Health Records of Nuclear Workers to Be Made Public

The Department of Energy has decided to allow outside scrutiny of health records of 600,000 people who have worked on government nuclear projects over the last four decades, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) said today.

The decision is a dramatic policy reversal for the agency, which has been fighting a Freedom of Information Act request for the data filed by the Three Mile Island Public Health Fund, a group created after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Glenn, who for several years has been investigating problems in the government’s nuclear weapons complex, began pressing for release of the data two months ago.

He said he asked for the health records because of “the growing controversy over the conflicts of interest between the DOE’s dual roles of promoting radiation technologies and assessing their health impacts.”

The medical information dates back to the early 1940s, when the government began work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. It includes records of workers at about 50 government facilities, and is considered the world’s largest body of information on the effects of radiation exposure.

Energy Secretary James D. Watkins said he ordered the department to establish a national repository for “all epidemiologically relevant information on DOE workers.” That central data base would cost $4.5 million, The Washington Post reported in today’s editions.

The department also awarded the National Academy of Sciences a $250,000 contract to “develop a mechanism” for giving “qualified researchers” access to the raw files before the central data base is ready, the newspaper said. Researchers should be able to start reviewing the files in a few months, it said.