 Section 52 of Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patrick McAfee, Evanston. The bomb tests. Questions of risk, records, and trust. In this chapter, the Advisory Committee reviewed six different activities that were conducted in conjunction with bomb tests, that today we would consider research involving human subjects. Only two of the six, the Atomic Effects Experiments, conducted on officer volunteers and the Flash Blindness Experiments, were clearly treated as instances of human research at the time. The six human research projects likely included no more than 3,000 of the more than 200,000 people who were present during the bomb tests. Some of the research subjects, perhaps as many as several hundred, were placed at greater risk of harm than the other bomb test participants who were not also research subjects. However, most of the research subjects were not. At this point, we turn to a consideration of several issues that affect all atomic veterans, regardless of whether they were also research subjects. These include how, at the time, the DOD and the AEC determined what exposures would be permitted, issues of record keeping, and what is known today about long-term risks and participation in the bomb tests. AEC and DOD risk analysis for exposure at bomb tests. In counseling human subject research at bomb tests, the joint panel on the medical aspects of atomic warfare stated that the research had to be performed under safe conditions. What SAFE meant for all those exposed, both experimental subjects and other military participants at the bomb tests, was subject to arrangements between the AEC and the DOD. While the military, of course, is responsible for the safety of its troops, the AEC had responsibility for the safe operation of the Nevada and Pacific sites at which the weapons were tested. Secrecy, summarized Barton Hacker, a DOE-sponsored historian of the bomb tests, quote, so shrouded the test program that such matters as worker safety could not then emerge as subjects of public debate, end quote. As we have seen in the case of the cloud fly-through research, by the mid-1950s the AEC and the Defense Department had arrived at a method of operation through which waivers to the basic radiation safety standards for the tests would be granted for particular activities. In the early 1950s, in the context of the Desert Rock exercises, the AEC and the DOD established the precedent for departure from the standards that the AEC relied on for its own bomb test workforce. At this time the AEC was the main source of expertise on radiation effects. Its guidepost for its own workers at the Nevada test site and elsewhere was the 3R per 13-week standard established for occupational risk by a private organization, the National Committee on Radiation Protection. This level, it may be recalled from the debates on nuclear airplane experimentation, discussed in Chapter 8, was well below that at which the experts assumed acute radiation effects such as would limit combat effectiveness could occur. In 1951, the Los Alamos Laboratory, the AEC's right hand in weapons test management, called on the Division of Biology and Medicines Director, shields Warren for, quote, official but unpublicized authority to permit exposures up to 3.9R, end quote, for AEC test personnel. Warren granted the request, counseling that, quote, this division does not look lightly upon radiation excesses. As we have seen, the DOD shortly thereafter determined to use the tests for troop maneuvers and did so at Desert Rock 1, keeping the troops at 7 miles distance during the detonation. In early 1952, the DOD asked the AEC to endorse its request to station troops at Desert Rock 4 as close as 7,000 yards from ground zero, approximately 4 miles, far closer than the 7-mile limit the AEC permitted its own test site personnel. The AEC's Division of Military Applications was willing to concur. Shields Warren, however, dissented on grounds of safety. The dispute was settled when AEC Chairman, Gordon Dean, advised DOD that, quote, the commission would enter no objection to stationing troops at not less than 7,000 yards from ground zero, end quote, provided that proper precautions were taken. Even so, an internal review of the Desert Rock 4 exercise by the Division of Military Applications, generally supportive of DOD's request for troop maneuvers, raised questions about the wisdom of deviation from the AEC standard and the potential for, quote, delayed, end quote, casualties. Determined to proceed, DOD called for, quote, a study to be made to determine the minimum distance from ground zero that should be permitted in a peacetime maneuver, end quote. The December 1952 report recommended that dosages for Army personnel be above the limit set by the AEC for its personnel. The soldiers, by comparison with the AEC personnel, would be exposed, quote, very infrequently, end quote. The report summarized the state of knowledge, quote, is no known tolerance for nuclear radiation. That is, there is no definite proof that even small doses of nuclear radiations, sick, may not, in some way, be harmful to the human body. On the other hand, there is no evidence to indicate that, within certain limits, nuclear radiation has injured personnel who have been exposed to it, end quote. In response to the DOD's proposal to assume full responsibility for physical and radiological safety of troops and troop observers within the Nevada test site, the AEC stated that general safety practice and criteria at the Nevada Proving Grounds was and must continue to be the responsibility of the AEC. The AEC did, however, quote, accept the proposal that the DOD assume full responsibility for physical and radiological safety of troops and all observers accompanying troops within the maneuver areas assigned to Exercise Desert Rock 5, including establishment of a suitable safety criteria, end quote. The AEC further explained that, quote, the Atomic Energy Commission adopts this position in recognition that doctrine on the tactical use of atomic weapons as well as the hazards which military personnel are required to undergo during their training must be evaluated and determined by the Department of Defense. The Atomic Energy Commission has, however, established safety limits. We consider these limits to be realistic and further are of the opinion that when they are exceeded in any operation, that operation may become a hazardous one. So that we may know in which particulars and by how much these safety standards are being exceeded, we desire that the exercise director transmit to the test manager a copy of his safety plan, end quote. For the spring 1953 Desert Rock 5 exercises, the DOD deemed the permissible limit for the troops for a test series to be 6R. In the case of the officer volunteers, a 10R test limit was agreed to with the proviso that, quote, it is not intended that these exposures result in any injury to the selected individuals, end quote. The Army's limit at Desert Rock was well below the level understood to potentially cause acute effects and far below the recommendation of Brigadier General James Cooney that the military depart from the infinitesimal industrial and laboratory limits except 100 engines for a single exposure limit. But the level was not only higher than the AEC level, but also above the 0.9R per week being urged by the British and Canadians, partners in U.S. testing. The AEC itself objected that a 0.9R per week limit would make testing at Nevada impractical. Interestingly, in 1952 the Navy also faced with the need for more realistic training exercises considered spraying radioactive materials on ships during training exercises. The Navy's Bureau of Medicine, Bue Med, rejected the proposal. Bue Med told the chief of naval operations that while it, quote, fully appreciates, end quote, the need for more, quote, realistic radiological defense training, end quote, it could not approve the use of radioisotopes in a form other than, quote, sealed sources commonly used in basic training since such use might produce an internal radiation hazard serious enough to outweigh the advantages of area contamination for training purposes, end quote. By the mid-1950s, AEC test health and safety staff were continually concerned about radiation safety at the tests and the failure to reduce them to a predictable and assuredly safe routine, quote, there are, end quote, Los Alamos Health Division leader Thomas Shipman wrote to the AEC Division of Biology and Medicines Gordon Dunning in 1956, quote, two basic facts which much never be lost sight of. The first of these is that the only good exposure is zero. The second fact is that once the button for a bomb detonation is pushed, you have to live with the results no matter what they are, end quote. In fact, while the AEC had set a limit of 50 kilotons, more than twice the power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs for Nevada tests, this limit had already been exceeded by 10 kilotons in 1953, quote, it is all very nice, end quote. Shipman wrote in another 1956 memorandum, quote, to have a well-meaning task force commander who by a stroke of the pen can absolve our radiologic sins, but somehow I do not believe that overexposure are washed away by edict, end quote. Shipman's comments illustrate an acute awareness among experts at the center of the testing program of the real and continuing element of risk and uncertainty in the attempt to define and control exposures at the bomb tests. The aftermath of crossroads. Confidential record-keeping to evaluate potential liability claims. In the midst of the Korean and Cold Wars, researchers and generals were focused on the short-term effects of radiation, not effects that might take place years later. Thus, the benefits from knowledge about the bomb or training of troops in its use loomed large, and the risks from long-term exposure likely seemed distant and small. Government officials undertook to guard against acute radiation effects. The surviving documentation indicates that they were remarkably successful. Of the more than 200,000 service participants in the tests, available records indicate that only about 1,200 received more than today's occupational exposure limit of five REM. And the average exposure was below one REM. But there was no certainty that lower exposures were risk-free. During the summer of 1946, the contamination of ships at the crossroads tests