Scientists Get Earful On Hanford Study That Dismissed Cancer Link Attacked

At times, it was nearly a nuclear meltdown.

A National Academy of Sciences panel in Spokane on a fact-finding mission heard angry words from the public Saturday about a government study of Hanford radiation releases.

For eight hours, a parade of scientists, state health officials and Hanford activists skewered the $18 million Hanford Thyroid Disease Study, conducted for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center of Seattle.

Some 50 people stayed at Cavanaugh’s Ridpath Hotel all day to testify before the academy’s 12-member subcommittee.

Hanford downwinders assailed the study, which reported no link between Hanford’s Iodine 131 releases and increased thyroid cancer in 3,441 people born near Hanford from 1940 to 1946.

The Seattle scientists who conducted the study exaggerated the results when it was released in draft form on Jan. 28, before it had undergone scientific peer review, they said.

“The Hanford doses are general estimates at best, and the study is inconclusive. Significant thyroid disease was found, but that message was buried,” said attorney Trisha Pritikin of Berkeley, Calif.

Pritikin, raised in Richland, Wash., in the 1950s in the shadow of Hanford’s reactors, has thyroid disease. Her father, a Hanford nuclear engineer, died of the disease, as did her infant brother.

Release of the study’s draft results was a “debacle,” said Tim Connor of the Northwest Environmental Education Foundation.

More than a decade ago, Hanford activists pushed for the CDC study and convinced Spokane Rep. Tom Foley to support it, Connor said.

“My warning to community leaders now is to be careful what they ask for,” because epidemiological studies are usually inconclusive, Connor said.

“You can then expect the polluter will use the study to exult in vindication and you, in turn, will be portrayed as an alarmist,” Connor said.

There were words of praise as well for the Fred Hutchinson scientists who conducted the study.

They made an unprecedented effort to locate and examine thousands of people as they searched for connections between Cold War-era Iodine 131 releases and thyroid disease, one critic said.

“It’s a fine, detailed epidemiological study. No other study has screened people so intensively,” said Owen Hoffman, a scientist from Oak Ridge, Tenn.

He’s recently worked on a state study of radiation releases from the government’s weapons production facilities at Oak Ridge.

But the Hanford study has serious problems, Hoffman said.

The Hanford doses calculated by Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories may underestimate by up to 60 times Hanford’s post-1950 Iodine 131 doses, he said.

Bill Farris of Battelle, who worked on the Hanford doses, said some dose recalculations have already been done in response to Hoffman’s critique.

Hoffman caught a mathematical error that underestimated by 2.5 times the Iodine 131 releases to the environment from 1951 to 1957, Farris said.

But Battelle has not yet addressed Hoffman’s questions about whether Iodine 131 releases from several plutonium reprocessing plants at Hanford in the 1950s were properly calculated, he said.

The thyroid study’s statistical power - its ability to detect a relationship between the Hanford releases and thyroid disease downwind - is exaggerated compared to similar studies, Hoffman said.

Even if the ‘50s doses are recalculated, the study still may not be statistically powerful enough to detect a Hanford radiation effect in the group of downwinders studied, Hoffman said.

“The chances are high the study will remain inconclusive. They would have needed to study twice as many people - nearly 7,000 - in order to detect an effect,” Hoffman said.

Keith Baverstock of the World Health Organization, who spoke to the panel by telephone from Finland, said it’s extraordinarily difficult to detect extra thyroid cancers through studies like Hanford’s.

“I’m not surprised the increase isn’t easily seen (at Hanford). I don’t think the fact that it’s not seen means it’s not there,” Baverstock said.

Scott Davis, principal investigator for the Fred Hutchinson study, stayed all day but said he didn’t want to respond yet to Hoffman and the other critics.

A Battelle scientist defended his company’s work on the Hanford doses, and took a jab at Hoffman as well.

Darrell Fisher, a Battelle radiation biologist, said any reworking of the doses won’t change the results of the thyroid study.

“The Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project represents strong science,” Fisher said.“Owen Hoffman is a consultant for Hanford litigants and a consultant to CDC.”

But some downwinders said they don’t trust Battelle because of its work as a nuclear contractor.

The scientific debate over the study’s credibility isn’t simply an academic exercise, said Dr. Jim Ruttenber, a University of Colorado Medical School professor.

Over 10,000 people have asked Washington state health officials to calculate their individual Hanford exposures and are waiting for them, Ruttenber said.

That Individual Dose Assessment project is on hold until the controversy over the Hanford thyroid study is resolved.

If the study’s inconclusive, “do we just tell everybody there’s no effect here? That’s rough when we know there’s a risk for Iodine 131,” Ruttenber said.

People should be given specific information about how their Hanford dose relates to risk, he said.“I feel uncomfortable walking away from this study without doing that,” Ruttenber said.

The NAS panel will produce a report on the Hanford study by September, said panel chair Dr. Roy Shore of New York University.