To help avoid fogging of undeveloped film, the government warned film manufacturers about areas where it expected heavy fallout from atomic-bomb tests in the 1950s. But it didn't warn the people living there.
The government also had evidence as early as 1953 that cows eating fallout-contaminated foliage could deliver radioactive iodine-131 to milk drinkers, which could cause thyroid cancer in downwind areas such as Utah. But it took few protective steps.Those are conclusions of an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by Pat Ortmeyer and Arjun Makhijani, researchers at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
With those, they write, the nuclear weapons establishment should not be surprised that a 14-year study partially released last month by the National Cancer Institute found that virtually all Americans in the 1950s were exposed to scattered fallout.
They also say the government should have released partial findings from that study earlier to allow people in high fallout areas to obtain screenings for "highly treatable" thyroid cancer.
The pair wrote that the government learned after its first atomic detonation in New Mexico in 1945 that fallout could be scattered far - including 1,000 miles away in Indiana.
That happened when customers of Eastman Kodak complained shortly thereafter of buying fogged X-ray film. A Kodak physicist, according to Energy Department histories, traced the problem to packing material made from corn husks in Indiana that had been radioactively contaminated.
"He deduced that the origin of the contamination was from an atomic explosion. The physicist's knowledge of the secret (atomic bomb) project was not altogether surprising: The Kodak Co. ran the Tennessee Eastman uranium processing plant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory," they wrote.
As previously reported by the Deseret News, Kodak also found problems from fallout at its Rochester, N.Y., headquarters after the first explosion at the Nevada Test Site in January 1951 - finding radiation 25 times normal because of a snowstorm that caused a local, heavy deposit of fallout.
But the article says, "When Kodak complained and threatened to sue, the Atomic Energy Commission agreed to give the company `advance information on future tests,' including `expected distribution of radioactive material in order to anticipate local contamination.' "
They added, "The entire photographic film industry was warned about fallout" with maps and forecasts of potential contamination - as well as some data on the nature of tests.
"But the AEC did not see fit to provide milk producers or consumers with similar information," they wrote, even after the possibility became clear that milk could deliver possible cancer-causing radioactive iodine to drinkers' thyroids.
Ortmeyer and Makhijani said such evidence was available as early as 1953 in governmental research papers.
"Although public concern about fallout grew in the early 1950s, the AEC consistently denied that the public was in danger," they wrote.
"The AEC's collection of milk samples was haphazard at best. For example, in 1953, the Public Health Service was asked to obtain milk samples in St. George, near the test site.
"But the service took a sample from a carton of milk purchased in a store, not from a local farm or dairy - at a time when the majority of residents of southwest Utah obtained milk from their own cows and many others purchased milk from neighboring farms," they wrote.
They added that milk in early tests also was treated with perchloric acid to remove organic residue, but scientists said that also eliminated iodine before testing.
The article said that while the U.S. government was ignoring warnings, Great Britain did not. In 1957 it ordered all milk dumped that was produced within 200 miles of a fire at a uranium-reprocessing plant that released 16,200 to 17,000 curies of radio-iodine.
"By comparison, cumulative releases of iodine-131 from atmospheric tests during the 1950s were around 150 million curies, but at no time did the government order that milk be dumped," they wrote.
They added that when milk levels in Utah were found to exceed then-new standards for iodine-131 in 1962, the Federal Radiation Council decided the new standards shouldn't be applied without more study - and said diverting milk from the market may do more harm than good by possibly causing malnutrition.
They said a 1966 AEC study again showed children in far-scattered places had received high thyroid doses of iodine-131 from drinking contaminated milk.
"Infants in St. George, Utah, were estimated to have received 120 rad. But across the country, the researchers found significant does to children from iodine fallout: 46 rad in Salt Lake City, Utah; 56 rad in Roswell, N.M.; 51 rad in Grand Junction, Colo.; 19 rad in Amarillo, Texas; and 15 rad in Albany, N.Y.," they wrote.
Ortmeyer and Makhijani note that a study on effects of iodine-131 releases around the Hanford, Wash., nuclear-weapons plant called for cancer screenings for anyone who received doses of 10 rad or more.
They say the new National Cancer Institute study said average doses to children in the 24 most fallout-affected counties in the nation were far greater, ranging from 27 to 112 rad - so the government could consider offering screenings there.
It also said the NCI should have released preliminary results when it first had them four years ago, but before the entire report was complete. "Since thyroid cancer is highly treatable, screening could have been instituted earlier, possibly saving lives."