put officials and medical experts on alert to the radiation risk posed to participants at atomic bomb detonations. Difficult and expensive medical-legal problems. Crossroads medical director Stafford Warren Feard will probably occur if previously contaminated target ships are cleared for constant occupancy or disposal as scrap. A medical-legal advisory board sought to deal with these questions and the Navy created a research organization dedicated to the study of decontamination and damage to ships. Concern for long-term liability stimulated by crossroads led to more steps to guard against the legal and public relations implications if service personnel exposed to radiation filed disability claims. In the fall of 1946, General Paul Hawley, administrator of the Veterans Administration, became deeply concerned about the problems that atomic energy might create for the Veterans Administration due to the fact that the armed services were so actively engaged in matters of atomic energy. In August 1947, Hawley met with representatives of the Surgeon General's offices of the Military Services and the Public Health Service. The meeting was also attended by former Manhattan Project Chief General Leslie Groves. Groves reportedly was, quote, very much afraid of claims being instituted by men who participated in the Bikini tests, end quote. An advisory committee was created which included Stafford Warren and Heimer Friedel, Warren's deputy on the Manhattan Project Medical Team. The committee was given the name, quote, Central Advisory Committee, as it was not desired to publicize the fact that the Veterans Administration might have any problems in connection with atomic medicine, especially the fact that there might be problems in connection with alleged service-connected disability claims, end quote. The committee recommended the creation of an, quote, atomic medicine division, end quote, of the VA to handle, quote, atomic medicine matters, end quote, and a radioisotope section to, quote, implement a radioisotope program, end quote. The committee further recommended that, quote, for the time being the existence of the atomic medicine division be classified as confidential and that publicity be given instead to the existence of a radioisotope program, end quote. This history is contained in a 1952 report presented by Dr. George Lyon to the National Research Council. The 1952 report records that, quote, General Hawley took affirmative actions on these recommendations and it was in the manner described that the radioisotope program was initiated in the fall of 1947, end quote. Lyon, who had worked with Stafford Warren at Crossroads, was appointed Special Assistant to the VA's Chief Medical Director for Atomic Medicine, and through 1959 served in a variety of roles related to the VA's atomic medicine activities. Dr. Lyon's 1952 report recounts that he was present at the August 1947 meeting and involved in the deliberations of the Central Advisory Committee, as well as subsequent developments. Working with the VA and the Defense Department, we sought to retrieve what information could be located regarding the Atomic Medicine Division and any secret record keeping in anticipation of potential veterans' claims from radiation over exposures. Among the documents found was a confidential August 1952 letter to the attention of Dr. Lyon, in which the Defense Department called for comment on the Army's proposal to, quote, eliminate the requirement for maintaining detailed statistical records of radiological exposures received by the Army personnel, end quote. The requirement, the letter recorded, quote, was originally conceived as being necessary to protect the government's interest in case any large number of veterans should attempt to bring suit against the government based on a real or imagined exposure to nuclear radiations during an atomic war, end quote. In 1959, Dr. Lyon was recommended for a VA, quote, Exceptional Service Award, end quote. In a memo from the VA Chief Medical Director to the VA Administrator, Dr. Lyon's work on both the publicized and confidential programs was the first of many items for which Dr. Lyon was commended. Following a recitation of the 1947 developments, similar to those stated by Dr. Lyon in his 1952 report, the memo explained, quote, It was felt unwise to publicize unduly the probable adverse effects of exposure to radioactive materials. The use of nuclear energy at this time was so sensitive that unfavorable reaction might have jeopardized future developments in the field. Dr. Lyon maintained records of classified nature emanating from the AEC and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which were essential to proper evaluation of claims of radiation injury brought against VA by former members of the Armed Forces engaged in the Manhattan Project, end quote. The advisory committee has been unable to recover or identify the precise records that were referred to in the documents that have now come to light. An investigation by the VA Inspector General concluded that the feared claims from crossroads did not materialize and that the confidential Atomic Medicine Division was not activated. However, the investigation did not shed light on the specific identity of the records that were kept by Dr. Lyon, as cited in the 1959 memo on behalf of his commendation. While mystery still remains, the documentation that has been retrieved indicates that prior to the atomic testing conducted in the 1950s, the government and its radiation experts had strong concern for the possibility that radiation risk born by servicemen might bear longer-term consequences. Looking back, accounting for the long-term risks, civilians, a UCLA psychologist observed during a 1949 NEPA meeting convened to consider the psychology of radiation effects, question, quote, whether the medical group have actually discovered thus far all the effects of radiation on human beings, that is going to be one of the most insidious things to combat, end quote, quote. When you talk about probable delayed effects, possible, unknown and so forth, end quote, Dr. Sells of the Air Force asked, quote, what is the proper evaluation of the ethical questions as to how to treat the possible or probable unknown effects, end quote. While not answering the question, he observed that, quote, certainly we can create more anxiety by being scientifically scrupulous than if we simply treated these matters as we are inclined to treat other matters in our everyday life, end quote. This may have been the case following crossroads, quote, now we are very much interested in long-term effects, end quote, a military participant in a 1950 meeting of the DOD Committee on Medical Sciences stated, quote, but when you start thinking militarily of this, if men are going out on these missions anyway, a high percentage is not coming back. The fact that you may get cancer 20 years later is just of no significance to us, end quote. Decades following the 1946 crossroads tests, researchers began to study the longer-term effects of the bomb on test participants. In 1980, the Centers for Disease Control reported a cluster of nine leukemias among the 3,224 then-identified participants of shot smoky at the Nevada test site in 1957. A later report increased the count of leukemias to 10 compared with 4 expected on the basis of U.S. rates, but found no excess cancers at other anatomical sites. The total observed was 112 compared with 117.5 expected. The smoky test was the highest yield tower shot ever conducted at the Nevada test site. However, the measured doses for the smoky participants as a group were too low to explain the excess. Whether this cluster represents a random event and underestimation of the doses for the few participants who got leukemia or some other explanation remains unclear. In light of the CDC research, the National Academy of Sciences, NAS, thereafter undertook an enlarged study of five series of nuclear tests totaling 46,186 then-identified participants. The 1985 NAS report confirmed the excess of leukemia at the smoky test, but found no such excess at any of the test series as opposed to individual tests and no consistent pattern of excesses at other cancer sites. Later, however, the NAS study was found to be flawed by the inclusion of 4,500 individuals who had never participated and the exclusion of 15,000 individuals who had participated in one or more of the five series as well as incompleteness of dosimetry. The belated discovery that thousands of test participants had been misidentified punctuated the deficiencies in record creation and record keeping faced by those who seek to reconstruct at many years' remove the exposures of participants at the tests. Documents long available and those newly retrieved by the committee provide further basis for concern about the data gathering at test sites in which human subject research took place. At the 1953 Upshot Knot Hole series, which included the Desert Rock 5 Hume RRO research, 1994 DOD data show that only 2,282 of the 17,062 participants are known to have been issued film badges to serve as personal dosimeters. At Desert Rock 5, the Army Surgeon General's policy that one time exposure need not be reported led to a determination that maneuver troop units would be issued one film badge per platoon and observers would be issued one per bus. An AFSWP memo recorded that the Radiological Safety Organization did not have enough pocket dosimeters for efficient operation. A recently declassified DOD memo records that, quote, although film badges on the officer volunteers at Desert Rock 5 indicated an average gamma dose of 14 RENGINs, best information available suggests that the true dose was probably 24 RENG initial gamma plus neutron radiation, end quote. In a 1995 report, the Institute of Medicine found that the dose estimates that were proposed for use in the NAS follow-up study were unsuitable for epidemiologic purposes, but concluded that it would be feasible to develop a dose reconstruction system that could be used for this purpose. Nonetheless, there are some further studies that are of direct relevance. Recently, Watanabe et al. studied mortality among 8,554 Navy veterans who had participated in Operation Hard Tack 1 at the Pacific Proving Grounds in 1958. This is, to date, the only study of U.S. veterans to include a control group of unexposed military veterans. Overall, the participant group had a 