?? Harold McCloskey Info

[CAREY JOHNSTON <JOHNSTON.CAREY@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV>]

Dear Radsafers:

In yesterday's Washington Post (5/5) was an article on the Hanford reservation. One tid-bit of information that wasn't
explored to deeply was the story of Harold McCloskey. Dubbed in the article as the "Atomic Man", McCloskey is
identified as a "technician who survived a 1976 accident at Hanford that sprayed his face with the largest human
dose of radiation ever recorded. He became the most thoroughly studied nuclear victim in America...After the
accident, McCloskey was almost blind and his face could set off Geiger counters 50 feet away." This quote begs the
following question from inquiring minds:

1) How did the accident occur?
2) What's the best estimate on how much radiation he received?

BTW in the article continues with the following.."But he (McCloskey) was pro-Hanford until the end (he died of a
heart attack in 1987). 'Just forget about me being anti-nuclear, because I'm not,' he said a decade after the accident.
'We need nuclear energy'"

Carey A. Johnston
EPA
Radiation Protection Division
http://www.epa.gov/oar/oria_rpd.html
johnston.carey@epamail.epa.gov
(202) 233 9341