Hanford Works Research Articles

The legacy of weapons grade plutonium production: Health status of Hanford complex workers who manage the waste.

The extent and etiology of health effects in workers who maintain underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (Hanford) have been subjects of controversy and concern for several decades. Hanford is a decommissioned nuclear production complex managed by the US Department of Energy in southeast Washington State. This integration-of-evidence review evaluates the relationship between exposure to vapors from mixed chemical and radioactive waste stored in underground storage tanks at Hanford and worker health. Hanford workers' health information was gathered from technical reports, media reports, and published literature, including the systematic search of seven databases. This review describes the health status and health concerns of Hanford tank farm workers based on the integration of the available health effects data from disparate sources. In interviews with external groups, Hanford workers reported both irritant-type symptoms and diseases that they believe are attributable to tank farm vapors. However, the results of this integration-of-evidence review indicated that no pervasive pattern of occupational disease was identified that can be associated with exposure to tank farm vapors. Inhalation exposure to asbestos and beryllium is associated with lung disease from various types of nuclear industry work but not from work on tank farms. This review concluded that while irritant-type symptoms and isolated cases of occupational disease are plausible under certain conditions, the currently available data do not support a pervasive pattern of occupational disease associated with vapor exposure.

Increased Occupational Radiation Doses

The increased occupational doses resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident that occurred in Ukraine in April 1986, the reactor accident of Fukushima that took place in Japan in March 2011, and the early operations of the Mayak Production Association in Russia in the 1940s and 1950s are presented and discussed. For comparison purposes, the occupational doses due to the other two major reactor accidents (Windscale in the United Kingdom in 1957 and Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979) and to the main plutonium-producing facility in the United States (Hanford Works) are also covered but in less detail. Both for the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and the routine operations at Mayak, the considerable efforts made to reconstruct individual doses from external irradiation to a large number of workers revealed that the recorded doses had been overestimated by a factor of about two.Introduction of Increased Occupational Exposures: Nuclear Industry Workers. (Video 1:32, http://links.lww.com/HP/A21).

In Vivo Radiobioassay and Research Facility

Bioassay monitoring for intakes of radioactive material is an essential part of the internal dosimetry program for radiation workers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Site. This monitoring program includes direct measurements of radionuclides in the body by detecting photons that exit the body and analyses of radionuclides in excreta samples. The specialized equipment and instrumentation required to make the direct measurements of these materials in the body are located at the In Vivo Radiobioassay and Research Facility (IVRRF). The IVRRF was originally built in 1960 and was designed expressly for the in vivo measurement of radioactive material in Hanford workers. Most routine in vivo measurements are performed annually and special measurements are performed as needed. The primary source terms at the Hanford Site include fission and activation products (primarily 137Cs and 90Sr), uranium, uranium progeny, and transuranic radionuclides. The facility currently houses five shielded counting systems, men’s and women’s change rooms and an instrument maintenance and repair shop. Four systems include high purity germanium detectors and one system utilizes large sodium iodide detectors. These systems are used to perform an average of 7,000 measurements annually. This includes approximately 5000 whole body measurements analyzed for fission and activation products more » and 2000 lung measurements analyzed for americium, uranium, and plutonium. Various other types of measurements are performed periodically to estimate activity in wounds, the thyroid, the liver, and the skeleton. The staff maintains the capability to detect and quantify activity in essentially any tissue or organ. The in vivo monitoring program that utilizes the facility is accredited by the Department of Energy Laboratory Accreditation Program for direct radiobioassay. « less

Beryllium risk to new Hanford workers

Beryllium risk to new Hanford workers

Determination of an Environmental Background Level of 90Sr in Urine for the Hanford Bioassay Program

During the decommissioning and maintenance of some of the facilities at the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site in Washington State, workers have potential for a Sr intake. However, because of worldwide radioactive fallout, Sr is present in our environment and can be detectable in routine urine bioassay samples. It is important for the Hanford Site bioassay program to discriminate an occupational intake from a non-occupational environmental one. A detailed study of the background Sr in the urine of unexposed Hanford workers was performed. A survey of the Hanford Site bioassay database found 128 Hanford workers who were hired between 1997 and 2002 and who had a very low potential for an occupational exposure prior to the baseline strontium urinalysis. Each urinalysis sample represented excretion during an approximate 24-h period. The arithmetic mean value for the 128 pre-exposure baselines was 3.6 +/- 5.1 mBq d. The 99 percentile result was 17 mBq d, which was interpreted to mean that 1% of Hanford workers not occupationally exposed to strontium might exceed 17 mBq d.