10% higher mortality rate, but the cancer excess was significant only for the combined category of digestive organs, 66 deaths compared with 34.9 expected, a 47% increase. On average, the radiation doses were low, mean 388 MREM, but among the 1094 men with doses greater than one REM, there was a 42% excess of all cancers. No categories of cancer sites showed a significant excess or clear dose response relationship, but the number of deaths in any category was small. Two sets of foreign atomic veterans have been studied. In a study of 954 Canadian participants, no differences with matched controls were found, but only very large effects would have been detectable in such a small study. In contrast, a large study of British participants of test programs in Australia found higher rates of leukemia and multiple myeloma than in a matched control group, 28 versus 6. However, the cancer rates among the exposed veterans were only slightly higher than expected based on national rates, whereas those in the control group were much lower than expected and there was no dose response relationship. No excess was found at any other cancer site. Although the difference between the exposed and unexposed groups was quite significant, the interpretation of this result is unclear. Does it mean that for some unknown reason soldiers are less likely than the general population to get cancer? The, quote, healthy soldier effect? End quote, which is usually not thought to be so large for cancer. Or is it an indication of some unexplained methodological bias? This point has never been resolved. These observed effects need to be put in the context of what might reasonably be expected based on current understanding of low dose radiation risks and the doses the atomic veterans are thought to have received. Approximately 220,000 military personnel participated in at least one nuclear test. The film badges for those monitored thought to be roughly representative of all participants average 600 MREM. As summarized in the Basics of Radiation Science section of the introduction, the consensus among scientific experts is that this lifetime risk of fatal cancer due to radiation is approximately 8 per 10,000 person REM. On this basis, one might anticipate approximately 106 excess cancer deaths attributable to participation in the nuclear tests. Not only is this a number with considerable uncertainty, it is small in comparison with the total of about 48,000 cancer deaths that are eventually anticipated in this population. Such a small overall excess would be virtually impossible to detect by epidemiologic methods. In some subgroups, however, the relative increase above normal cancer rates could be large enough to be detectable. Leukemia, for example, is proportionally much more radio-sensitive than other cancers and the largest excess occurs fairly soon after exposure when natural rates are low. Focusing on those with highest exposure would also enhance the relative increase, albeit with many fewer people at risk. The Defense Nuclear Agency estimates that about 1,200 veterans received more than 5 REM, a mean of 8.1 REM. On this basis, about 8 excess cancer deaths would be anticipated. These factors may have contributed to the observed leukemia excess among participants of shot smoky, for example. Although these numbers represent the best estimate currently available of the expected cancer excess, there are uncertainties in both the real exposures received by the participants and the magnitude of the low-dose risk. As described in the Basics of Radiation Science section, there is roughly a 1.4 uncertainty in the low-dose radiation risk coefficient simply due to random variation in the available epidemiologic data with additional uncertainties of unknown magnitude about model specification, variation among studies, extrapolation across time in between populations, unmeasured confounders, and so on. These uncertainties are hotly contested, although the majority of radiation scientists believe the figures quoted above are unlikely to be seriously in error. If low-dose radiation risks were indeed substantially higher than this, then there would be a serious discrepancy to explain with the effects actually observed at higher doses. The uncertainties in the doses received by participants are perhaps more substantial, but given the limitations in the dosimetry and record keeping, it may be difficult ever to resolve them. As is clear from the epidemiologic data available today, there is no consistent pattern in increased cancer risk among atomic veterans, although there are a number of suggestive findings, most notably the excesses of leukemia among shot smoky and British test participants, the causes of which are still unclear. The low-recorded doses, the small size of the expected excesses and problems in record keeping and dosimetry make it very difficult to resolve whether atomic veterans as a group are at substantially elevated cancer risk and whether any such excess can be attributed to their radiation exposures. The advisory committee debated at some length the merits of further epidemiologic studies and concluded that the decisions to conduct such studies should be made by other appropriately constituted bodies of experts. End of section 52 Recording by Patrick McAfee Evanston Section 53 a final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patrick McAfee Evanston Final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments. Case studies Chapter 10 Part 5 Looking Back The Legacy of Distrust The chain of events set in motion by the CDC research and renewed interest in the fate of the atomic vets led to congressional enactment of legislation that provides veterans exposed at atmospheric tests with the opportunity to obtain compensation for injury related to radiation exposure. The Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Exposure Compensation Standards Act of 1984 provides for claims for compensation for radiation related disabilities for veterans exposed at atmospheric tests. The Radiation Exposed Veterans Compensation Act of 1988 provides that a veteran who was exposed to radiation at a designated event and develops a designated disease may be entitled to benefits without having to prove causation. Notwithstanding the passage of this legislation the committee heard from many atomic veterans and their widows who complained that the records that were created and maintained by the government records on which veterans claims may stand or fall were inadequate, missing, or wrong. Atomic veterans also stated that the laws and rules do not adequately reflect the kinds of illnesses that may be caused by radiation, that they do not provide for veterans who were exposed to radiation in settings other than atmospheric tests, and that the practical difficulties in time and resources of pursuing their rights under the laws are often excessive. The committee heard from many who told of the time, expense, the quality of getting information on the full circumstances of bomb test exposures. They told of their continued efforts over the course of the years to reconcile what they've learned from government sources with that which they had been told by other test participants, that which they recovered from the private letters of test participants to family members, and their own further research. For numerous atomic veterans, the testimony was not simply that the bomb tests themselves had been large experiments, but that they had been put at risk in the absence of planning to gather the data and perform the follow-up studies needed to ensure that the risks of the unknown, however small, would be measured and adequately accounted for. Conclusion The story of human research conducted in connection with nuclear weapons tests illustrates the difficult questions that are raised when human research is conducted in an occupational setting, especially a setting such as the military where exposure to risk is often part of the job. The story illustrates that it may often be difficult to discern whether or not an activity is a human experiment. By the same token, it also illustrates the importance of guarding participants against unnecessary risks, whether or not the activity is a human experiment. Human experiments at atomic bomb tests were undertaken by the military, which had a long tradition of requiring voluntary consent from participants in biomedical experiments. The need for written consent in experiments related to atomic, biological, and chemical warfare was clearly stated in the Secretary of Defense's 1953 memorandum. That memorandum also required the approval in writing of the appropriate service secretary and precluded experiments that did not adhere to its further requirements. The 1953 memorandum, however, does not appear to have been transmitted to those involved in human research at bomb tests, although the tenet of voluntary consent was followed in some cases. In addition to consent, the 1953 memorandum contained other significant ethical requirements, including that research be reasonably likely to produce useful scientific results and that proper precautions be taken to minimize risk. The bomb test research illustrates the significance of the position that bad science is bad ethics. Unless a research project is scientifically defensible, there is no justification for imposing on human subjects even minimal risk or inconvenience. For example, the DOD's biomedical advisors advocated the conduct of psychological and physiological research on troops participating in bomb tests with an awareness that the likelihood of scientifically useful results was small and that the effort would be part of a larger exercise in indoctrination and training. Having done so, they had an obligation to at least review continued research efforts to determine if the research design was developing useful information. In the case of the psychological and physiological testing, the evidence indicates that early results showed that the research design was not likely to produce useful scientific information if only because the military, the researchers, and perhaps even the subjects did not view the setting as sufficiently realistic. At the same time, this question of ethics and science is irrelevant if the HUM-RRO activities did not entail research involving human subjects. An activity that has a poor research design would not be an ethical human experiment. However, the