I have blogged before about the adverse health effects of nuclear radiation. The debate over whether or not there is a safe maximum amount of radiation exposure has raged for decades. The NRC is now seriously considering whether or not the natural background radiation from uranium in the soil is actually beneficial to health. During the Cold War there were numerous nuclear test explosions in the atmosphere by the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and China, France and Britain. Radioactive fallout from the tests has spread around the Earth and is measurable. One way to authenticate old bottles of wine is to test them for radioactivity. If they were bottled before the Atomic Age began in the 1940s, they will not show radioactivity from fallout.
In 1997, the National Cancer Institute conducted research into one isotope found in radioactive fallout from nuclear tests. The isotope was iodine-131 . The study looked at the way that this isotope could make its way into human consumption via what is called the "milk pathway." When iodine-131 particles fell over diary country, they were eaten by cows and goats. This toxic isotope was shown to concentrate in cows' and goats' milk. The report linked the presence of iodine -131 to thyroid cancer in humans.
Following the controversial and disturbing report in 1997, in 2002 the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control carried out a broader test of the possible effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests on human health. The report tracked more than iodine. Cesium-137 was also investigated. The researchers tracked fallout from Nevada tests, U.S. tests in the Marshall Islands and Johnston Atoll, British tests on the Christmas Islands and Soviet tests at Semiplatinisk and Novaya Zemlya. The U.S. has conducted over one thousand atmospheric nuclear tests, the Soviet Union carried out over seven hundred atmospheric nuclear tests, France did over two hundred, China forty seven and Britain forty five.
Radiation from fallout is not uniformly distributed around the Earth. "Hot" spots of radiation caused by fallout from Nevada tests have been found in New York state and Maine. Hot spots from U.S. and Soviet testing in the Pacific have been found in California, Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina. The 2002 study is not comprehensive. It only considered fallout from nuclear tests carried out from 1951 to 1962. This excludes Chinese tests, most French tests, early testing in the Marshall islands and New Mexico and venting from U.S. and Soviet underground tests. The study also excluded Alaska and Hawaii which both suffered serious fallout from Pacific tests. In addition, it did not study the release of radioactive particles from uranium mining, uranium processing, nuclear accidents and nuclear waste.
The effects of radioactive fallout on human health are slow, hard to assess and long-term. The report estimates that twenty five hundred U.S. citizens have died from thyroid cancer, five hundred fifty from leukemia, eleven thousand from radiogenic cancers caused by external exposure, and three thousand have died from internal radiogenic doses of tritium and cesium-137. The report estimates that radioactive fallout has caused at least eighty thousand cancers in total and killed over fifteen thousand U.S. citizens. The report concluded that nearly everyone who has lived in the U.S. since 1952 has been exposed to fallout from U.S. tests.
Prior to the release of this report, the U.S. government maintained that only people living downwind from U.S. nuclear testing areas in Nevada experienced impacts on their health although the government knew in the 1950s that the danger of fallout extended far beyond the downwind areas. The new report extends damage from fallout to the entire continental U.S.
Nuclear test in Nevada in 1962:
