Russia To Turn Over Radiation Data

["George J. Vargo, Ph.D., CHP" <vargo@physicist.net>]

Apologies if this is a duplicate entry -- I hadn'e seen it posted
previously.
-GJV

Russia To Turn Over Radiation Data
December 22, 1997
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DENVER - The Associated Press via Individual Inc. : Scientists say an
unusual trade between Russia and a defunct Colorado nuclear weapons plant
will provide a better understanding of the risks of radiation exposure.
- Russia has agreed to give American scientists the medical records of
thousands of nuclear plant workers exposed to daily doses of radiation
nearly a half-century ago.
- In exchange, the former Rocky Flats nuclear plant near Denver is sending
Russia a device that measures plutonium levels in people.
- The Russian records are the first major compilation of data on people
exposed to sustained radiation, scientists say. Doctors worldwide have been
studying the issue for years to determine safe levels of exposure to
everything from medical X-rays to nuclear waste sites.
- ``It's a scientific bonanza,'' said Dr. Marvin Goldman, professor of
radiological sciences at the University of California-Davis, who has worked
closely with Russian scientists for nearly a decade and proposed that Rocky
Flats donate the detector to help a joint effort between the two countries.
- While the threat of a nuclear attack diminished with the end of the Cold
War, determining safe radiation levels remains important as nuclear weapons
are dismantled and nuclear waste is stored.
- ``How low do you regulate? What are safe levels? The answers are still a
moving target, but this will enhance what we have,'' said Dr. Daniel
Hoffman, chairman of epidemiology at George Washington University School of
Public Health, who has also traveled to Russia to study effects of
radiation.
- Russian scientists are sharing case histories of more than 10,000 people
who worked at the Mayak plutonium-producing facility between 1948 and 1953,
when the former Soviet Union was locked in an arms race with the United
States.
- Mayak was Russia's largest and oldest weapons production site, and its
workers didn't wear protective masks or hoods, Goldman said.
- The records are expected to include tissue samples and autopsy results and
reveal what kind of cancer workers got, the radiation levels that caused the
disease and the path radiation took upon entering the body, Goldman said.
More than half the workers are still alive.
- Similar studies were not possible in the United States because American
nuclear plant workers were subjected to lower doses of radiation.
- ``We controlled our plutonium much better than other people in the
world,'' said Frank Masse, director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's radiation protection program.
- Government regulations prohibited American nuclear plant workers from
being exposed to more than 12 rems _ a unit of measure _ of radiation per
year before 1957. Regulations were tightened that year so workers could be
exposed to no more than five rems per year, but most workers were exposed to
an average of one a year, Goldman said.
- Their Russian counterparts received as much as 100 rems per year in the
1940s and early '50s, he said.
- Today, the average person in the United States is exposed to about one rem
every three years from natural and manmade sources.
- The swap comes from a 1994 agreement between the United States and Russia
to coordinate research on the health effects of radiation.
- Rocky Flats, which closed in 1989 because of safety concerns, is giving
the Russians a ``germanium detector,'' which measures plutonium in the body.
- The detector is housed in a 62-ton steel vault that blocks out other forms
of radiation, said Patrick Etchart, a Department of Energy spokesman. The $1
million device was built in the 1960s to monitor workers who made plutonium
triggers for nuclear weapons.
- Russia has no device that is as precise or sensitive, Goldman said.
- The detector will be sent by boat to Russia, where scientists at the First
Institute of Biophysics in the Ural Mountains hope to receive it by April.
- ``This will mean peace of mind for some Russian workers, especially if
they walk around thinking they were (exposed to radiation), but no one ever
confirmed it,'' Goldman said.
[Copyright 1997, Associated Press]