same activity might be ethical conducted as a training activity whose essential purpose is to provide reassurance. Similarly, to the extent that research was intended solely to provide reassurance, ethical questions arise that might not be present if the activity were not experimental. Just what makes something an instance of research involving human subjects? The answer to this question is not discoverable. Instead, it is fashioned by people in particular contexts for particular purposes. Today, we would likely consider all the activities reviewed in the first part of this chapter. The HUM-RRO testing, the quote, atomic effects experiment, the flash blindness experiments, the cloud fly-throughs, and the protective clothing and decontamination tests to be cases of research involving human subjects to which the current federal regulations and the current rules of research ethics would apply. Some of these activities are nevertheless more paradigmatically instances of human research than others. Depending on the context, for example, the protective clothing and decontamination tests might be considered within the normal course of duty for military personnel. One of the reasons it is important to be able to distinguish research involving human subjects from other activities is that military policy clearly states that service personnel may not be ordered to be human subjects. In contrast to much else in military service, participation in research is a discretionary activity that service personnel are permitted under military policy and federal regulation to refuse. Thus, in the military as elsewhere, human subjects are supposed to be volunteers for which consent has been obtained. Human subject research is not the only activity in the military, however, for which consent is a requirement. The military also asks for volunteers in setting where the risk is unusually great. For example, the testing of equipment may often be hazardous, may involve the use of volunteers, but may not be considered human research. Thus, in the case of test pilots, there may be significant risk. Volunteers may be called for, but the activity might not be considered research with human subjects and thus would not be thought subject to human use research regulations. Conversely, a requirement of consent necessarily mean that subjects have some measure of control over the risks to which they are to be exposed. Even under today's rules, informed consent in the HUME-RRO tests would be limited to the psychological and physiological testing and not required for participation in the bomb test itself. Whether the activity is research involving human subjects or an unusually risky assignment that is not considered human subject research, how free are military personnel to accept or refuse offers as opposed to orders put to them. Dr. Crawford, when asked to comment in 1994 on consent HUME-RRO research, responded by observing that, quote, military service personnel generally do what they're asked to do, told to do, end quote. He was speaking of an army that included many conscripts. Today's all-volunteer military is doubtless different in many respects that bear on questions of voluntariness. Nevertheless, the culture of the military with its emphasis not only on following orders but on the willingness to take risks in the interests of the nation, surely influences and in some circumstances may restrict how service personnel respond to such offers. Because in the military volunteering is often seen as a matter of duty and the boundaries between experimental and occupational activities may not be clear, the importance of minimizing risk emerges as a central concern. Above all, the activities discussed in this chapter confirm that the ethical requirement that risks to service personnel be minimized should not depend on whether an activity is characterized as an experiment or occupational. In the case of the atomic veterans the risks run were usually no different for those who were subjects of research and those who were not. The military took precautions with great success to preclude exposure to radiation at levels that might produce acute effects. However, bomb test participants were exposed to lesser long-term risks without adequate provision for, one, the creation and maintenance of records that might be needed in retrospect to determine the precise measure of risks to which military personnel were exposed, two, the tracking of those exposed to risk so that follow-up and assurance as needed could be effectively undertaken. It might be argued that at the time there was no awareness of a potential for long-term risk or that the potential was understood to be non-existent. But while the possibility of long-term risk from low exposures was seen as low it was not seen as non-existent. Following the 1946 crossroads tests, officials and experts connected with the DOD, AEC and VA thought action was needed to collect data in secret to evaluate potential disability claims. Since the bomb tests, the Defense Department has come to recognize the importance of providing for an independent risk assessment when service personnel may be exposed to new weapons regardless of whether the exposure is classed as experimental or occupational. However, for the numerous atomic veterans and their family members who spoke to the committee, a continuing source of distress is not simply that the government put service personnel at risk but that having undertaken to do so, the government did not undertake to collect the data and perform the follow-up that might provide them knowledge and comfort in later years. The advisory committee agrees when the nation exposes service men and women to hazardous substances there is an obligation to keep appropriate records of both the exposures and the long-term medical outcomes. From listening to those who appeared before us and from reflection on the laws that are already in effect the committee came to appreciate that there are several reasons record keeping is important. First, those who served and their widows and surviving family members have a great interest in knowing the facts of service-related exposures. We repeatedly heard from veterans and family members whose inquiries into the circumstances and details of exposures has spanned many years. Second, information may provide basis for scientific analysis that may shed light on the relation between exposure to risk and subsequent disability or disease. Third, where disability or disease appears to be a possible result of exposure data are needed to provide the basis for a fair and efficient system of remedies. The experience of the bomb test participants indicates that several different kinds of records or data should be of use. First, of course, there are data about the exposure of individual service personnel in particular potential hazards. In the case of the atomic bomb tests, the potential that radiation would be a hazard was, of course, obvious. In addition, radiation is a phenomenon that is almost uniquely susceptible to measurement. In other settings faced by service personnel, the precise nature of the hazard may not be easily anticipated or even if anticipated readily measurable. Second, there are data concerning the location of service personnel. In the case of the bomb tests, as we have seen, data on the identity and location of all test participants so that their position in relation to the putative hazard can be retrospectively reconstructed if need be, were not available. Even if the hazard cannot be anticipated, such data can be useful in later efforts to reconstruct the nature of the hazard and its effect. Third, the maintenance of complete medical records including linkages where multiple sets of records exist is essential. Records suitable for use in epidemiologic studies of long-term medical consequences of military actions would be valuable for both medical science and service members. But having heard from many atomic vets and their family members, the advisory committee does not believe that, but for the inadequate record keeping and lack of follow-up, there would be no anger or disappointment among atomic veterans and their families. The real offense to many is the belief that the risk was unacceptable and that they or their loved ones may suffer illness unnecessarily as a consequence. Proper attention to record keeping should provide some basis for gaining and assuring the trust of those who are exposed to risk in the future and perhaps scientific results that may be of real value to them. But it is hardly a guarantee against perceptions of abuse or unfairness. If nothing else, our experience makes us appreciate the difference between technical, analytic data and the reality of the human experience. The available data as we have discussed indicate that the average amount of radiation bomb test participants were exposed was low. But those who believe they have suffered as a consequence of these exposures do not believe these risks to have been as slight as the data indicate. When we review this decades later, we rely on numbers. The atomic veterans and their family members who have appeared before the committee associate in a cause and effect way, the exposure with some kind of result that they have personally experienced or witnessed. The emotions and concerns expressed to the committee by these citizens and those downwind from atomic tests and intentional releases were very, very real. Both the public and the scientific community must understand that when data indicate that risks are low, the risks are not necessarily zero and it is possible for a rare event to occur. The risk analysis may only indicate that it is unlikely that such events will occur with significant frequency or probability. End of section 53 Recording by Patrick McAfee Evanston Section 54 of final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kristin Edwards Final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments. Case studies Section 1 Intentional releases lifting the veil of secrecy. In February 1986 officials at the Department of Energy responded to requests from activists by releasing 19,000 pages of documents on the early operations of the world's first plutonium factory at Hanford, Washington. Coming through these documents, reporters and citizens found references to an event cryptically named Green Run in which radioactive material was deliberately released