Herb Parker Feels Like Dancing, and: Deposition

Herb Parker Feels Like Dancing, and: Deposition Kathleen Flenniken (bio) Herb Parker Feels Like Dancing Mr. Parker’s Sunbeam is shiny as an atom He pulls up, disembarks with grace and makes his dance hall entrance. Perhaps you sense his English accent and pocket square. Women shy like ponies to one corner. He corrals one and trots her around the dance floor. Herb Parker rides a shapely 4/4. “That Old Black Magic,” “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Maybe it is, or maybe it’s blazing, unsafe to breathe tonight. [End Page 40] Her earrings are zircon daisies. A silver belt rings her slim waist. Herb Parker steers her toward his dark place. “Mr. Parker?” he hears somebody ask, like a tremble on a seismograph, but you can’treblame Herbert Parker for his appetites. He palms the tender center of her back. “Mr. Parker?” again. Perhaps it’s her voice, or her husband’s, or one of the voices in his head. He’s a Dutch boy with his fingers in the dike, a valvular, crepuscular figure. “Look out the window at that storm . . .” He takes the government’s calls and negotiates those devil’s bargains, how much of their order can he fill? You understand they say “product” and mean plutonium, they mean how many bombs can you afford to fuel?“Darling, down and down I go, round and round I go in a spin” . . . the river, and its sediments, the air, capricious with winds, the soil column, the ground water, the vase of wildflowers on Deputy Chief Gamertsfelder’s desk! Sagebrush and Russian thistle growing in Richland yards. The mosquitoes, for pity’s sake, the farm animals, the farmers living off the land, the water birds and the duck hunters, the bottom fish and the fishermen on Richland dock. Everything he thinks to test. . . good god, [End Page 41] the entire food chain contaminated. He’s basically a shy man with immeasurable power. A sultan coaxing his courtesan’s smile. She only shakes a little now. Don’t you understand? Someon must step forward and play God. How much better that the man can lead? hold you tight in his very good hands, and spin. The contamination referred to is documented in Michele Stenehjem Gerber’s book On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site, 3rd ed. (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2007). Deposition Richland Federal Building Auditorium February 4, 2000 I wasn’t there. I’d packed my car with houseplants years ago, confident my rawhide neighbors would change their campers’ oil, mow and edge their lawns like always, street after street of Hanford workers who’d moved 30 years ago from West Virginia or Pennsylvania or Tennessee for a job—no saying what it was—for a pre-fab landscaped with white rocks, for their kids grown up like me, for their wives, hair freshly done, comparing prices at Safeway. You know one [End Page 42] you know them all, I said at 25 and moved away, brushed off the dust and breathed in the liberal city. So I wasn’t there when one by one they rose, walked stiffly up the aisle in the Federal Building auditorium. And yet I see them clearly, the same bastards who grinned when schoolgirls strolled by, who flirted with John Birch, and hunted grouse, and owned their stools at the cinderblock taverns downtown. Whose sons and daughters would appear at school sometimes with bruises on their arms. Carolyn was there to testify and even she can’t explain how anybody there met anybody else’s eyes. It must have choked their throats like rotting meat, admitting to cancers of this and that and hothouse-flower blood diseases, each a different suffering. How did they stand on stage and say what nobody could say aloud? And the ones who came but couldn’t speak. It’s killing to think of even now. Every one of them ashamed for falling ill the way the anti-nuke fanatics said we would, who never knew shit about anything, who’ve never understood us and never will. [End Page 43] Kathleen Flenniken Kathleen Flenniken’s first collection of poetry...

