Radiation Exposure to Infants Cited : Scientist Reports Leaks During ‘40s at Hanford Reservation

Some infants living near the Hanford nuclear reservation in the 1940s may have received more radiation than people living near Nevada nuclear weapons testing sites, a scientist said today.

John Till, chairman of a panel trying to estimate doses of radiation to people living near the federal weapons production reservation, said some infants may have received 2,900 rads of radioactive iodine over three years.

A rad is a measure of radiation exposure to human tissue and is roughly equal to the radiation in 12 chest X-rays. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that facilities it licenses limit yearly radiation exposure from airborne emissions to 15-thousandths of a rad.

Release of the study came one day after the Department of Energy acknowledged for the first time that Hanford leaked radiation at levels that endangered the health of nearby residents.

“Now that they’ve admitted what they’ve done, I think they should make restitution and they should provide medical help for the rest of our lives for anything the radiation has caused,” said Betty Perkes, whose family farms near Pasco, Wash. “I feel like they used us for guinea pigs, and I don’t feel like they cared one iota what happened to us either, or our families.”

The study was not intended to identify health risks from radiation exposure. But Till said the numbers were high enough to strongly justify a study of thyroid diseases among so-called “down-winders” who lived near Hanford during periods when it was spewing radioactive particles into the atmosphere in large quantities.

The study of 270,000 people living in 10 counties of Washington and Oregon near the reservation in south-central Washington indicated that 13,500 people received cumulative doses greater than 33 rads in the years 1944 to ’47.

“These numbers are significant because that is a lot of folks,” Till said at a news conference. “That dose level is significant enough to strongly justify a thyroid dose study.”

Radioactive iodine was released when spent reactor fuel rods were chemically dissolved to separate weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. When it concentrates in the thyroid gland, iodine-131 can cause cancer and other diseases.

Till said that by comparison, doses downwind from the Nevada nuclear weapons testing site ranged from a few rads to 500 rads.