Are you a denier of Fukushima radiation in your seafood?

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National Cancer Institute's management of radiation studies : hearing before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Fifth Congress, second session, September 16, 1998

Excerpts of Testimony of Dr. F. Owen Hoffman

"I am here today to testify about the health impact on the American people from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site and about the significance of the results presented by the National Cancer Institute in its report on this subject that was published in October of 1997."

"One of the major findings of the NCI report was the large extent of fallout that occurred in the mid-west and eastern USA."

"Radioactive iodine 131 from Nevada was also deposited in Canada, but to the best of my knowledge, the doses and health impacts of NTS fallout to individuals and populations exposed beyond the border of the USA have not been addressed in any detail, by NCI or any other organization."

"On December 19, 1997, in a presentation to the NAS/IOM, Dr. Charles Land of the NCI estimated that the total number of excess cases of thyroid cancer for those individuals in the USA who were alive in 1952 could range from 11,300 to about 212,000, with a central value of 49,000. The majority of those cases would be manifested among females who resided in the mid-west and eastern USA who were under the age of 5 at the time of the weapons tests. About 45% of these cases are expected to have already occurred, with more in females than in males." [The NCI report did not look at the question of risk -- that is, the chance of developing thyroid cancer after eating, drinking, or inhaling I-131. Risk was one of three requirements of Congress in 1982, when it passed legislation calling for the Department of Health and Human Services to develop methods to estimate I-131 exposure, to assess I-131 exposure levels across the country from the Nevada tests, and to assess risks for thyroid cancer from these exposures. The 1997 fallout report did not fulfill the last of the three requirements however risk estimates were provided in a later report. Dr. Land's was the only risk estimate provided - although it was a risk estimate for the country as a whole - up until the time of the hearing.]

"My present work indicates that the risk of radiogenic thyroid cancer is highest in Americans whose ethnic origin is from the Philippines and least in Americans of African ethnic origin. Females are at greater risk than males, with the risk being greatest when exposures occur in early childhood."

"One major reason for the difficulty in public comprehension of the NCI report is that it includes no estimate of health risk, an endpoint that is more readily understood than dose. Health risks are neither discussed in the report nor on the NCI web page."

IS FOLLOW-UP NEEDED TO BROADEN THE INTENT OF PL 97-414 [THE NCI STUDY]?

"In presenting this testimony, I feel compelled to note to Congress that if its intent was to investigate the full extent of public health outcomes from exposure to NTS fallout, then it is important to proceed to investigate the exposure to all radionuclides in fallout and to evaluate potential health impacts to individuals residing beyond the continental borders of the USA. Such an analysis would have been readily accomplished by the NCI because the techniques developed to estimate I-131 depositions from the analysis of gummed paper are the same ones required to estimate deposition for all other radionuclides in NTS fallout. Some of the radionuclides from NTS weapons testing, such as Strontium-90, Cesium-137, and Plutonium-239/240 are still in soil and in present-day food products. Although PL 97-414 restricted NCI to the investigation of I-131, NCI made no attempt to request that the scope of its study be broadened so that it could evaluate the full public health consequences of NTS testing of nuclear weapons."

"The impact of these additional radionuclides has not been addressed in the NCI report."

"Based on a collection of experiences, I now believe that prior to October 1997, there was concern within NCI about the negative impact that its study might have on public perception about the legacy of atmospheric testing of nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site. I believe that this concern may have been partially responsible for the delay in publication of the results and the omission of risk estimates."

"...I believe that investigations should be undertaken of the full suite of radionuclides that have been produced."

Note: Dr. Hoffman performed experimental research for the NCI to produce information that helped confirm some of the Institute's I-131 study's assumptions.

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Tables about atomic elements, decay charts, fission yields

NuclearCrimes.org's sitemap and various public and government documents of interest we uploaded online: 1. 2.

'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.'
- Forgotten Guinea Pigs Report, 1980

Tips for arguing with radiation PR people
When they belittle your claims...	by comparing any exposure from their facilities to...	You say or ask...
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	....background radiation...	'Background radiation doesn't mean it is harmless - it probably does cause a small portion of cancers. If you are adding to the background radiation, you are adding to someone's risk.' 'How many more defective children will be born and how many cancers will be induced by this increase in 'background radiation'?
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...flying in a airplane...	'That is not a realistic comparison. Radionuclides in fallout are incorporated into our bodies (tissue, bones). Most of the radiation from cosmic rays is external.'
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	... a chest x-ray...	'You don't ingest or inhale the radiation source from x-rays. An x-ray lasts for a millisecond. Fallout lingers in body tissue and bones for decades .'
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...eating a banana	'Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioisotope that has been present in foods and the environment on Earth for billions of years. Potassium 40, which at normal body levels delivers an annual internal dose to the soft tissue of 20 millirem and 5 millirem to the bone, is not as hazardous as many forms of anthropogenic (meaning: artificial; manmade) radiation for several reasons. One main reason is, unlike many types of manmade fission products, its environmental levels rarely peak to hundreds or thousands of times normal levels. Since 1945, we've seen a cycle of drastic rising and falling of levels of environmental anthropogenic radiation with nuclear accidents, non-accident releases, radioactivity blowing around, etc... Another reason: some forms of anthropogenic radiation in the body do much more damage than potassium-40 for the same quantity of radiation. Dose tables printed in a 1970s document (NUREG 1.109 rev. 1 Oct. '77) by the NRC paint a spooky, yet realistic, picture for what happens to a radiation sensitive organ, the thyroid, when iodine-131 is consumed. A NRC formula indicates that 1,000 picocuries of iodine-131 gives a dose of 80 millirems to the adult thyroid and 140 millirems to the thyroid of an infant. Consider: one liter of 'Sunrise Dairy' (Kansas) milk in April 2011 had 1,518 pCi/L of Iodine-131. That was from Fukushima.
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...standing next to a smoke alarm....	'You don't ingest or inhale the Americium-241 from smoke alarms. You're talking about the small gamma component of Am-241. That's external exposure.'