Dugway Proving Ground is one of three candidate installations where a research facility may be built to study huge electromagnetic pulses - experiments that might cause leukemia and other cancers.
The possibility is examined in a draft environmental impact statement on relocating the government's electromagnetic pulse (EMP) simulators. The study hastens to add that although data suggest an association between EMP and leukemia, the connection isn't proven.Andrew Kimbrell, policy director and attorney for the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington-based group that sued to force the facility out of Woodbridge, Va., told the Deseret News that there are serious questions about the safety of such research. The danger is particularly acute to workers at research facilities, he said.
During a nuclear attack, an atomic bomb detonating high above the ground would release an intense EMP - a pulse of electromagnetic radiation something like a radio wave, lasting for only one millionth of a second. The pulse is so powerful it can generate an electric field intensity of 50,000 volts per square meter, over a large area.
This is "hot" enough to fry the electronics of many kinds of equipment, such as radios and detonators. It might even be able to ignite fuel, because of electrical charges that would build up on metal surfaces like truck frames.
Because the Army wants to be able to continue fighting in case of a nuclear attack, for the past 40 years it has been studying ways to shield equipment to prevent its being locked up, rendered useless or blown up by an EMP.
Experiments were carried out using EMP simulators at the Woodbridge Research Facility at Woodbridge, Va. The facility is part of the Army's Harry Diamond Laboratories. The simulators use electrical currents to produce a pulse like that expected in a nuclear blast; they don't use radioactive materials.
In 1987, the Foundation on Economic trends filed a federal suit against the Department of Defense, charging that the public wasn't told about the dangers from research from the facilities. Research was carried out at eight to 10 sites across the country, he said.
"We had a whistle-blower who told us they (researchers working for the Defense Department) had prepared such assessments but it was decided not to release them to the public," Kimbrell said in a telephone interview Monday.
To settle the suit, the Defense Department agreed to stop using the simulators at Woodbridge until an environmental assessment was completed. In October 1989, the Army said it would move the simulators to another location.
Six candidate sites have been selected for the move, including a site at Dugway called White Sage. Four sites are on the Army's White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, and the sixth is at the Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.
A main criterion in the screening was "prudent avoidance of human exposure by considering areas of minimum population density," the report says. The population density had to be less than three people per square mile, and this resulted in Dugway's making the list of six finalist sites.
Cathy Colman, spokeswoman for the Harry Diamond Laboratories, based in Adelphi, Md., told the Deseret News that White Sands is the preferred installation for the site.
However, until a final decision is made, Dugway remains an option.
The report's summary says that "the overall results of this (biological) analysis indicate that there is a low probability that adverse biological health impacts or consequences exist for humans and other biological systems exposed to the pulsed electromagnetic fields of the EMP simulators."
However, an appendix to the report contains a summary of a scientific survey that implies a connection may exist between cancers and EMP.
The most extensive survey of medical information related to EMP was gathered by the Boeing Co., which operated three facilities for the Air Force. From 1970 to 1976, annual physicals were given to about 400 employees at Boeing's EMP facilities.
"The number of deaths due to hematopoietic cancers, lymphoma, and leukemia exceeded the expected numbers," the environmental statement says.
The Boeing study identified four cases of leukemia out of 304 individuals exposed to EMP. This is a leukemia rate "almost eight times higher than in the general population," the draft adds.
"However, the low numbers of individuals exposed to EMP and the lack of quantitative data make these data difficult to interpret," the report says. Chance or some other factor might have been involved, it adds.
"These EMP facilities clearly are dinosaurs of the Cold War, and they are expensive and dangerous dinosaurs," the foundation's Kimbrell charged.
"Right now we're in the same situation as we were in the '50s and the late '40s where they were subjecting Army personnel and testing personnel to nuclear blasts without really understanding nuclear radiation."