Victims of Radiation or Men Undergoing Effects of Aging? : ‘Atomic Veterans’ Push Claims Campaign

On a clear morning in May, 1953, Army Staff Sgt. Ralph William Allen, 28, crouched in a trench in the Nevada desert and waited with other troops to simulate an infantry attack on an atomic battlefield.

Suddenly, said Allen, “there was a loud bang and the most brilliant light you ever saw. I could see the bones of my hands like looking through an X-ray. We looked up and there was an evil yellow cloud just racing at us.”

The force of the atomic blast lifted him off his feet. He saw tiny pinpricks of blood on his hands as he removed them from his eyes. “It was a thing of awesome beauty,” he said. “Every color in the rainbow was in that cloud.”

Shock Waves Still Felt

Shock waves from that blast, and from many of the other 234 atomic tests conducted by the United States from 1946 to 1962, are still being felt three decades later.

Five thousand veterans who participated in these tests or in the post-atomic bomb occupations of Hiroshima or Nagasaki have filed claims with the U.S. government for special disability benefits. Many charge that, as a result of radiation exposure, they are suffering from cancers, blood disorders, nerve problems and defects in their offspring.

For years, government health officials have rejected the claims, asserting that the ailments were due to the veterans’ advancing age and that the radiation exposure they received was insignificant.

But a recent congressional study has raised doubts about the accuracy of the radiation doses the government estimated were produced by the tests. And Congress is considering legislation that would give expanded benefits to the “atomic veterans,” as they have come to be known, and to authorize them to take their cases to court.

Hope for Momentum

Although supporters of the veterans acknowledge the key measures probably will not pass this session, they have optimism that momentum for this issue, like Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, may be building.

“We’re getting some very cooperative responses,” said Robert S. Faron, a Washington lawyer and volunteer for the National Assn. of Atomic Veterans, a group representing 7,500 former soldiers. “We’re waiting to see what we get out of it.”

“With Agent Orange we faced the same thing,” said Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), co-sponsor of one of the bills to aid atomic veterans. Administration officials “want to do anything they can to reduce” potential federal responsibility, he said.

The atomic veterans’ claims underscore other allegations in recent years that the government underestimated the hazards of radiation in its early experiments with nuclear weapons. Two years ago, a federal judge in Salt Lake City awarded $2.7 million to 10 Utah residents who claimed health and property damage from fallout from the tests. That case is being appealed by the government.

Incomplete Records

The dispute also illustrates the difficulty the government, soldiers and medical authorities are encountering in accurately evaluating the possible effects of decades-old military actions for which many records and analyses are incomplete.

More than 200,000 military personnel participated in the U.S. atomic tests or in the American occupations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to the government and veterans groups. About 50,000 are believed still to be alive.

In the late 1970s the claims from veterans alleging radiation-caused illnesses began to stream in to the Veterans Administration and to courts around the country. The veterans say that long-term reaction to the radiation they absorbed is the only plausible explanation for the wide range of ailments they are suffering now.

Allen, 60, of Seaford, Del., said that only his 1953 exposure to radiation could account for his severe diabetes.

Criticizes VA Policy

“I have no family history of diabetes,” Allen said. “Why am I an exception? . . . The VA refuses to admit any complicity or any part of this problem. They tell me that the reason I have developed diabetes is that I just developed it.”

Don Parchem, a 54-year-old veteran from Cicero, Ill., said he paid $2,000 out of his own pocket for surgery six years ago for breast cancer, which he attributes to radiation from a 1962 atomic test. “It appears that the VA goes out of its way to disprove the claim instead of assisting the veteran,” he said.

The Pentagon contends that 99% of atomic veterans received less than five rem of radiation, the safety standard for nuclear power plant workers, during the tests or in Japan. That amounts to the radiation in more than 300 X-rays but is far less than the 100 rem in annual exposure that radiation experts consider likely to cause cancer.

The government also cites two federal studies, whose methodology is challenged by the veterans, that found no abnormally high cancer rate among atomic veterans in comparison to the general population.

“What you have is men who were in their 20s in the 1950s who are now in their 50s and 60s, and they are experiencing the normal deterioration and illnesses that accompany aging,” said David Miller, an Energy Department spokesman in Nevada.

GAO Questions Data

The validity of the government’s estimates of the radiation doses experienced by the veterans, the key piece of statistical evidence in the dispute, was challenged last year by a General Accounting Office study conducted at the request of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), a congressional ally of the nuclear veterans.

The study examined one of the largest atomic tests, the 1946 Operation Crossroads, which involved 42,000 soldiers. It concluded that the government’s estimates did not fully account for radiation inhaled, were based on decontamination procedures that were not always thorough and did not account for the high margin of error in radiation-sensitive “film badges” worn by some participants.

The Defense Department defended its estimates, saying the GAO misinterpreted the data. “I think a fair reading of the record shows that the tests were conducted safely and there was no one that was hurt there,” said David Auton, manager of the Pentagon’s review of nuclear test personnel.

Cranston has ordered a study by another congressional office to resolve the matter, but one congressional investigator said gaps in the old records make it almost impossible to reconstruct the exposure. “You’re going through all kinds of documents that are 40 years old and it’s very difficult to come up with a number,” said the investigator, who asked to remain anonymous. “It becomes very difficult and nebulous.”

Similarities to Agent Orange

Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange are experiencing similar problems. A White House science panel has found that incomplete records are hampering its research on the health effects of that defoliant.

The key bill introduced on behalf of the atomic veterans would make moot the estimates of the veterans’ radiation doses. Sponsored by Simon and Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.), the bill, in effect, would make all atomic veterans eligible for disability payments if they have cancer or any other disease that medical research has indicated can be caused by radiation.

It would also classify the ailment as service related, guaranteeing top-priority care at VA hospitals. Veterans without service injuries receive care on a space-available basis.

Other legislation would force the government to keep a registry for atomic veterans showing their estimated radiation dose and their medical and claims histories. And two other bills, creating an exception from federal laws that bar military personnel from filing suit for injuries sustained on active duty, would allow the veterans to sue the government and nuclear weapons contractors for damages.

‘Making Headway’

Only the bill for the registry is expected to pass this year. Said Simon: “I’m not saying we’re going to get anything this year, but we are making headway on this.”

VA officials, vowing to fight the measures that would extend the blanket benefits, estimate that the extra disability payments alone could amount to several hundred dollars a month per recipient and total $23 billion annually.