Hanford Group Explores Autoimmune Diseases Information Network Helps Those Exposed To Radiation; Seminar Will Discuss The Common Thread Between Diseases
More than 35 years ago, Boise resident Eileen Walker started getting sick with rashes, nausea, fatigue, achy joints and frequent colds.
“My mom use to say, ‘How come you’re sick all the time?”’ said Walker, now 52, who was born and raised in Coeur d’Alene.
No one knew why until 10 years ago, when Walker was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called systemic lupus. She suspects living downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may have made her sick.
Today, the Hanford Health Information Network will take up the subject of autoimmune diseases in a public, daylong seminar called “The Common Thread: Living with Autoimmune and Chronic Diseases.”
The network was established by health agencies in Washington, Oregon and Idaho to help people who may have been exposed to radiation released from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, near Richland, between 1944 and 1972. The radioactive material was mostly Iodine 131, which concentrates in the thyroid and could cause thyroid disease.
Some researchers believe environmental factors can trigger autoimmune illnesses in up to 20 percent of the population, people with a genetic tendency to such diseases. But the Boise coordinator of the Hanford network could not say whether autoimmune illnesses could have been caused by Hanford radiation. There is no research on it.
“I can’t say no, I can’t say yes,” said Jean Woodward, a health educator at the Central District Health Department.
People with autoimmune diseases are being attacked by their own immune systems. Healthy immune systems protect from disease by attacking bacteria and other foreign bodies.
Walker is suspicious about a possible connection to her lupus.
“I just think it’s awful funny,” she said. “Idaho seems to have a higher-than-normal incidence of people with autoimmune disease.” Many of the children Walker grew up with in Coeur d’Alene now have autoimmune diseases of some sort, she said.
But Dr. Noel Rose, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who will speak at today’s conference, does not know of a connection between autoimmune diseases and the kind of radiation released by Hanford.
“We don’t have very definitive information, but there is a body of evidence that some of the common pollutants may serve as a trigger for autoimmune disease,” said Rose, a professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine and the School of Hygiene and Public Health.
xxxx NETWORKING The Hanford Health Information Network was established by health agencies in Washington, Oregon and Idaho to help people who may have been exposed to radiation released from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, near Richland, between 1944 and 1972.