into the air at Hanford in December 1949. In the aftermath of the public discovery of the Green Run, Senator John Glenn asked at the General Accounting Office the investigative arm of Congress to find out if there were other instances in which radioactivity had been intentionally released into the environment without informing the surrounding community. In 1993 the GAO reported 12 more instances of such secret intentional releases. Following additional research by the DOD and DOE the number of secret intentional releases has expanded to several hundred conducted between 1944 and the 1960s. At the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah dozens of intentional releases were conducted in an effort to develop radiological weapons some in tests of prototype cluster bombs others using different means of dispersal. At Bayo Canyon in New Mexico on the AEC's Los Alamos site researchers detonated nearly 250 devices which contained Radiolanthanum R-A-L-A as a source of radiation to measure the degree of compression and symmetry of the implosion to measure the atomic bomb. Other intentional releases were not classified although not all were made known to the public in advance. At AEC sites in Nevada and Idaho radioactive materials were released in tests of the safety of bombs nuclear reactors and proposed nuclear rockets and airplanes. In still other cases small quantities of radioactive material were released in and around AEC facilities and in the Alaskan wilderness to determine the pathways such material follows in the environment. Public witnesses from several of these communities told the committee that they remain deeply disturbed by these releases wondering whether there is still more information about the secret releases in their communities that they do not know and how much will at this late date be impossible to reconstruct. Intentional releases and the Charter 13 the advisory committee is authorized by its Charter to examine quote experiments involving intentional environmental releases of radiation that A were designed to test human health effects of ionizing radiation or B were designed to test the extent of human exposure to ionizing radiation end quote. The Charter also called for the committee to quote provide advice information and recommendations end quote on the following 13 experiments and similar experiments identified by the interagency working group. One the experiment into the atmospheric diffusion of radioactive gases and test of detectability commonly referred to as the green run test by the former atomic energy commission AEC and the air force at the Hanford reservation in Richland Washington. Two two radiation warfare field experiments conducted at the AEC's Oak Ridge office in 1948 involving gamma radiation released from non bomb point sources or at near ground level. Three six tests conducted during 1949 to 1952 of radiation warfare ballistic dispersal devices containing radioactive agents at the U.S. Army's Dugway Utah site and four atmospheric radiation tracking tests in 1950 at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Tests of nuclear weapons intentional environmental releases of radiation in amounts greatly in excess of any of the releases identified above were not included in the Charter. As discussed in chapter 10 the committee did seek to investigate human-subject research conducted in connection with these tests. This chapter reports on what we found as we sought to retrieve what we could about the releases identified in our Charter, determine the nature and number of further intentional releases, identify the ethical standards by which these activities can be evaluated and determine what lessons can be learned from the past. Part two of the secrecy surrounding these releases as opposed to atmospheric nuclear weapons tests which were impossible to hide, many of them took place with no public awareness or understanding. The intentional releases were conducted primarily at sites such as Hanford, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge in which defense and atomic energy facilities were located but they were largely unknown to those who lived in surrounding areas. There is no evidence in any of these cases that radioactive material was released for the purpose of studying its effects on human communities. As we discuss later in the chapter, the public often was exposed to far greater risk from the routine course of operations of the facilities than from the intentional releases themselves. That the possible health effects from the green run and other intentional releases are so slight that they cannot be distinguished from other sources of disease is a small comfort to downwinders who were put at risk without their knowledge. The committee heard from many of them and learned that the longer term costs of secrecy extend well beyond any physical injury that may have been incurred. These costs include first, the anxiety and sense of personal violation experienced by those who have discovered that they have intentionally and secretly been put at risk, however small by a government they trusted but they also include the consequences for that government and its people of the attendant distrust of government that has been created. And finally they also now include the citizen and taxpayer resources that must be expanded in efforts to reconstruct long-barried experiences and determine as best as can currently be done the precise measures of the risks involved. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first and lengthier section reconstructs the history of the three kinds of releases that were in our charter. The green run, radiological warfare tests and the RALA tests and includes a discussion of some types of intentional releases that were not expressly identified in the charter. This section concludes with a review of what is known today about the likely risks of all the releases we consider as well as a review of the chance of dose reconstruction by which this knowledge is obtained. In the second part of the chapter we focus on the ethical and policy issues raised by intentional releases. We examine the rules that currently govern intentional releases in an effort to learn whether secret environmental releases like the green run could take place today and if so whether in light of lessons learned from the past current procedures and protections that are adequate. What we know, the green run. While the other intentional releases addressed in the committee's charter were part of the effort to develop the US nuclear arsenal, the green run was conducted to develop intelligence techniques to understand the threat posed by the Soviet Union. In 1947 General Dwight D. Eisenhower assigned the Air Force the mission of long range detection of nuclear tests. Based on observations from Operation Fitzwilliam, the intelligence component of the 1948 Sandstone Nuclear Test series, the Air Force determined aerial sampling of radioactive debris to be the best method of detecting atomic releases. An interim aerial sampling network was in place in early September 1949 that detected radioactive debris from the first Soviet nuclear test. Around the same time Jack Healy of Hanford's Health Instrument, HI, divisions, noticed anomalous radioactivity readings from an air filter on nearby Rattlesnake Mountain. The HI divisions were responsible for radiological safety and Healy had set up this filter to test how radioactive contamination varied with altitude. The rapid decay of his radioactive samples led Healy to conclude from a recent nuclear test. Soon after news of Healy's observation reached Washington DC, Air Force specialists arrived and took Healy's samples and data for analysis. It is not clear whether Healy's observation came in time to support President Harry Truman's announcement on September 23 that the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb, but it did confirm that radioactivity from a nuclear test could be detected on the other side of the globe. Now that the Soviet Union knew how to make atomic weapons, the United States needed to know how many weapons and how much of the critical raw material plutonium the Soviets possessed. Like nuclear testing, plutonium production released radioactive gases that sensitive instruments could detect, though not at such great distances. To identify Soviet production facilities and estimate their rate of plutonium production, the Air Force now needed to test ways to monitor these gases. Hanford, the world's first plutonium factory. In 1942, General Leslie Grove selected the Hanford site overlooking the Columbia River in southeast Washington state for the Manhattan Project's plutonium factory. The river would provide a large, reliable supply of fresh water to plutonium production reactors, and Hanford's relative isolation from major population centers would make it easier to construct and operate the facility without attracting unwanted attention. The nearby towns of Richland, Kenwick, and Pasco soon became boom towns whose economies depended on Hanford. At Hanford, neutrons converted uranium 238 in the production reactor's nuclear fuel into plutonium 239. Chemical separation plants then separated this plutonium from the fission products and residual uranium in the irradiated fuel elements. The first separation plants, the TNP plants, used acid to dissolve these fuel elements, but this was superseded by the more efficient redox and purex processes in the 1950s. Part 2 In late 1948 and early 1949, Air Force and Oak Ridge personnel conducted a series of 20 air sampling flights at Oak Ridge and three at Hanford. The results were disappointing. Instruments detected airborne releases of radioactive material at ranges of up to 15 miles in the hills and valleys near Oak Ridge, but no farther than 2 miles from Hanford because of measures taken to reduce radioactive emissions there. At an October 25, 1949 meeting at Hanford, representatives of the Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission and General Electric, the post-war contractor for the Hanford site, agreed to a plan to release enough radioactive material from Hanford to provide a larger radioactive source for intelligence-related experiments. This intentional release took place in the early morning of December 3, 1949, but information about it remained classified until 1986. Two periodic reports of the H.I. divisions described a plutonium