Questions haunt many Downwinders

A Malad, Idaho, man who was part of a study of possible connections between atomic testing fallout in southern Utah and thyroid abnormalities is dismayed federal officials are ending the study before all subjects could be examined.

J Truman, who grew up in Enterprise, Washington County, says his earliest memory is sitting on his father's knee, watching the sky light up during an atomic bomb test at the nearby Nevada Test Site.

He "never forgot it, nor how it scared me," he says. Today he is the director of Downwinders, the anti-atomic testing activist group that tracks the health effects of fallout from bomb tests conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Truman was among the school students in Washington County in 1965 who form the core subjects for the study of possible connections between fallout and thyroid abnormalities.

Dr. Joseph L. Lyon of the University of Utah has been conducting the study for the past 3 1/2 years. But because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is refusing to fund it further, the study is ending after examining 1,700 of about 4,500 subjects that include a control group from Arizona.

Lyon said Monday that researchers will be notifying hundreds about thyroid abnormalities and advising them to seek medical follow-up.

For 40 years, Truman said, there has been no definitive answer to "the question most important to all the thousands of residents of Washington County — school kids when we started — what the fallout did to us. What risks of cancer and other thyroid disorders did it leave us with? What medical nightmares may the future hold?"

Answers still are not available, he wrote in an e-mail, "simply because CDC doesn't feel like signing a check to finish the study!"

Lyon pointed out that the CDC paid close to $50 million to study possible health effects from radiation at the nuclear weapons laboratory at Hanford, Wash. That study came up with no association between the radiation and health effects, he said.

"We're at $8 million," he added, referring to the U. study.

"We're saying we have found an association (between fallout and health effects) and these people do have problems, and they need further follow-up. And the answer from the government is, 'Yeah, we're not interested.' "