Environmental Exposure to Radioactive Iodine and Thyroid Disease

Eew topics engender more vigorous debate than low-dose or chronic radiation effects on Fhealth, especially when exposures are due to the release of radioactive materials to the environment. Such releases have occurred as a result of nuclear weapons explosions, nuclear experiments and operations, and nuclear reactor accidents. Concerns regarding effects to the thyroid from environmental radiation probably originated with the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and continued with the testing of ever more powerful atomic weapons during the Cold War years. The deliberate reactor releases at the Hanford Works in the state of Washington and accidents involving nuclear power plants, especially the Chernobyl catastrophe in the Ukraine, have further fanned the debate. There has been particular concern about the atmospheric nuclear testing carried out at the Nevada test site. This concem led to a series of studies of thyroid disease and leukemia in populations residing in states surrounding the test site. Of special interest is the potential effect of iodine-131 (13'I) on thyroid disease among those exposed during early childhood. To address this question, a cohort was assembled in 1965 consisting of children attending junior and senior high school in Washington County, Utah. This cohort has been examined every 5 years, including thyroid screening, collection of medical histories, and interviews of study subjects and their parents. 2 Extensive efforts to estimate individual doses of 1311 have been undertaken. Reports from this study have been published at various stages to describe both the dose reconstructions and assignment and results of the epidemiologic follow up (phases I and 11).3-6 The report by Lyons and colleagues' in this issue of EPIDEMIOLOGY is a revision (phase IIR) of the second epidemiologic follow-up study6 and the third in the series describing the dosimetry and epidemiologic results of the Utah cohort. This revision was prompted by problems uncovered during preparations to imple ment phase III of the study. While gearing up for the new effort, a number of deficiencies were discovered, including corrupted data files, coding errors, software and hardware issues, dose-estimation errors, and problems of exposure and outcome misclassification. 1,2 The researchers also used this opportunity to address another problem in the phase II results, namely that thyroid disease diagnoses had been assigned after exposures were known.18 In addition, the new analysis took advantage of new information from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on estimated 1311 thyroid doses to the U.S. populace from nuclear weapons tests fallout.7 The current report (phase IIR) corrects the deficiencies just mentioned and imple ments additional quality controls. The report revises the dose estimates (including application of the aforementioned NCI population dose estimates) to subjects who resided outside of Utah and surrounding states and who had previously been assigned doses of zero. Finally, the report uses data from rescreening subjects and assigns diagnoses using updated diagnostic criteria by clinicians who were blind as to exposure, residence, and other characteristics of the study subjects. 2 To the authors' credit, they present results from both the original and the revised analyses.

Age at exposure to ionising radiation and cancer mortality among Hanford workers: follow up through 1994

Background: Studies of workers at the plutonium production factory in Hanford, WA have led to conflicting conclusions about the role of age at exposure as a modifier of associations between...

Age at exposure to ionising radiation and cancer mortality among Hanford workers: follow up through 1994

Age at exposure to ionising radiation and cancer mortality among Hanford workers: follow up through 1994

Missing annual external radiation dosimetry data among Hanford workers.

Epidemiological studies of workers employed at the Hanford Site have been underway for nearly 30 years. Although the external radiation dosimetry program at Hanford has been fairly comprehensive, some workers included in previous epidemiological analyses have periods of employment during which there are missing annual external radiation dosimetry records. In this report, employment history records and annual external dosimetry records have been used to investigate the extent of missing annual external dosimetry records for workers at the Hanford facility. A "nearby" procedure for estimating values for missing annual external dosimetry records was evaluated. Among the 33,459 workers who were employed at least 180 days and had at least one annual external dosimetry record, annual external dosimetry records were missing for 8% of the years of employment (32,323 missing annual external dosimetry records). Missing annual external dosimetry records were more common for female Hanford workers than for male workers, and for workers employed in the early years of Hanford's operation than for workers employed in later years of operation. The nearby procedure provided reliable estimates of values for missing annual external dosimetry records. Using this procedure, 18,937.5 mSv were estimated for missing annual external dosimetry records; this was 2% of the total recorded cumulative external radiation dose for these workers. Missing annual external dosimetry records should be considered as a potential source of bias and uncertainty in investigations of radiation-cancer associations among Hanford workers.

