He praised the recommendation that the Centers for Disease Control and National Cancer Institute should complete dose estimates for all significant radioactive isotopes in fallout.

"To date, only one radioactive isotope — iodine-131 — has been extensively studied," he said. "The fact that the report cites a lack of data comes as no surprise, but it does underline the need for more information for people who were told over and over again, 'There is no danger.' "

According to his communications director, Alyson Heyrend, Matheson has introduced a bill to make a significant investment in studies of the health effects of radiation exposure.

"What's changed?" said Jay Truman, a long-time activist with the group Downwinders, responding to the report. "We're still treated like we are all just trying to scam the government. . . ."

While the report, in a way, admits national guilt and responsibility for harm, he wrote, "for the victims themselves these endless new recommendations mean little more than being delayed and studied to death!"

According to Truman, while the buck is being passed back to Congress, time is running out for many fallout victims.

Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake woman who has survived thyroid cancer, said the report is a mixed bag. "It admits that fallout affected the entire country," she said.

"But it is not possible for many victims to produce hard scientific evidence of their exposure because studies were not done at that time. At this point, all the government has to do is wait for the victims to die."

A group of environmental groups, including the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, reacted to the report by calling on Congress to act swiftly to help others harmed by fallout. Their press release, which also included Dickson's statement, expressed support for expanding coverage to people living outside the counties now under RECA.

"The National Cancer Institute has shown that there were hot spot areas all over the country where milk was contaminated. People with a high risk of thyroid cancer should be compensated without delay wherever they lived without having to jump through hoops," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, one of the groups.

In a Deseret Morning News phone interview, Julian Preston, the scientist who chaired the National Academy of Sciences committee that wrote the report, said the document does not discuss any changes in the areas presently covered. The area includes 10 southern Utah counties.

"We stuck to the science, so we provided an approach for a go-forward position," he told the Deseret Morning News. Any discussion of potential changes in the counties that are eligible today for compensation would amount to a policy decision, he said.

The member of an Environmental Protection Agency research lab at Research Park, N.C., Preston emphasized that he was not speaking for the EPA but as the chairman of the NAS committee.

"As far as those regions are concerned, we remain silent," Preston said of the counties eligible for compensation. The question of coverage there is an important one, he added, but it is a policy matter.

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com