TMI

[Harry Hinks <Miller@nukeworker.com>]

Saw this on google - 



http://www.press-citizen.com/news/032804threemile.htm



Sounds like interesting studies, does anyone know anything about this guy or if indeed these papers were published??  Steve Miller 



Sunday, March 28, 2004



Three Mile Island changed UI professor's life



By Mike McWilliams

Iowa City Press-Citizen



Bill Field first heard of a small leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant about 10 a.m. as he drove his 1969 Ford Mustang to class at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. 



"They said there was a leak of some type, but not to be worried," said Field, who was a 25-year-old graduate student at the time. "I thought it was interesting, but not too worried."



Reports later that night indicated the leak was growing. Officials thought there was a chance that a radioactive hydrogen bubble inside one of the reactor vessels would explode. Field said his concerns grew when he saw firetrucks driving down his Elizabethtown, Pa., neighborhood, urging people to shut their windows to keep out radioactive iodine gas.



"At that point, I tried to call my wife, but the lines were busy," he said. "You couldn't get a dial tone."



Precisely 25 years after a near catastrophe at the Three Mile Island facility, Field, an associate professor in the occupational and environmental health and epidemiology departments at the University of Iowa, said the event changed his life and career path.



On the morning of March 28, 1979, pumps feeding a cooling tower to the plant's reactor failed and 32,000 gallons of radioactive superheated water spewed into the domed concrete reactor housing. Without water, more than half the reactor's 36,000 nuclear fuel rods ruptured at the plant, located on an island in the Susquehanna River, near Harrisburg, Pa.



Although no deaths or injuries resulted because of the accident, some radioactive gases were released into the environment. As more information about the accident was released, Field said, the atmosphere became more chaotic. He said several people emptied their bank accounts and lines of 10 to 15 cars waited at gas stations to fill up and flee the area. National Guard troops arrived to make sure people didn't loot.



Field joined his wife, who was completing her medical residency at Penn State University's Medical Center in Hershey. The medical center is about 10 miles away from Three Mile Island. The couple was committed to stay near the medical center in case patients had to be moved.



They packed their clothes, took their wedding pictures, and moved into the medical center, unsure if they would ever return home.



"It's hard to describe the feeling of leaving your home and trying to decide what to take," Field said. "It's a hard feeling to convey to people and it's pretty much how everyone felt."



About one week after the incident, Field said he started testing voles, or field mice, near the nuclear plant for radioactive iodine gas. Field said he wasn't testing for effect of the gas on the mice but was looking at whether the radiation could be detected in the animals.



Later that year, Field expanded his radiation study to 15 surrounding counties on teeth from whitetail deer. Two years after the accident, Field published a paper, which he said was the only scientific paper to document radioactive contamination on the wild food chain.



"We were surprised to find anything, but what we were trying to accomplish was finding the upper levels of exposure and differences between the exposure of different areas relative to exposures," Field said.



In Iowa since 1988, Field has since earned his P.h.D. The former marine biology major is now focused on exposure assessment to a variety of chemicals, not just radiation.



"The origins of my interest really started out in the days after Three Mile Island," he said.







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