"We set up very rigid criteria," he said. "What we came up with was a much stronger association with thyroid neoplasms (growths, including tumors). It more than doubled."

The risk ratio for people with the highest exposure to fallout, compared with those with the least exposure, jumped from 3.4 times as likely to develop neoplasms to the new study's 7.5 times as likely.

For thyroiditis, an inflammation that is the most common form of thyroid disorder, the figures also are compelling. Those from heavily hit areas had been thought to be 1.1 times as likely to have the disorder. The new study places the risk ratio at 2.7 times.

"We think that's fairly persuasive that thyroiditis is associated" with fallout exposure, Lyon said. The illness is "a very, very common disease," he added, and the disease is not one the government will make payments for under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Owen Hoffman, a Ph.D. researcher who heads the SENES Oak Ridge Inc. center for risk analysis at Oak Ridge, Tenn. — one of the report's authors — said that in the 1993 report, only neoplasms of the thyroid were found to be statistically related to fallout doses.

"All other diseases were found to be statistically insignificant" in the earlier study, he said in a telephone interview.

The re-evaluation, Hoffman said, "has found increasing risk with respect to exposure to fallout exposure."

It not only confirmed a link to neoplasms, but showed "a link between fallout exposure and thyroiditis."

This is among the first published reports "of a strong link between fallout exposure and an increased incidence of thyroiditis," Hoffman added.

J Truman, originally from southern Utah and now a resident of Malad, Idaho, was among the group of children first tested in the early 1960s and then retested.

"As a participant in that study since its beginning I can't say it's comforting to see the final verdict," he said in an e-mail. "Far from it. There's only anger."

He is angry about the endless government repetitions of "there is no danger" as fallout was coming down.

Truman also feels anger about the federal government pulling the funding on the next follow-up tests, "when the new links (between fallout and disease) started emerging."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com