Characteristics of the healthy survivor effect among male and female Hanford workers.

The healthy survivor effect is a selection process whereby healthy workers are selectively retained in the work force while unhealthy workers are removed. Understanding this phenomenon is integral to the accurate assessment of exposure effects in occupational cohorts. To date, scarce information has been published on the descriptive characteristics of the healthy survivor effect. Follow-up mortality data on 44,154 employees from the Hanford nuclear facility for the period of 1944-1986 were used to estimate the healthy survivor effect according to frequently measured sociodemographic characteristics. While Hanford employees did not exhibit a stepwise decline in standardized mortality ratios according to duration of employment, workers in the longest employment duration category demonstrated a substantial survival advantage compared to the rest of the cohort. This effect was present in both males and females, and in all but the following subgroups: males hired at or after age 40, females hired before age 40, and females classified as both professional and nonprofessional. The findings of the present study suggest that investigators should consider the potential confounding role of the healthy survivor effect when relying on SMRs, or other methods, to assess the adverse health effects of exposure in occupational cohorts. Further studies should be conducted, however, to assess variation in the healthy survivor effect according to sociodemographic characteristics.

Characteristics of the healthy survivor effect among male and female Hanford workers

Background: The healthy survivor effect is a selection process whereby healthy workers are selectively retained in the work force while unhealthy workers are removed. Understanding this phenomenon is integral to the accurate assessment of exposure effects in occupational cohorts. To date, scarce information has been published on the descriptive characteristics of the healthy survivor effect. Methods: Follow-up mortality data on 44,154 employees from the Hanford nuclear facility for the period of 1944–1986 were used to estimate the healthy survivor effect according to frequently measured sociodemographic characteristics. Results: While Hanford employees did not exhibit a stepwise decline in standardized mortality ratios according to duration of employment, workers in the longest employment duration category demonstrated a substantial survival advantage compared to the rest of the cohort. This effect was present in both males and females, and in all but the following subgroups: males hired at or after age 40, females hired before age 40, and females classified as both professional and nonprofessional. Conclusion: The findings of the present study suggest that investigators should consider the potential confounding role of the healthy survivor effect when relying on SMRs, or other methods, to assess the adverse health effects of exposure in occupational cohorts. Further studies should be conducted, however, to assess variation in the healthy survivor effect according to sociodemographic characteristics. Am. J. Ind. Med. 35:343–347, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Building Air Bases in the Negev: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Israel, 1979–1982 by Frank N. Schubert