production run using quote, green fuel elements. The story of this green run has emerged piecemeal since then. The most complete account comes in a 1950 report co-authored by Jack Healy, who has the green run report, which was declassified in stages in response to requests from the public under the Freedom of Information Act and inquiries by the advisory committee. Although cooling times of 90 to 100 days were common by 1949, the fuel elements used in the green run were dissolved after being cooled for only 16 days. This short cooling time meant that much more radioactive iodine-131 and xenon-133 were released directly into the atmosphere, rather than decaying while the fuel elements cooled. Furthermore, pollution control devices called scrubbers normally used to remove an estimated 90% of the radio iodine from the effluent gas were not operated. When these green fuel elements were processed, roughly 8,000 curies of iodine-131 flowed from the tall smokestack at Hanford's tea plant. This stack was built in the early years of Hanford's operation, when large quantities of radioactive gases were routinely released in the rush to produce plutonium. Although the green run represents roughly 1% of the total radio iodine release from Hanford during the peak release years of 1945 to 1947, it was almost certainly larger than any other one-day release even during World War II. One clear purpose of the green run was to test a variety of techniques for monitoring environmental contamination caused by an operating plutonium production plant. A small army of workers, including many from Hanford's HI divisions took readings of radioactivity on vegetation in animals and in water and tested techniques for sampling radioactive iodine and xenon in the air. They tested an airplane carrying a variety of monitoring devices the same aircraft used in earlier aerial surveys at Oak Ridge and Hanford and set up a special air sampling station in Spokane, Washington. Those operating the equipment encountered numerous technical problems including a lost weather balloon and failed air pumps. The greatest problem, however, was the general contamination of monitoring and laboratory equipment. The system created a high background signal that made it difficult to distinguish radioactivity on the equipment from radioactivity in the environment. The main cause of this contamination was the weather at the time which led to much higher ground contamination near the stack than expected. The plans for the green run included very specific meteorological requirements. These requirements were designed to facilitate monitoring of the radioactive plume by aircraft but they were similar to the normal operational requirements which were designed to limit local contamination. A temperature inversion to keep the effluence aloft but at a low altitude. No rain, fog or low clouds to impede aircraft operations. Light to moderate wind speeds less than 15 miles an hour. Wind from the west or southwest so the plane would not have to fly over rough terrain and strong dilution of the plume before any possible contact with the ground. Jack Healy reports that he made the decision to go ahead with the green run on the evening of December 2nd, 1949 even though the weather did not turn out as expected. Some have suggested that the Air Force pressed to go ahead with the release in spite of marginal weather conditions but Healy recalls no such pressure. The plume from the release stagnated in the local area for several days before a storm front dispersed it toward the north northeast. As a consequence, local deposition of radioactive contaminants was much higher than anticipated. The green run report concludes under the worst possible meteorological conditions for such a test the airborne instruments detected the radioactive gases at a distance better than 100 miles from the stack. Under favorable conditions it was estimated that with the same concentrations this distance could have been increased by up to a factor of 10. Despite the contamination of equipment the monitoring provided a record of the extensive short term environmental contamination that resulted from the green run. Measurements of radioactivity on vegetation produce readings that, while temporary, were as much as 400 times the then permissible permanent concentration thought to cause injury to livestock. The current level at which Washington state officials intervene to prevent possible injury to people through the food supply is not much higher than the then permissible permanent concentration. Animal thyroid specimens showed contamination levels up to about 80 times the maximal permissible limit of permanently maintained radio iodine concentration. In spite of this contamination the public health effects of the green run discussed later in this chapter were quite limited. However in 1949 at the time the green run was conducted the most important environmental pathways for human exposure to radio iodine were unknown. Understanding developed shortly thereafter that environmental radio iodine enters the human body from eating meat and drinking milk from animals that grazed on contaminated pastures. Thus the effects of exposure through these pathways could not have been planned for and it is fortunate that the risks were not higher. The control of risks to the public from plutonium production at Hanford. From the first years of Hanford's operation its health physicists were aware of the problems of contamination of the site by radioactive wastes and it quickly became clear that radio iodine posed the greatest immediate hazard. Most fission products would remain in the dissolved fuel but iodine gas would bubble out of the solution up through Hanford's tall stacks into the atmosphere and down into the surrounding countryside. Other radioactive wastes could be stored and dealt with later and other radioactive gases were chemically inert and would quickly dissipate. Over the years Hanford health physicists adopted three main approaches to the iodine problem. Choosing meteorological conditions for releases that would prevent air with high iodine concentrations from contaminating the ground near Hanford. Letting the irradiated fuel elements cool for extended periods before separating the plutonium so that most of the iodine 131 which has an 8 day half life could decay and beginning in 1948 using scrubbers or filters to remove the exhaust emissions. During World War II producing plutonium for bombs was an urgent priority and knowledge of both the environmental hazards from iodine and the ways to prevent it were limited. Over the period 1944 to 1947 Hanford released nearly 685 thousand curies of radio iodine into the atmosphere about 80 times what was released in the green run. After the war an improving understanding of how iodine could contaminate the food supply evolving techniques to remove iodine from the plant's emissions and policy decisions to limit the risks to the nearby population led to a marked reduction in iodine emissions. When the AEC began operation in 1947 it promptly moved to review safety practices at Hanford and other operating facilities which had operated largely autonomously until then. The advisory panel established for this purpose concluded that the degree of risk justified in wartime is no longer appropriate. To address the radio iodine problem at Hanford and related problems the AEC established a stack gas working group which met for the first time in mid-1948 to study air pollution from AEC production facilities. The chair of this group noted that the AEC desires the removal from gaseous effluence of all radioactive material insofar as is humanly and economically feasible and that because of uncertainties in risk estimates no limit short of zero should be considered satisfactory for the present. By 1949 daily emissions of radio iodine by a factor of 1,000 from their wartime highs. The Green Run clearly did not conform to the practices designed to ensure public safety at Hanford in 1949 or even during the rush to produce plutonium for the first atomic bombs. In his monthly report for December 1949 Herbert Parker Hanford's manager concluded that the Green Run had posed a negligible risk to personnel but the resultant activity came close enough to significant levels and its distribution differed enough from simple meteorological predictions that the H.I. divisions would resist a proposed repetition of the tests. This suggests that Parker at least consider the risks of such releases potentially excessive even for a one-time event particularly given the degree of uncertainty. Parker's recognition of the uncertainties surrounding environmental risks from Hanford's radio iodine emissions was appropriate. At the time it was not known that drinking milk from cows that graze on contaminated pastures is the main source of exposure especially for children. Jack Healy recently suggested that if Parker had known of the milk pathway he would have objected strongly to the Green Run. The question remains as to the consideration that was given by the Green Run's planners to the possibility that they might not fully understand the risks that might be imposed on nearby communities. End of Section 54 Section 55 of final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Kristen Edwards. Final report of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments case studies Chapter 11, Part 2. Benefits of the Green Run The advisory committee attempted to assess of the national security benefits that were expected and actually resulted from the Green Run. A planning memorandum before the Green Run notes, the possibility of the detection of stack affluence is of great importance to the intelligence requirements of the country. How important the detection of stack affluence was to the security of the nation in 1949 is not something the advisory committee was in a position to judge. We did attempt to ascertain however the purpose of the Green Run and the extent to which this purpose was served. The Green Run report focuses primarily on ground based monitoring of radioactive contamination in the environment which provided a test for techniques that could be used on the ground in the Soviet Union. The report also describes efforts to track the radioactive plume by aircraft but their significance is unclear. Aerial monitoring turned out to be the most effective method for detecting atmospheric nuclear tests and