Downwinders Blast Study On Cancers Express Outrage That Draft Hanford Report Saw Only Weak Link Between Radiation Releases And Thyroid Disease

Angry Hanford downwinders are continuing to challenge an $18 million draft study that found a weak link between Hanford’s Cold War radiation releases and thyroid disease in a group of exposed people.

At a meeting in Spokane on Wednesday, the critics had a succinct message for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control: They don’t believe the results of the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study, released Jan. 28 with Page One national headlines.

Allan Berman of Spokane said his wife, a Hanford downwinder, was only 48 when she died of cancer.

She had a nonfunctioning thyroid and was the eighth person in her Grandview High School class of 1962 to die young from cancer, Berman said.

“I’m troubled. Something is wrong with this study,” he said.

Trisha Pritikin, a Berkeley, Calif., attorney born in 1950 in Richland, has hypothyroidism. She’s lost her entire family - father, mother and brother - to thyroid-related cancers.

“When I heard the national media reporting no link between Hanford and thyroid disease, I fought back. I want you to think about the toll this has taken on people like me,” Pritikin said.

There will be changes in the final Hanford study later this year after a scientific peer review, the CDC’s Mike Donnelly said.

“It will look different from the draft. We were under a great deal of pressure to get the draft out” for public review, he said.

The nine-year study was conducted for CDC by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center of Seattle.

Its release triggered a storm of criticism because investigators said downwinders should be “reassured” that the study found no link between Hanford’s releases of radioactive Iodine 131 and thyroid disease.

Those assertions were made before the draft study was subjected to scientific peer review by the National Academy of Sciences.

The NAS review has already flagged a number of errors in the study, including mistakes in some of the dose calculations, which are being corrected.

Tim Connor, research director for the Northwest Environmental Education Foundation of Spokane, accused the Fred Hutchinson researchers of “investigator’s hubris” for their sweeping conclusions about the strength of their own study.

Dr. Scott Davis, the study’s chief investigator, said he stands behind the study despite the criticism.

“There will be some challenges to the report’s numbers, but we are quite confident the basic results will remain the same” after a thorough peer review, Davis said.

Meanwhile, the CDC has sought to temper some of the Fred Hutchinson statements about the impacts of Hanford’s radiation releases.

CDC epidemiologist Dr. Paul Garbe said the study also showed that individuals were exposed to Iodine 131 from Hanford and that thyroid diseases and cancer were found in the study population.

Although it found no correlation between higher radiation doses and increased thyroid diseases in 3,441 people studied, the results “do not prove there is no link between thyroid disease and Iodine 131,” Garbe said.

The CDC’s Hanford study is only “one piece of the puzzle” in the continuing study of radiation and human health, Garbe said.

Several issues may affect the final study results, the CDC scientists said. They include:

The accuracy of the Hanford dose estimates used to assign individual doses to the people selected for the study, born from 1940 to 1946 in seven Eastern Washington counties near Hanford.

A review of the study’s statistical power.

Further investigation of causes of death among Hanford downwinders sought for the study who had already died. The death rate was 20 percent higher than normal.

The National Academy of Sciences has extended its review of the Hanford study and is planning a meeting in Spokane on June 19 to seek additional comment from citizens on how the Hanford study was portrayed.

Steve Corker, a Spokane public relations executive, said he welcomes the NAS scrutiny.

If that review forces changes in the study, “I can only pray you’ll be as assertive with the media as you were with your draft report,” Corker told the scientists.

He said the message mistakenly conveyed to the public was that Hanford’s radiation emissions caused no harm.

“That’s what the world was told - that it would be OK for the Defense Department to do this again,” Corker said.

“We are saying no such thing,” said Dr. Kenneth Kopecky, the study’s statistician. “There was no justification for releasing harmful agents on people.”

The CDC is accepting written comments on the Hanford study until July 1.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT? Meeting set The National Academy of Sciences has extended its review of the Hanford study and is planning a meeting in Spokane on June 19 to seek additional comment from citizens on how the Hanford study was portrayed.