Help Owed For Fallout Exposure, Panel Says

People exposed to radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear bomb tests should be given government help and support, according to a federal health studies panel.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee released its recommendations Thursday in Washington.

“The government has already admitted that it had an inappropriate relationship with the American public” by exposing millions to fallout, said committee member David Ozonoff, professor of public health at Boston University.

The panel’s recommendations will be presented to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

The panel - formally known as the Advisory Committee on Energy-Related Epidemiologic Research - also suggested the government should pay for treatment of thyroid problems affecting poor people.

“You can’t go around harming people and then not take responsibility because you don’t know who they are,” Ozonoff said.

Thursday’s advisory committee meeting was in response to a National Cancer Institute fallout study released last fall - nearly 15 years after it was requested by Congress.

The report found millions of Americans nationwide were exposed to radioactive fallout from the Nevada-based tests.

Up to 211,000 additional thyroid cancers are expected as a result of the exposure to iodine-131, according to NCI estimates.

In early September, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine made a recommendation against widespread screening for thyroid cancer but did not offer solutions about dealing with non-cancerous thyroid problems caused by the fallout.

“They didn’t do their homework and they didn’t explain their recommendation not to act,” said Tim Connor of Spokane, the CDC panel member charged with putting together the recommendations.

“The NAS/IOM review was a very lame scientific response to the question of medical screening, especially for the noncancerous cases,” Connor said.

The federal government does not know exactly who the affected people are.

The study released last year identifies “hot spots” where fallout was high, including sections of Montana and Idaho.

But people exposed to the radiation may have moved out of those areas since the nuclear tests, which occurred from 1951 to 1962. Children were most affected by the fallout.

A Senate subcommittee hearing last week criticized the study for failing to include estimates of thyroid cancer risk, a concern shared by the CDC panel.

The 1983 law that authorized the study on iodine-131 called for thyroid cancer risk estimates, and the creation of tables looking at all cancer types and calculating risk based on exposure to fallout.

Dr. Ernest Mazzaferri, chairman of Ohio State University’s Department of Internal Medicine, supports the recommendation against thyroid screening.

That form of cancer is typically checked through a touch test on the neck, he said.

Many people have small thyroid tumors that will never grow into full blown cancer.

Patients hear “tiny cancer” and they want the thyroid removed, even if there is no health risk, Mazzaferri said.

“There is really no information that screening for early detection would lower the mortality rate,” he added.

The advisory panel, however, is concerned that 40 million Americans lack health insurance and won’t get medical checkups that can identify fallout-related thyroid problems.

Fallout Rx The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee’s key recommendations: Millions of Americans exposed to fallout as children should be notified of their increased risk of developing thyroid cancer. The government should consider offering screening for thyroid cancer and hypothyroidism. Americans should get complete thyroid cancer risk estimates. A public information center should be established. An archive documenting experiences of people exposed to fallout should be created.

Staff writer Karen Dorn Steele contributed to this report.