CDC says it's 'committed' to learning nuclear effects

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says the federal agency remains committed to finding out about possible health effects due to radiation exposure in the past.

Kathy Harben was responding to comments by Dr. Joseph L. Lyon, reported in Thursday's Deseret Morning News. After the CDC pulled funding for an extensive fallout-health effects study he and colleagues have been pursuing, he wondered if someone was trying to cover up fallout harm.

The study, which has cost about $8 million so far, has examined about one-third of the 4,000 subjects, seeking evidence of thyroid abnormalities. A subsection of the study also was planned to check for possible deaths from reasons other than thyroid disease that could be tied to fallout.

According to Lyon, it was the only study in this country actually examining individuals who were exposed to radiation, looking for health effects. The main group in the study attended Washington County schools in 1965, and when Lyon and colleagues checked them years after fallout from the Nevada Test Site had ended, they found thyroid tumors at 3.4 times the expected rate.

The follow-up study was launched because thyroid disease can materialize years after exposure to radiation. Some of the 4,000 make up a control group of Arizona residents.

Lyon commented after reading a letter from CDC director Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, whose points were covered in the article Thursday.

Harben read the article and said Gerberding had made a good analysis of the CDC's reasoning. "That is a very good summary for the basis for the CDC's decision not to continue funding," she said.

"Besides that, the CDC remains committed to evaluating the exposure and possible effects related to past radiation released from nuclear weapons production facilities," she said.

"We continue to study the health effects of these types of environmental radiation exposures through the Hanford (Washington) thyroid disease study, the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project, the Savannah River (Georgia and South Carolina) Dose Reconstruction Project, the Los Alamos (New Mexico) Dose Reconstruction Project and the Idaho National Laboratories (Idaho) Dose Reconstruction Project."

Harben added, "We do expect that findings from these studies will provide valuable information on the health effects of past radiation exposures."

E-mail: bau@desnews.com

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