[ RadSafe ] Seabrook Nukes and cancers: TFP

[Norm Cohen]

Dear Friends:  This is an article that appeared in the Hampton Union on
Friday Dec. 2.  The paper is located in Hampton Beach NH, near the Seabrook
nuclear power plant.

 
 
 
Study: children's cancer up ... 12/02/2005
Hampton Union
Date: 12/02/2005    Section: news    Page: a1
Word Count: 633 word
 

Study: children's cancer up
N-plant, CDC say they have no knowledge of report
By Susan Morse   smorse at seacoastonline.com
SEABROOK - Childhood cancer deaths in the last two decades increased by 19
percent in communities surrounding Seabrook Station, according to the group
awarding the nuclear power plant a Dirty Dozen award on Tuesday.
   In a released statement, Paul Schramski of the Toxics Action Center in
Massachusetts said the information came from a study by the Center for
Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.
   However, neither CDC spokeswoman Susan Asher nor Seabrook Station
spokesman Al Griffith had any knowledge of such a study, they said.
   Further information released by Schramski said the research was done by
Joseph Mangano, an epidemiologist with a master's degree in public health
who is the national coordinator for the Radiation and Public Health Project.
   Its Web site says the project is "a nonprofit educational and scientific
organization, established by scientists and physicians dedicated to
understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and
public health."
   Mangano, reached at his office in Norristown, Pa.,  on Wednesday, said he
used CDC statistics in his study. Anyone can access the same information at
wonder.cdc.gov, he said.
   Infant death rates in four counties surrounding Seabrook Station
increased by 4 percent from the two years prior to the plant going on line
in 1989, to two years after, he said.
   The childhood cancer death rate increased by 19 percent between 1981 and
2002, he said.
   The CDC's Asher said on Wednesday that the federal center does release
statistics on race, gender, age, and how people died.
   She could not confirm the results obtained by Mangano.
   The CDC does look into the veracity of any study, she said, when it gets
a request to do so.
   "The CDC gets involved when it gets a petition to get involved," she
said. "We just don't go out on our own. It can come from anyone."
   "We've never had a request to go out to the Seabrook place," Asher said.
   Mangano said the impetus for his research came from Guy Chichester, a Rye
resident who co-founded the Clamshell Alliance. The alliance  opposed the
building of the Seabrook plant.
   Mangano and Chichester are also working on a study to determine the level
of strontium 90 found in baby teeth. Strontium 90 is one component of
ionized radiation and is like calcium in that it heads for teeth and bone,
said Mangano.
   So far Mangano has gathered 4,500 teeth nationwide. He expects to release
his results  in 2006.
   Of his cancer study, Mangano admits factors other than the nuclear power
plant may play a role in the increased statistics.
   Similar studies of cancer rates in areas surrounding other nuclear power
plants have yielded similar results, he said.
   "Seabrook should be put in a list of factors," he said. "The general
trend is, open a plant, the rate goes up, close a plant the rate goes down."
   Mangano looked at infant death rates for the years 1987 to 1988, and
after the plant started operating, from 1989 to 1990, in four counties near
Seabrook Station: Essex County in Massachusetts; Rockingham County;
Strafford County; and York County in Maine.
   "In the four-county area it went up by 4 percent," he said. "In the rest
of the three-state area - Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine - it was
down 7 percent. In the rest of the U.S. it was down by 5 percent."
   He then looked at long-term changes in the childhood cancer death rate,
of children  dying before the age of 15 in the same four counties.
   Mangano compared the CDC statistics for the years 1981 through 1989 and
1990 through 2002.
   "The change in the rates increased by 19 percent," he said. "Elsewhere in
the three states it was down by 23 percent and in the U.S., down 26
percent."
   The Radiation and Public Health Project is not an advocate organization,
he said.