Re: Russia To Turn Over Radiation Data

[rkathren@tricity.wsu.edu (Ron L. Kathren)]

This interesting AP story is mute on the fact that the US Transuranium and
Uranium Registries at Washington State University have been collaborating
with the Russians at Mayak for a couple of years now, and have even
published papers jointly comparing their Registry and Registry findings with
ours.  Professor Ron Filipy, a radiobiologist, is the U.S. lead scientist on
this Russian collaboration.  For those interested, a trip to the USTUR Web
page might prove illuminating; the URL is:   http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/~ustur/

Ron Kathren
Professor and Director, USTUR


 At 04:20 PM 1/1/98 -0600, George J. Vargo, Ph.D., CHP wrote:
>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]
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