The study is the government's
first effort to assess the nationwide effects of all forms of radiation from the
hundreds of aboveground nuclear blasts detonated worldwide before such testing
was banned in 1963. The cancer estimates add a new human toll to the Cold War
and raise profound public policy questions, including whether the government should
do cancer screenings in high-fallout areas.
USA TODAY obtained portions of the study, which was supposed
to be finished more than a year ago.
"There should be no more waiting," says Sen. Tom Harkin,
D-Iowa, who pushed the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct the
study in 1998. "People are still waiting for real communication on their exposure
risks and steps they can take."
The study's estimates of radiation dispersal are based
on complex computer analyses of weather patterns, population trends and other
data that can help gauge public exposure to fallout from aboveground nuclear
The cancer figures are a general nationwide estimate
there is no way to link specific cases to fallout. The study does not assess
cancer risks in other countries.
The data show that global fallout blanketed much of the
USA, with heavy pockets in Iowa, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Washington and
Idaho. Fallout from the Nevada tests settled more in the mountain and Midwest
states, including Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.
The study measures exposure to an array of fallout elements
based on county of residence, birth date and factors such as consumption of
foods that absorb fallout.
It concludes that about 22,000 cancers, half of them fatal,
probably occurred from external exposure to radioactive fallout. Those could
include everything from melanoma to breast cancer.
The study attributes thousands of additional cancers to
internal radiation exposure, such as inhalation or eating tainted food. Those
cancers include at least 550 fatal leukemias and about 2,500 thyroid cancer
Nuclear weapons powers "owe the world a real accounting
of what they did to its health," says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research. "The U.S. has been the only honest country so far."