Radiation Archive At Gu Opens Worldwide Database Seeks To Contribute To Research

Indian drumming accompanied the opening Saturday of a new archive that will collect data from anyone in the world who may have been exposed to radiation.

The new archive at Gonzaga University will collect the health histories of people from around the world to create a database for future research. It expands a present archive of people who believe their health was damaged by radiation from the Hanford nuclear reservation.

“No two words or phrases are scarier to Americans than cancer and radiation contamination,” U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., said at the ceremony dedicating the archives.

Many of the people who attended the opening were “downwinders,” who grew up near the Hanford reservation during the 1940s and 1950s, the years of the greatest radiation releases. Many contend they have suffered higher rates of thyroid cancer and other illnesses because of the exposure.

The radiation was released as Hanford made plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Area Indians, who were heavy consumers of fish from the Columbia River, are among the people considered most at risk of radiation exposure. Tribal representatives attended the ceremony and played drums.

The new Radiation Health Effects Archives is at the university’s Foley Center library.

It will try to obtain stories, health records and other information from people exposed to radiation at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Nevada, the South Pacific and other areas.

It is being set up as a nonprofit organization and will have to raise its own money, said Tom Carter, the administrator of both archives.

The Hanford Health Information Archives, which has been open for several years, has gathered information from about 1,100 “downwinders.”

It is funded by the federal government until Sept. 30, 1998.