perhaps it was expected to be equally effective for monitoring plutonium production. Plutonium production releases relatively little radioactivity into the atmosphere however too little to detect outside Soviet airspace and flying inside Soviet airspace would have been risky. Alternatively, aerial radiation tracking may have been designed to test techniques for use in monitoring nuclear weapons tests. Finally, the Green Run report compares the pattern of the Green Run's dispersion with theoretical models but this appears to be an attempt to estimate the pattern of contamination rather than to test the already well established theory regarding atmospheric diffusion of gases developed in the 1930s. It is difficult to ascertain how useful the Green Run actually was. The classified histories of the Air Force's atomic intelligence activities contain no references to the Green Run. These histories jump from events that directly preceded the Green Run the Oak Ridge and Hanford Aerial Monitoring tests to later ones without any mention of the Green Run. Perhaps most telling a 1952 AEC report entitled Technical Methods in Atomic Energy Intelligence does mention the Green Run in the text but only in a list of occasions on which a particular type of instrument was used. In describing ways of detecting plutonium production facilities the report relies on routine reports of environmental surveys from Hanford's routine operations. The advisory committee accepts that there may be conditions under which national security can justify secrecy in intentional releases like the Green Run even as we recognize that secrecy can increase the risk to the exposed population. In discussing this question it is important to explain that when we use the term secret we can be referring to secrecy regarding the very fact that a risk has been posed secrecy regarding the purpose behind the risk or secrecy regarding the means for example the science of technology by which the risk was imposed. These distinctions are important because even if we agree that the undertaking of an activity is required for national security reasons it does not follow that secrecy should govern all aspects of the activity. Thus as an obvious example atomic bomb tests were quintessential national security activities information on the design of the bomb was secret as was information on many of the specific purposes of the tests. However in many but not all cases the public was given notice that a hazardous activity was being undertaken. Similarly in the cases of other environmental releases it may be that national security requires secrecy for some aspects of the release but does not necessarily preclude public disclosure sufficient to give basic notification of the existence of potential risk. The committee is not equipped to say whether this was so in the case of the Green Run. However in the case of radiological warfare as we will discuss later there was contemporary argument that some public disclosure was not inconsistent with national security. If a release is conducted publicly affected communities have an opportunity to comment and perhaps influence the conduct of the release in ways that serve their interests. Downwinders can be warned giving them options of staying indoors with their windows closed wearing protective clothing altering their eating habits or evacuating the area. If the release is conducted in secret foreign adversaries are less likely to be alerted but downwinders will be deprived of their options. Of course evacuation may not be warranted and other precautions may not be needed or they may be of limited value but as we have learned during the course of our work secrecy even where initially merited has its long-term price. At Hanford as we have noted the Green Run represented only a fraction of the risks including non-radiation as well as radiation hazard to which local communities may have been exposed in secret. The delayed legacy of these risks in uncertainty and distrust as witnesses from the Hanford community told the committee is only becoming apparent as the secret history of early Hanford operations has been made public. During World War II officials at Dupont the contractor for Hanford at that time proposed a practice evacuation to prepare for a possible emergency. General Groves turned them down saying that any practice evacuation of the Hanford camp would cause a complete breakdown in the security of the project as noted in the introduction at the onset of the Manhattan project concerned for the effects of Hanford operations on the surrounding environment including the salmon in the Columbia river led to a secret program of research on the environmental effects of Hanford's operations. Secrecy remained the rule at Hanford after the war. In 1946 as recalled years later by an early biologist at Hanford who wrote to radiation researcher Newell Stannard Hanford researchers resorted to deception simply to collect information about possible iodine contamination in livestock by having employees pretend to be agricultural inspectors while surrepetitiously monitoring iodine levels in animal thyroids. The biologist wrote though the environmental study group at Hanford had been sampling air, soil, water and vegetation in a wide area surrounding the Hanford site for several years previous to 1946 it was agreed that sampling from farm animals for uptake of fission product plant wastes would be a much more sensitive problem. At the time the revelation of a regional I-131 problem would have had a tremendous public relations impact and furthermore the presence of other radionuclides was of possible national defense significance. He explained that he was called at home and told to report to work at the director's office in downtown Richland. There I was introduced to two security agents of the Manhattan Engineer District who were to be my escorts and contact men during the day. They proved to be the best straight faced liars I had ever known. I was no longer Carl Heard of Dupont but through the day would be known as Dr. George Heard of the Department of Agriculture. I was to simulate an animal husbandry specialist who had the responsibility of testing a new portable instrument based on an unproven theory that by external readings on the surface of the farm the health and vigor of animals could be evaluated. I was advised not to be alarmed if at times during the conversations with farmers that they appeared critical or skeptical. I was to be very reserved and answer questions as briefly and vaguely as seemed acceptable. They agreed to carry a clipboard. I was to concentrate on the high readings thyroids of course and furnish those for recording when not being observed. That day we visited several diversified farms under irrigation from the Yakima River between Toppinshish and Benton City. Stock and flattery enabled us to gain 100% cooperation. I was successful in placing the probe of the instrument over the thyroid at times when the owner's attention was focused on the next animal or some concocted distraction. In 1948 the AEC prepared a public relations pamphlet entitled Handling Radioactive Wastes in the Atomic Energy Program. The Department of Defense objected to the description of Hanford's operations arguing that any description of the methods used to reduce contamination might be used by the Soviet Union to avoid detection of its plants. The AEC decided at its October 7, 1949 meeting to release the pamphlet which contained no specific numbers in order to dispel and allay possible latent hysteria. With a major expansion of Hanford's operations underway in 1954 questions arose over whether to publish information about contamination of the Columbia River. Parker warned that it might be necessary to close portions of the river to public fishing but he and others noted that this could have a substantial public relations impact. At the same time there was concern that information on river contamination could make it possible to ascertain Hanford's plutonium output. For this combination of public relations and security reasons Hanford did not release any quantitative information or public warning on contamination of fish in the Columbia River until many years later. It is difficult to argue with the need for secrecy about the purposes of the Green Run. Making information on US atomic intelligence methods openly available could have led the Soviet Union to develop countermeasures to these methods. The issue remains important today in responding to the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities around the world. But the results of the long delay in informing the public about the activities of which the Green Run was only a part are now evident in public anger and distrust toward the government. At the advisory committee's public meeting in Spokane on November 21st 1994 Lynn Stembridge, executive director of the Hanford Education Action League argued that information regarding that radiation release was kept secret for almost 40 years. There was no warning. There was no informed consent. Citizens downwind were never advised of measures that could have been taken to safeguard the health of themselves or their children. Although the Green Run was not as direct as handling a patient placed with radioactivity or giving someone an injection, the Green Run was every bit as intentional, every bit as experimental, every bit as unethical and immoral as the medical experiments which have made headlines over the last year. Among the most damaging dimensions of the legacy of distrust created by the secrecy that surrounded the routine and intentional releases at Hanford is the government's loss of responsibility as a source of information about risk. Now, when the government is attempting to find out what damage these releases actually did and share that information with the people affected, these people question why they should believe what the government says. Federally funded scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington are now studying those exposed as children to all of Hanford's iodine emissions, many routine emissions, as well as the Green Run to see whether any health effects are detectable. Whatever this study concludes, many residents are convinced that they have already seen the effects. Tom Bailey, who grew up and still lives on a farm near Hanford spoke to the advisory committee's meeting and spoke hand in November 