Excerpt from 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age'- "Manhattan Project and Army staff, although they were in even greater danger from Trinity's intense radiation at close range, apparently largely escaped harmful exposures. How? They were instructed by their superiors to... follow 'protective measures' such as closing windows, staying indoors, and even breathing through a slice of bread!" more

• News/home
• About▼
• Opeds
• Reactor issues▼
• Subcritical tests▼
• 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age'

After the conclusion of World War II through the 'end' of the Cold War in 1992, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successor agencies* conducted over 1,100 nuclear tests - underground, aboveground, under-sea, and in high altitude - at locations spanning the Western Hemisphere.  Most of these tests occurred at the Nevada Test Site, a Rhode-Island sized piece of land north of Las Vegas that was withdrawn from public use specifically for weapons-testing.   Nevada tests were categorized by 'series' (i.e, 'Plumbob series') and each shot had its own moniker (i.e., Shot Smoky of the Plumbob series).   

As is factually-true, but not well-known by the public, U.S. nuclear testing in Nevada (as with Pacific testing) sent radioactive fallout across the nation and was deposited on just about everything in its path.  A federal health study completed in 1997 stated that every county in the continental U.S. received fallout from Nevada.  A follow-up study in 2002 added that any person living in those counties since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout and their organs and tissues have received some radiation exposure.

To give you an idea of the spottiness of 1950s monitoring, compare the above map to the fallout cloud trajectories of Shot Smoky.    

The first extensive monitoring program for fallout deposited 'offsite' - meaning outside the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site -  began after the conclusion of the first Nevada test series dubbed 'Ranger' when AEC officials first 'discovered' testing-debris at substantial distances off-site.  The AEC initially developed various crude devices for radiation monitoring sampling.  These devices were deployed into a nationwide network to collect fallout, measure radiation activity and ascertain movements of radioactive clouds from Nevada.   

The devices used to collect both dry- and wet-atmospheric fallout evolved from trays of water to gummed paper and eventually to an acetate-backed rubber-base cement gummed-film also called 'sticky paper'.  Scientists quickly learned that gummed-film was superior to its predecessors-methods and was the only relied-upon technique from 1953.   

By the mid- to late-1950s, however, it was found that gummed-film was inadequate because it failed to retain fallout that came down via precipitation and also failed to adequately quantify levels of strontium.  Strontium is a radio-chemical that scientists by the late 1950s were learning was a testing-related public health danger.  Despite these concerns, the gummed-film technique was exclusively used through 1960.  

The gummed film problem

Gummed film comprised of an acetate-based film (similar in concept to fly-paper) on a 1-square foot sheet of plastic mounted on a stand to catch fallout as it descended.   The film was heated to 500-550 degrees Celsius and the ash was passed through a beta-radiation detector.  No other specifics were recorded via this or other methods, i.e. specific radio-isotopes in the fallout, only total beta-activity was recorded.  Because the gummed-film had to be mailed off to labs for ashing and measuring, the radiation reading was conducted at a delay of about 3-weeks post-exposure. As such, some short-lived radio-isotopes were 'lost' during this wait time and were not reflected in the beta-counting.  Also, some volatile radionuclides were lost during the ashing process.

The network of radiological monitoring - comprising stations from the network of AEC's Health and Science Laboratory (HASL, later named the Environmental Measurements Laboratory, or EML) - increased in scope markedly towards the end of the 1950s.  The network grew from 10 stations (water tray collectors) in 1951 to 93 stations (gummed-paper collectors) in 1952 to about 100 stations (gummed-film collectors) to the end of the decade.  However, researchers in the past several decades have found only about 25% of the original data recorded during 1957 and 1958, the two most prolific years of Nevada nuclear testing.  The HASL network was complemented by stations of the Public Health Service (PHS) - however much PHS data has been lost or is still classified.

Below is a table of HASL monitoring network data for most of the 100 above-ground nuclear tests in the 1950s.  The table is arranged by chronological weapons test series at the Nevada Test Site for the years 1951 to 1958.  (In 1958 the U.S. entered into an unilateral testing moratorium.  In 1961, aboveground testing at the NTS resumed and ended upon the 1962 test ban treaty.)  The table is adapted from an original that appeared in the study 'Estimates of Fallout in the Continental U.S. from Nevada Weapons Testing Based on Gummed-Film Monitoring Data' (Health Physics Vo. 59, No. 5 pp. 565-576, 1990).  

There are several 1950s NTS test series omitted from the above table including 4 tests of Project 56 (1955), 1 test of Project 57 (1957), 2 tests of Project 58 (1957), and 2 tests of Project 58A.

^a Number of HASL stations available during tests series for which some data are available (except Ranger)

 ^b Ten sites were added for last two shots

^c The study's authors could not find gummed-film data for one-half (48.6%) of all tests 

^d Although about 100 HASL stations were proposed for the Plumbob series, the study's authors learned that data from only half of those stations were reported

Data from the gummed-film network in the 1950s has been over-relied on in various dose reconstruction studies for the simple reason that it is the only set of extensive (nationwide) monitoring data available.   However, gummed-film was very inefficient at measuring fallout especially when fallout came down in rain or snow.  Also, humidity, washoff by rain, size and solubility of dust particles, wind direction (movement of dust) and other factors (such as beta-counter calibration errors and the fact that some HASL data wasn't found or not labeled or mislabeled by nuclear test) has confounded the reliability of gummed film data.  (Read more in box below)

For decades, scientists have been scratching their heads concerning the data's degree of certainty.  And during that time, their assessment of gummed-film's ability to estimate the actual deposition on the ground or 'collection efficiency' (attributed to numerous inefficiencies with the gummed film method) has dropped from initial estimates of around 60% to about 20%.  The collection efficiency for individual radio-isotopes is even believed to be as low as 10% (for strontium isotopes), and less than 10% during some types of precipitation.

