Re: Fallout from Weapons Testing

["H.Wade Patterson" <hwade@triax.com>]

Andy Hull wrote:
> 
> In an 8/3 letter to the New York Times, Joseph A. Mongano, a consultant to
> the Radiation and Public Health Project (E.J. Sternglass and Jay Gould) wrote:
> "The National Cancer Institute's revelation that fallout from atomic bomb
> testing in Nevada from 1951-62 contained greater amounts of thyroid
> cancer-causing iodine than had previously been believed omits a key observation.
>  For years, independent scientist warned that iodine from Nevada tests had
> produced excess thyroid cancers. Medical journals published articles
> estimating 80 to 1,800 additional cases in children (June 1959), as well as
> a 300 percent increase in thyroid cancer among young Utah females after
> testing began (October 1967). All cancer institute analyses of rising cancer
> rates have ignored bomb test fallout as a potential cause.

 Here's another study which has been omitted and which reaches opposite
conclusions.

Lloyd, R. D.; Tripp, D. A.; Kerber, R.A. Limits of fetal thyroid risk
from radioiodine exposure. Health Physics 70:559-562, 1996
Conclusion:
Concern for the possible consequences to the fetus of radioiodine
administration to its mother 9 d before conception motivated us to
search the data base for the Utah Fallout study (Stevens et al.)to
discover what effects had been documented among subjects exposed to
fallout radioiodine in utero. Not only was it found that no neoplasia
had occurred among this population, but there were no thyroid effects of
any kind in the persons with the highest thyroid doses (>0.5 Gy). Other,
non-neoplastic effects were about as common among subjects at the lowest
dose category (<0.01 Gy) as among those receiving 0.01-0.2 Gy,
indicating that any possible link with radiation exposure was extremely
weak. As an added bonus of this investigation, it was found that,
although the uncertainties were rather large, the fetal thyroid is
probably not much more sensitive to radiation-induced neoplastic change
than is the postnatal thyroid.

Stevens, W.; Thomas, D. C.; Lyon, J.L.; Till, J. E.; Kerber, R. A.;
Simon, S. L.; Lloyd, R. D.; Abd Elghany, N.; Preston-Martin, S. Leukemia
in Utah and radioactive from the Nevada Test Site. JAMA 264:585-591;
1990




-- 
Wade

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