CDC posts final report on fallout study

The Centers for Disease Control has posted its final report on the feasibility of studying health problems caused by fallout — about eight years after Congress requested it.

The report refers approvingly to a study that Dr. Joseph Lyon of the University of Utah was conducting related to the connection between thyroid abnormalities and fallout, believed to be the most widespread harm caused by the radioactive particles. However, the CDC killed Lyon's study last March after $8 million was spent on it.

Lyon estimated his study was about two-thirds completed.

"We should be doing that study," he said Tuesday. "The CDC shut us down and told us it was a waste of their money and time." He added, "The CDC doesn't have a clue."

Congress requested the feasibility report in 1998. In 2002 a draft was forwarded to the National Academy of Sciences for comment. The final version was ready in April 2005, and transmitted to Congress in February 2006, says a CDC summary posted on the Internet.

A government spokeswoman said the report was made public on Jan. 25, when delivered to Congress. (The CDC's posted statement says it was transmitted to Congress in February). It was posted on the Internet on Friday, she said.

The final report concludes that a detailed study of the health impacts on Americans because of fallout "is technically possible." It adds that this would require "significant resources" and that "careful considerations should be given to public health priorities before this path is taken."

In other words, the report says an agency considering such a study should carefully weigh priorities.

The report says the harm from fallout is "small" but that is a relative term, based on the astronomical number of cancer injury and deaths not caused by fallout. It notes that the National Cancer Institute said in a 1997 study that between 11,300 and 212,000 thyroid cancers would be expected among the U.S. population because of Nevada Test Site fallout. Thyroid cancer is rarely fatal.

The latest report estimates that about 11,000 "extra cancer deaths from all cancers, including leukemia, would be predicted to occur among the population of the United States alive at any time during the years 1951-2000 as a result of external exposure to fallout."

When non-fatal cancers are included, the number of cases double to 22,000, it says. That is a relatively small number compared with the millions of cases that harm Americans.