Volume 1, Number 3
November 25, 1998
Published by RPHP
PO Box 60 Unionville, NY 10988
Editor: W.L. McDonnell
https://radiation.org

FOUNDATION GRANTS PERMIT BABY TEETH TEST MAILING

The Radiation and Public Health Project has received grants for the Baby Teeth Study from The Louis and Harold Price Foundation and The Alida R. Messinger Charitable Lead Trust, No.2, one of the Rockefeller Family Trust Funds.

These funds will allow us to conduct a test mailing to 10,000 families with appeals for baby teeth.

RPHP has identified professional sources from which we can purchase mailing lists for all families in the US with children in the age group 6 to 12, when children lose their baby teeth.

We are therefore asking people, who are concerned about the health impacts of radiation and who live near commercial nuclear power reactors, to send us a list of those 5 digit Zip Code areas within 10 or 15 miles of the reactor site, particularly those Zip Codes downwind (i.e. generally, to the northeast, as prevailing winds blow from the southwest to the northeast). RPHP will consider those Zip Codes as a factor in the design of its methodology for collecting baby teeth from nuclear and non-nuclear counties.

These teeth will be tested for radiation levels in an independent laboratory. For example, Susan Perry Luxton has sent us the following list of zip code areas near the Millstone reactors in Waterford, Ct: 06385, 06375, 06320, 06357, 06333, 06340, and 06353.

Similarly, Margo Schepart has sent us the following zip code areas downwind of the Indian Point nuclear power plants: 10511 (Buchanan), 10520 (Croton-on the Hudson), 10548 (Montrose), 10562 (Ossining), 10566 (Peekskill ), 10596 (Verplanck), and 10598 (Yorktown).

Because the greater New York metropolitan area has among the nation's highest breast and prostate cancer rates, we shall do our first test mailings to families living close to the following reactors, in addition to Millstone (CT); Brookhaven National Lab (Long Island NY) Indian Point (NY), and Oyster Creek (NJ).

However, funding permitting, we hope to eventually conduct mailings in any area for which there appears to be a particular urgency. So, please let us know if there is a particular cancer cluster or disease cluster in your area.

Also, it seems evident that similar grants may be available from local foundations. The foundations we are approaching are stunned to find that the US is the only nation that has never conducted its own study of strontium-90 in baby teeth, as the first St. Louis study which contributed to the termination of above- ground tests in 1963 was the work of independent dental associations led by Dr. Barry Commoner.

There are two dozen nations, including small ones like Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary, as well as major nuclear power nations such France, Japan and the U.K., that have historically published studies of Sr-90 levels in baby teeth.

Please send your comments and Zip Code suggestions via mail, e-mail, or fax to:
Jerry Brown, Ph.D.
National Coordinator
Radiation and Public Health Project
1630 W. 22nd Street
Miami Beach, FL 33140
Telephone: (305) 532-5565
Fax: (305) 532-8829
email: jbbrown@icanect.net

CHANGE IN INFANT DEATHS AFTER CLOSING NUCLEAR REACTORS
Joseph J. Mangano, MPH, MBA
Radiation and Public Health Project
This article will appear in its final form at our Website After April 25, 2000.

Joseph Mangano's new book Low Level Radiation and Immune System Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy may be ordered from Lewis Publishers

French Reprocessing Plant Violating Its License
Paris (November 18, 1998) -- Greenpeace has charged that Cogema's plutonium reprocessing plant at La Hague, in Normandy, is frequently breaching its license limits for radioactive discharges into the air, following aerial sampling around the plant during the past three weeks. Samples collected by Greenpeace and analyzed at the University of Ghent, Belgium, have led the environmental organization to conclude that limits set in the facilities 1980 license are violated on a regular basis. The license (1) specifies maximum weekly average concentrations of radioactive gas permitted in the local environment around the la Hague facility, which lies 15km from the port of Cherbourg. Greenpeace sampled the air at an altitude of between 60 and 120 metres and up to 1km from the plant's main discharge stacks. These samples were analyzed by the University of Gent, Belgium, and were found to contain over 90,000 Bq/m3 of the radioactive noble gas Krypton-85 (Kr-85). This value contrasts sharply with the world average radioactivity in air of between 1-2 Bq/m3.

Click here for complete coverage.

225 Organizations Petition DOE To Disqualify Yucca Mountain As Nuclear Dump
Wash DC (November 18, 1998)--NIRS, Public Citizen, The US Public Interest Research Group, Sierra Club and 225 local, national and international organizations sent a letter and petition to Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson demanding that his Department disqualify the Yucca Mountain site from further development as a possible high-level nuclear waste dump. The groups took this action because Yucca Mountain clearly cannot be qualified as the nation's only high-level atomic waste dump under the Department of Energy's (DOE) own guidelines.

See the whole story at NIRS.

See also the Washington Post story Nevada Nuclear Waste Site Opposed.

Japanese Groups Urge Japanese Government NOT to Construct Nuclear Power Plants In Developing Countries
Japan (November 12, 1998) -- "Nuclear power will not save the Earth"--so say environmentalists in Japan who are concerned that the Japanese Government will construct nuclear plants in developing countries through the "Clean Development Mechanism."

The Japanese government and the electric power industry have been trying to make nuclear power into a key part of government energy policy, stating that nuclear power is "clean energy" because it does not emit CO2. Even at the Fourth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP4), the nuclear industry mounted a powerful publicity offensive.

For details, click here.

Cambridge Votes To Shut Down MIT Reactor
Cambridge MA (November 3, 1998)--By a vote of 5791 to 2889, a ratio of more than 2 to 1, Cambridge voted to move the MIT Nuclear Reactor out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ignoring the referendum vote, MIT plans to double the capacity of its Cambridge Nuclear Reactor, and keep it in a residential Cambridge neighborhood.

To read the whole story, click here.

Nine Mile Two Nuclear Plant Removed From Service
SYRACUSE, NY (November 24)--The Nine Mile Point Unit Two nuclear plant was taken out of service November 24th at 1:50 a.m. to repair a flow control valve on one of the plant's recirculating water systems. The plant is expected to return to service within a week, Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. (NYSE: NMK - news) said.

(story onYahoo! News)

China Closes Polluting Plants
BEIJING (November 23, 1998)--China has closed 150 factories for spewing toxic waste into the Yangtze river along the Three Gorges dam, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday. The closures reduced the annual volume of sewage discharged in the area by at least 5.0 million tons, Xinhua quoted Wang Mingji, an official with the Chongqing Environmental Protection Bureau as saying. The factories included paper mills, leather processing plants and those producing radioactive materials and asbestos.

Click here for the entire story

Nuclear Workers Sick At Hanford Facility
Spokane, WA (November 20, 1998) AP reports that pumping of nuclear sludge from an underground storage tank at the country's largest nuclear waste dump was halted after workers reported feeling ill, the U.S. Department of Energy said Friday. Nine employees at the Hanford nuclear reservation were checked for medical problems but none were found, department spokesman Erik Olds said. Some reported a sharp smell and experiencing throat irritation. The gas, which escaped Wednesday, was not radioactive. We have to determine what chemical the gas was, he said. (Full story in Washington Post)

Mysterious health problems that doctors cannot explain are afflicting people working at and living near nuclear weapons plants and research facilities from California to New York.
The Tennessean continues its excellent investigative reporting of health effects around nuclear facilities.

Click here for their on-line articles