. Consider these facts:

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up on April 26, 1986; nine
days later, radioactivity monitoring stations in Washington state
(9,000 miles from Chernobyl) detected radioactivity in rainfall.
By May 16th, 50 EPA monitoring stations detected radioactive
iodine-131 in cow’s milk all across the U.S. Our government said
“no problem.” Now government data, analyzed by Gould and Goldman,
show that in May, 1986, there was a 5.3% increase in the U.S.
death rate, compared to the previous year; the chances are less
than one in a thousand that this increase occurred by chance.
During June, 1986, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was
12.3% higher than it had been in June, 1985, and in some parts of
the country it was much higher; for example, in the south
Atlantic states, the infant mortality rate in June, 1986, was 28%
higher than it had been the previous year. Based on this, and on
much additional evidence that we haven’t space to review, Gould
and Goldman suggest that current EPA limits on exposures to low
level radiation may need to be tightened by as much as a factor
of 1000 (pg. 21).

In November and again in December, 1970, two nuclear rod
meltdowns occurred at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in
Georgia. The plant was operated for the government by DuPont, who
never told the public anything about these accidents until
Senator John Glenn grilled Dupont officials in public hearings in
late 1988. To this day, DuPont claims that no radiation escaped
outside the plant, but official government measurements of
radioactivity in rain throughout the southeastern U.S. reveal
highly suspicious increases immediately after the accidents. In
South Carolina in December, 1970, rain carried six times as much
radioactivity as it had carried in December, 1969. Radioactivity
was also measurable in local fish; fish in the Savannah river
contained radiation levels 100,000 times higher than fish sold in
New York City in 1971. A child who ate 1/4 pound of catfish from
the Savannah River in 1971 would have received a radiation dose
equivalent to 20 chest xrays. Infant mortality in South Carolina
in January, 1971, was 24% higher than it had been a year earlier;
in contrast, infant mortality declined that month over the entire
U.S. and over the southeastern states taken as a whole. During
the following summer (May through September) infant mortality in
South Carolina was 15% higher than it had been the previous year.
Again, we are omitting a wealth of detail.

March 28, 1979, a meltdown at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear
power plant spewed more than 10 million Curies of radioactivity
into the environment, most of it into the air. Because the
radiation dispersed quickly, most people received only low levels
of exposure. Government and industry spokespeople have repeatedly
assured the public than no one was harmed. However, the
government’s own health data tell quite a different story.
Comparing the period three months prior to the accident against
the period four months after the accident, Pennsylvania’s infant
mortality rate increased 16% and the state of Maryland’s
increased 41%. All together, Gould and Goldman calculate that
perhaps as many as 50,000 deaths occurred during 1980-1982 as a
result of the TMI accident (pg. 63).

This is an important book. Any individual fact in the book may be
disputed, but the cumulative weight of the evidence is
persuasive. And though we generally do not give much credence to
conspiracy theories, if you read this book from cover to cover,
you will have difficulty believing that your government is
telling the full truth about the effects of low-level radiation.
We suggest that you act prudently to protect yourself and your
family: do whatever it takes to keep BRC wastes out of your
community.

Get: Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman, DEADLY DECEIT;
LOW-LEVEL RADIATION, HIGH-LEVEL COVER-UP (New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows Press [P.O. Box 548, Village Station, New York, NY
10014], 1990). $19.95

And: Keep in touch with Nuclear Information Resource Service
(NIRS), 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 328-0002,
and the Radioactive Waste Campaign, 625 Broadway, 2nd floor, New
York, NY 10012; (212) 473-7390.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: brc; radioactive waste; llw; book review;
deadly deceit; tmi; three mile island; savannah river, ga;
dupont; jay gould; ben goldman; radiation; health effects;
hiroshima; nagasaki; nuclear weapons; chernobyl; meltdown; pa,
ma; groundwater;

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