432 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE on the definition of missile accuracy. Spinardi provides a clear narra­ tive and clearly established links to this broader literature, as well as framing the book with a deft exposition of the main themes in the social construction of technology program. Readers trained as histori­ ans to write contextual accounts may doubt the essential novelty claimed for this approach, but the intelligence with which it is summa­ rized here counts as one of the real strengths of the book. Bruce Hevly Dr. Hevly is assistant professor of history at the University of Washington. His work includes studies of the development of research rockets at the Naval Research Laboratory and of plutonium production at the Hanford Works. Building Air Bases in the Negev: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Israel, 1979—1982. By Frank N. Schubert. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1992. Pp. xiii + 303; illustrations, notes, index. Both Herodotus and Thucydides wrote about Middle Eastern mili­ tary history. Herodotus based most of his work on oral history, and Thucydides’ documentation involved participant observations. Frank Schubert, a contemporary military historian, has used both of these methodologies in his three-year chronicle of a contemporary episode of Middle Eastern military history. His topic centers on the role of administrative leadership of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Air Force, and the Israeli Air Force in the construction of two Israeli air bases. As a result of the Camp David agreements between Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin, Israel agreed in 1978 to move out of the occupied Sinai Peninsula and restore this territory to Egypt. The United States promised to help replace Eitam and Etzion, two Israeli air bases in the Sinai that had been a key to Israel’s air superi­ ority in the Middle East. Even before planning for construction started for the new bases at Ramon and Ovda in the Negev, Lieuten­ ant GeneralJohn W. Norris assigned Frank Schubert the task to write the history of this enterprise. Schubert based his work on correspon­ dence of the principals involved, field trips to Israel, and close to one hundred interviews conducted during the 1979-82 period of fast-track construction. Like Herodotus and Thucydides, Schubert discovered that the personalities of leadership, the institutional loyal­ ties of the second-in-command, and the cultural traditions of all in­ volved were the key elements in understanding the successful out­ come of this turning point in Middle Eastern history. The book is entitled Building Air Bases in the Negev, but if one wishes to examine working drawings, review site plans, and learn of the building technology of modern air base construction, one will not find it here. One does find, however, a very interesting, if not com­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 433 plex, insight into administrative management. Schubert discusses in revealing detail how the Corps of Engineers aggressively planned to obtain and control the contract for the construction of these bases, how it made sure it had the power of the purse during construction, and how it set the goals and agenda to complete the work within the three-year time schedule. Problems such as diversion channels for flood control at Ovda, the need for quality control of materials, the work stoppages by imported labor, the allegations of fraud and mis­ management, the overprocurement by contractors, the presence of unexploded ordnance, and the concerns of archaeological deposits are all discussed. However, the focal dilemma Schubert describes was the power struggles between the leaders of the U.S. Air Force, the Israeli Air Force, and the Corps of Engineers. Air Force Brigadier General Paul T. Hartung was assigned to be program manager and liaison between the Corps and Israel. Rather than working out problems, Schubert believes Hartung was the protagonist for quality control. The other protagonist was Israeli Air Force Brigadier General Moshe Bar-Toy, who advocated cost containment. Both of these men served their constituencies during the whole phase of the construction event. In contrast, the Corps had a maze of leaders and Schubert should have provided a flowchart to visualize the frequent changes in...

Comments on "Updated Analyses of Combined Mortality Data for Workers at the Hanford Site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Rocky Flats Weapons Plant" (Radiat. Res. 136, 408-421, 1993)

ized that as early as 1981 (2) we had estimated that the cancers initiated by radiation exposure at Hanford typically caused death 25 years after the exposure, and that there was a significant increase of cancer effect with increasing age, such that exposures before 47 years of age had less than a tenth of the effect of exposures at 65 years of age. Thus, by our reckoning, most of the radiogenic cancers of Hanford workers would have been caused by radiation exposure between 47 and 65 years of age and (in consequence of a typical latency of 25 years) been included among deaths after 72 years of age (47 + 25). This estimate is to be compared with the finding of Gilbert et al. for cancer deaths after 75 years of age. More recently, we have reported the results of calculating minimum latency and minimum exposure age for radiogenic cancers of all types (3). These gave the minimum lat ncy (or lag) as 17 years, and the minimum exposure age (for any subsequent cancer effect) as 58 or 62 years. So once again the radiogenic cancers w uld be concentrated among deaths after 75 years of age. Our minimum death age for radiogenic cancers, which agrees so closely with the estimate of Gilbert et al., was obtained by having a critical exposure age below which there were no cancer effects. Exposures below this age were included in Table X of Gilbert et al., but if they had been excluded (thus greatly reducing their average doses), the trend statistics would have be n appreciably higher than the ones actually r corded. How much higher can be seen in Table I, which is based on Hanford data and shows the effects