1994. He pointed on a large map to what he called a death mile where 100% of those families that drank the water, drank the milk, ate the food, have one common denominator that binds us together and that is thyroid problems, handicapped children or cancer. It is doubtful that the results of any study supported with federal funds, no matter how impeccably conducted, would be believable to people like Mr. Bailey. Assuming that the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center study is so conducted and assuming the study finds that at least some outcomes of concern to the community are not attributable to the Hanford emissions, government secrecy will have deprived Mr. Bailey and people like him of an important source of reassurance and peace of mind. The Green Run and the far greater number of environmental releases resulting from Hanford's routine operations raises challenging questions about the balance between openness and secrecy in settings where citizens may be exposed to environmental hazards. Citizens may reasonably ask whether releases have been determined to be necessary in light of alternatives, whether actions may have been taken to minimize risk and provide for any harm that may occur, whether disclosure will be made at the earliest possible date and whether records will be created and preserved so that citizens can account for any health and safety consequences at the time of disclosure. As we will see, these questions were posed with regard to other environmental releases and they remain with us today. Radiological Warfare The first proposed military application of atomic energy was not nuclear weaponry but radiological warfare, RW, the use of radioactive materials to cause radiological injury. A May 1941 report by the National Academy of Sciences listed the first option as the production of violently radioactive materials carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory. It was not until later that year that a calculation by British physicists demonstrated the feasibility of nuclear weapons and attention quickly turned to their development. Military interest in both offensive and defensive aspects of radiological warfare continued throughout World War II. In the spring of 1943 when it was still unclear whether the atomic bomb could be built in time, radiological weapons became a possible fallback. Manhattan Project Scientific Director J. Robert Oppenheimer discussed with physicist Enrico Fermi the possibility of using fission products particularly strontium to poison the German food supply. Oppenheimer later wrote to Fermi that he thought it impractical unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men. This proposal for offensive use of radiological weapons appears to have been dropped because of its impracticality. At the same time military officials developed contingency plans for responding to the possible use of radiological weapons by Germany against invading Allied troops. The peacetime experience of Operation Crossroads in 1946 particularly the contamination of the Navy Flotilla from the underwater nuclear test shot labeled Baker revived interest in radiological warfare. Some, including Berkeley's Dr. Joseph Hamilton concluded that radiological poisons could be used as strategic weapons against cities and their food supplies. Once absorbed into the body radioactive materials would cause slow progressive injuries. Others proposed that RW could be a more humane form of warfare. Using radioactive material to contaminate the ground would render it temporarily uninhabitable but it would not be necessary to kill or injure people. Although many discussions of radiological warfare took place in classified military circles the basic notion of radiological warfare was not secret and was a subject of public speculation. But the government's program in radiological warfare remained largely secret except in its broadest outlines. The post-war interest in radiological warfare spawned competing programs on radiological warfare both in the AEC and in various parts of the Department of Defense. To meld these into a coherent program the AEC and DOD established a joint study panel in May 1948 chaired by the chemist W.A. Noyce from the University of Rochester and including civilian experts and DOD and AEC officials. At its first meeting that month the Noyce panel recommended work in three areas. One, biological research on the effects of radiation and radioactive materials to be carried out mainly at the Army chemical cores toxicity laboratory located at the University of Chicago. Two, studies on the production of radioactive materials for use in radiological warfare carried out mainly by the AEC and three, military studies of possible RW munitions also carried out mainly by the chemical core. The latter program was the focus of the advisory committee's attention because it involved the intentional release of radioactive materials during several dozen tests of prototype radiological weapons at the chemical core's Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah desert. The offensive radiological warfare program field testing program coincided with the Korean war years. The Noyce panel issued its final report after its sixth meeting in November 1950 and was revived briefly in 1952 to assess the status of the RW research program. The first two field tests were conducted at Oak Ridge. These involved sealed sources of radioactive material that were placed in a field in order to measure the resulting radiation levels. These measurements may have helped predict the effectiveness of radiological weapons. The sources were then returned to the laboratory and left no residual contamination in the environment. Most of the radiological warfare tests were carried out by the chemical core at the Dugway Proving Ground using radioactive tantallium produced at Oak Ridge. From 1949 to 1952 the chemical core conducted 65 field tests at Dugway intentionally releasing into the ground roughly 13,000 curies of tantallium in the form of dust, small particles and pellets. These were prototype tests releasing much smaller quantities of radioactive material than the millions of curies per square mile that an operational radiological weapon would need to render territory temporarily uninhabitable. Furthermore the field test programs used tantallium primarily because it could be produced at existing facilities. An operational radiological warfare program required materials that could be produced in greater quantities than tantallium but this would have meant constructing special production facilities. In May 1949 the chemical core established a panel of outside experts to provide advice on the safety of its field testing program. Chared by Dr. Joseph Hamilton a strong advocate of the RW Research Program the panel was chartered to consider radiological hazards to the civilian population including hazards to the water supply food, crops, animal population etc. Occupational safety was left to the chemical core. Under Hamilton's leadership this panel raised a number of safety concerns but in the end appears to have been satisfied with the safety of the test program. Several months before the first panel meeting Hamilton himself had objected to the use of the relatively long-lived isotope tantallium 182 Half Life 117 days a radiological warfare agent in these field tests. He proposed using Gold 198 instead Half Life 2.7 days to eliminate any lingering radiation hazard to the general population. At its first meeting on August 2nd 1949 the RW test safety panel provisionally accepted the proposed testing program of the chemical core subject to a radiological safety review of the results of the first two tests. Hamilton's potential opposition clearly was of consequence and his agreement to proceed was caused for relief. Other members of the test safety panel including Carl Morgan head of health physics at Oak Ridge raised concerns about the possible hazard posed by radioactive dust at an arid site like Dugway both on and off site. Morgan proposed the use of airborne monitoring equipment developed at Oak Ridge in tests that preceded the green run. The use of such aircraft and other monitoring equipment evolved and expanded as the Dugway field tests continued over the next few years. Panel members approved the continuation of the program based in part on the results of these radiological surveys which showed the contamination of the area was limited in size. In 1952 the chemical core proposed a significant expansion of the radiological warfare program with a large test of 100,000 curies planned for 1953 and still larger tests proposed for later. The test safety panel once again raised concerns over the radioactive dust hazard. Hamilton noted that there were several hot spots areas of unusually high radiation at Dugway and that trucks at one of the target areas were kicking up significant quantities of radioactive dust. A chemical core study in early 1953 concluded that the hazard was relatively slight. Hamilton favored going ahead with the 1953 tests and was greatly disappointed when they were canceled and with them the entire radiological warfare test program. The reasons for this cancellation are not entirely clear but two factors are evident. The next phase of the program would have required the construction of expensive new production facilities which collided with military budget cuts at the end of the Korean war. Furthermore by 1953 only the chemical core maintained a strong interest in the radiological warfare program making it vulnerable to questions about whether it satisfied any unique military need. The radiological warfare program did not end completely but its focus narrowed to defensive measures including shielding and decontamination with atmospheric nuclear tests providing the main opportunity for study. The radiological warfare test safety panel was an early example of the use of an expert panel to evaluate possible risks of planned government activities. Ideally such a panel should not be chaired by a proponent of the program in question although those with such knowledge of and interest in the program are of obvious value to a safety effort. Hamilton's evident enthusiasm for radiological warfare research raises questions about his impartiality as head of the panel but the panel as a whole appears to have dealt with serious public health issues in a responsible manner. End of section 55