When it came time to complete a nationwide dose reconstruction study for Nevada testing fallout - the National Cancer Institute's Iodine-131 study (see footnote 42 here)- scientists and statisticians believed they could determine the inefficiencies and 'purify' the gummed-film data by calculating them out.  (The NCI study was titled 'Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 in Fallout Following Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Tests,' has for years been poorly maintained in its online form: many links, including the original URLs to the report and those links from other agency websites, as well as certain portions and appendixes of the NCI online report, are now dead links. Also, the entire data set, of annexes and sub-annexes, is completely missing.)   An interim report of the Working Group for Thyroid/Iodine-131 Assessments, documenting the NCI's progress on its I-131 study, stated that 'Careful reanalysis of the monitoring data together with sophisticated use of statistical techniques allowed interpolation of fallout levels between sites of the monitoring locations so that estimates of fallout deposition in each county of the contiguous United States could be made for all the tests that contributed such fallout.'   NCI scientists relied extensively on the gummed-film data and, with the aid of meteorological and nuclear test data (and exposure-rate measurements in the vicinity of the Nevada Test Site), extrapolated the deposition density for each of about 3,000 U.S. counties*.   Yet the data-set of gummed-film beta-counts originated from less than 100 data points (40 to 95 locations)!  How much certainty can there be in this 'meteorologically-enhanced' HASL data which was the basis for the NCI's I-131 study that gave us most of the fallout maps seen printed in books, articles and in websites and also dose estimates and projections of cancer rates that have steered judicial decisions, compensation legislation and 'common downwinder knowledge'?

* In 1993, for example, there were 3,071 counties in the continental U.S.  

Conclusions

Scientists of all affiliations - especially the NCI and CDC - have only meekly insisted on the fact that fallout-data could have been reconstructed another way, a method that could be utilized today (as it was available for the past 50 years).  But the federal health agencies have never wanted and probably don't want to do it - a nationwide core-sampling soil study.   Soils nearly everywhere in the continental U.S. have detectable levels of fallout radionuclides.  Since each weapons test had a characteristic signature of different radio-isotopes, scientists can perform tests (mass spectrometry) on thousands or millions of samples and deduce (using ratio comparisons) how much fell where, in what specific concentrations and from which tests.   Until that happens, we only have the guesswork of federal and independent scientists to shed light on where the hundreds of millions of Curies of Iodine-131 and hundreds of other radioisotopes from the Nevada Test Site fell, contaminated foods and poisoned people.   

To sum up:  The AEC's early monitoring network was never meant to ascertain the threat of fallout to the public.  It was designed for the needs of the AEC to determine where, and 'roughly' how much, fallout was being deposited.   The network was sparse and spotty, and the sampling technique was grossly inadequate for collecting usable, reliable data.  How do we know what areas of the U.S. truly got hard hit?  How do we know if cancer clusters are linked to fallout hot-spots?  We may never until we truly 'dig' deep and explore.

What the NCI is doing: In the NCI Report Appendix D titled 'Document Preservation and Retrieval: Current and Potential Future Activities,' it states that the 'NCI is working with EML to have the printed gummed film records entered into spreadsheets.'  

Appendix D also states 'There is a fundamental need for DHHS to continue the past efforts of itself and other agencies to ensure the preservation and continuing availability of data necessary for future fallout research.'  Some specific actions include ' Find PHS gummed film and milk data,' 'Catalog the reports at the EML and establish a reading room or library for them' and 'Assemble a list of Congressional hearings relevant to fallout and ensure that a complete collection is preserved somewhere.'  

Read our letter calling for improved present-day monitoring around the Nevada Test Site, now called the Nevada National Security Site.

* Successors to the AEC were the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Department of Energy

   

 About Us | Contact | Donate | Prefixes & equivalents, radiation conversions | One-stop atomic elements references | Japan Finds Radioactivity in More Foods From California: The California Radiation Report  | Map of eastern U.S. reactors | link to us

Popular pages: Updates (Fukushima and Pacific coast n' catch) | Subcritical nuclear test news | Downwinder Day | Trinity nuclear test | Contaminated wallboard/phosphogypsum | Caged human experiments at nuclear test sites

Important pages: Gummed film & fallout maps | Scientists misled Americans about 'hot' halibut | Fukushima formed a 'hotspot' in California | EPA is not exactly 'monitoring' our milk for radiation | Montana cows died from radiation? | FDA is barely testing our food for radiation | spent fuel fires could harm us all | a NUCLEAR REACTOR from SPACE could land on your house | solar storm dangers | plutonium dust is a problem north of Vegas | Chernobyl contamination was 95% from Chernobyl; 5% Was From a U.S. Secret Radiation Release | Nuclear Reactor Operators Don't Really Monitor Their Pollution - They Guess

Believe it or not: U.S. Government Gave Secret Fallout Maps to Kodak, But Never to Americans | Unexploded Nuclear Bombs North of Las Vegas Could Still Detonate or Reach Criticality| Your Cremated Remains Would be 180 Times the Limit Allowable by the EPA for Beta Radiation in Drinking Water | Quaker Oats and Boston universities gave radioactive cereal to unwitting special needs children