Response to the Letter of George W. Kneale and Alice M. Stewart

of having both a minimum latency of 17 years (compared with the 10-year lag of Gilbert et al.) and a minimum exposure age of 62 years (compared with no exclusions, as in the analysis of Gilbert et al.). This table also shows that the trend statistic (3.90) was much higher than the value of Gilbert et al. for Hanford workers (2.19). In the summary of their paper Gilbert and her associates are inclined to attribute their significant findings for high death ages to biases in the data that are not well understood. Therefore, it is interesting to consider what might have been the effects of faulty recording of cancer deaths and/or faulty recording of radiation doses. Faults of both kinds were possible, and the first would only require doctors who knew of the nuclear industry connection to be repeatedly overrecording cancer as the cause of death of workers who combined high doses with high death ages. However, when we added to the other controlling factors the age on leaving the industry, we found that for exposures after 60 years of age, with a lag period of 15 years (i.e. 75 years as the minimum age for a radiogenic cancer death), the trend statistic (3.51) was still much higher than the value of Gilbert et al. Therefore, faulty recording of cancer deaths could have been the cause of the suspected bias only if it had distinguished between workers with low and high doses who had in common both the age when they left the industry and the age when they died. Finally, although faulty recording of radiation doses was possible, it is difficult to see how this could have effects which were less obvious for deaths within 10 years of leaving the industry than for deaths with longer post-employment intervals.

Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll of America's Nuclear Arsenal

In Atomic Harvest Michael D'Antonio tells the story of the Site, where the plutonium for the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs was made and where a large share of America's plutonium for bombs continued to be produced for decades. As an attractive device, he follows the evolution of thinking and actions by a prime set of actual characters: Tom Baillie, a farmer who lived and worked close by; Karen Dorn Steele, an earnest reporter for the Spokane Spokesman-Review ; Casey Rund, a harassed safety auditor at the Hanford Works; and Paul Lorenzini and Michael Lawrence of the management side of the Hanford Works. Numerous other interesting characters fit into this story along the way. The result is a most readable, engaging book, clearly written. It is all done with grace and without demonizing any of the characters in the story, friend or foe. D'Antonio tells us the following: The legacy of

Reanalysis of hanford data: 1944–1986 deaths

Reanalysis of Hanford data by a method, which is new only in the sense that it makes new uses of standard epidemiological procedures, has produced evidence of a cancer risk at low dose levels. By a conservative estimate, about three per cent of the pre-1987 cancer deaths of Hanford workers had occupational exposures to external radiation as the critical (induction) event. These radiogenic cancers were evenly distributed between five diagnostic groups, but as a result of there being much greater sensitivity to "cancer induction by radiation" after, rather than before, 50 years of age, they were concentrated among the cancers which proved fatal after 70 years of age. The reanalysis provides no support for the idea that radiation is more likely to cause leukemia than solid tumors, or the idea that there is reduced cancer effectiveness of radiation at low dose levels (dose rate effectiveness factor or DREF hypothesis), but the estimated proportion of radiogenic cancers was much higher for the 175 nonfatal cancers (which had other certified causes of death) than for the 1,732 fatal cases. Finally, according to the latest publication of the US Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR V), dose rate is more important than exposure age, and even a single exposure to 10 rem would only increase the normal cancer risk by four percent. Nevertheless, for all recorded exposures of Hanford workers, the estimated doubling dose was close to 26 rem; for exposures after 58 years, it was close to 5 rem, and for exposures after 62 years, it was less than 1 rem.

Response to “comments on evidence of biased recording of radiation doses of hanford workers”

Response to “comments on evidence of biased recording of radiation doses of hanford workers”

Evidence of biased recording of radiation doses of hanford workers

Evidence of biased recording of radiation doses of hanford workers

Mortality of workers at the Hanford site: 1945-1981.

Analyses of mortality of workers at the Hanford Site were updated to include an additional three years of data (1979-81). Deaths occurring in the state of Washington in the years 1982-85 were also evaluated. Hanford workers continued to exhibit a strong healthy worker effect with death rates substantially below those of the general U.S. population. Comparisons by level of radiation exposure within the Hanford worker population provided no evidence of a positive correlation of radiation exposure and mortality from all cancers combined or of mortality from leukemia. Estimates of cancer risk due to radiation were negative, but confidence intervals were wide, indicating that the data were consistent with no risk and with risks several times larger than estimates provided by major groups concerned with risk assessment. Of 18 categories of cancer analyzed, a correlation of borderline statistical significance was identified for female genital cancers (p = 0.05), but was interpreted as probably spurious. The previously identified correlation for multiple myeloma persisted (p = 0.002).