More Hanford Health Studies May Be Held Agency Also Wants To Launch Effort To Track Down Thousands Of Downwinders

A federal agency assessing the dangers of Hanford’s Cold War radiation releases is considering several additional studies to track death and disease downwind.

The agency also is proposing an effort to locate thousands of downwinders and monitor their health problems.

At its broadest, that work could include all people who lived in Eastern Washington and Oregon from 1944 to 1972, the decades of the heaviest releases in the air and in the Columbia River.

Officials from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry met this week in Spokane with their new regional advisory group.

The advisory group will tell the agency which approaches it considers most helpful to downwinders, said committee chairwoman Lynne Stembridge of the Hanford Education Action League.

“Downwinders want medical monitoring. That’s what we told this agency two years ago,” Stembridge said.

Bob Spengler, an agency official from Atlanta, outlined several possible studies during the group’s Thursday session. They include:

Studying cancer deaths and birth outcomes in an eight-county area of southeastern Washington. Births from 1945 to 1972 and deaths from 1950 to 1992 would be examined.

Reviewing a Hanford-sponsored study of radiation exposure to 5,219 Richland-area schoolchildren from 1965 to 1969.

Establishing a registry to track the development of radiation-related diseases among people exposed as children to the heaviest Hanford releases.

Two major Hanford studies are already under way: a nearly complete, $26 million effort to estimate radiation doses to people in Eastern Washington, and a $9 million study of thyroid disease among the downwinders.

Hanford downwinder Trisha Pritikin urged the advisory committee to study a range of additional ailments suffered by those exposed to Hanford’s releases.

Pritikin, a Berkeley, Calif., attorney and physical therapist, presented a lengthy list of medical problems reported by downwinders.

In addition to thyroid disease and cancers, they include chronic fatigue syndrome; several autoimmune diseases including lupus and multiple sclerosis; chronic indigestion and swallowing difficulties; various cancers, including lymphoma; infertility, reproductive disorders and birth defects.

About 10,000 downwinders have told the federally funded Hanford Health Information Network they are afflicted with one or several of these ailments, said Judith Jurji of the Hanford Downwinders Coalition.

The links between radiation and some of these ailments have been established. But in some cases, they haven’t.

“It’s important to downwinders that none of these diseases are overlooked. Some of them are killing us,” Pritikin said.