Studies: Health Impacts of Uranium Mining/Nuclear

[Oscar]

U.S.: strontium-90 in baby teeth near Florida reactors

published by WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor on May 16, 2003

http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html ... /5518.html

A study on childhood cancer near nuclear power plants in Florida, U.S., was released in April. According to the study by the Radiation and Public Health Project, levels of fission product strontium-90 in the teeth of children living in southeast Florida had increased with 37% from 1986-1989 to 1994-1997. The highest levels were found near the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. The amount of radioactive strontium-90 appeared to be 85% higher in the teeth of children with cancer than those without. The results might suggest a link between cancer and exposures to radioactivity from the reactors, but further studies are still needed to confirm this. (587.5518) WISE

Amsterdam - The study was conducted by the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) and funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida. RHPH is an independent non-profit research organization, established by scientists and physicians to investigate the links between environmental radiation, cancer and public health. The main authors of the study are Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emiritus Radiation Physics of the Unversity of Pittsburgh, Dr. Jerry Brown, Founding Professor Florida International University and Joseph Mangano, national coordinator of RPHP.

Four nuclear reactors are in operation in southeast Florida: Turkey Point-3 and -4 in Miami-Dade County and St. Lucie-1 and -2 in St. Lucie County. Concerns have been raised about reported increases in childhood cancer. RPHP studied data on radioactive releases from the plants, radioactivity concentrations in rain- and drinking water, cancer rates in the region and levels of strontium-90 in baby's teeth in the region. The main findings of the RPHP study are:

Radioactivity emissions

Radioactivity in Miami-Dade County (Turkey Point) rainwater rose from a minimum in 1987-1988 to a plateau in 1990-1993, and later by some 60% in the last half of the 1990s. Atmospheric bomb testing by the U.S. ended in 1963 and by other countries in 1980. Accidental releases by underground bomb testing ended in 1992-1993. The releases by these test were an important source of beta-emitting radionuclides. As the activity in water still increased in the late 1990s, the persistence of (high beta) radioactivity in precipitation and drinking water near Turkey Point and St. Lucie therefore is likely to be caused by those two NPPs.

Radioactivity in drinking water

The highest levels of fission product strontium-90 in drinking water in southeast Florida were found within 5-20 miles (8-32 kilometers) of the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. Fission products like strontium-90, cesium-137 and iodine-131 are always released during normal operation of a reactor. The are released by the plant by air or water discharges. The levels of strontium-90 decreased with distance from the plants. This appears to rule out past nuclear bomb tests as the source of strontium-90 in drinking water. Contamination by nuclear tests would have caused equal activity levels all over Florida instead of the highest levels found near the two NPPs.

Cancer rates in Southeast Florida

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, cancer incidence in children under 10 rose 35.2% in the five counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie reactors. Childhood cancer in the whole U.S. had only risen with 10.8%. So, the amount of childhood cancer rose more quickly in the regions of the two NPPs. A high amount of 325.3% increase in childhood cancer was observed in St. Lucie County.

Radioactivity in Florida Baby Teeth

The authors collected baby teeth for measurements on strontium-90 concentrations. The study found that levels of strontium-90 in 250 Miami-Dade County baby teeth have been rising since the early 1980s. The current level is even as high as in the late 1950s, when the U.S., U.K., and the Soviet Union conducted atmospheric bomb tests. As the major releases of strontium-90 have ended since the atmospheric tests stopped, the authors suspect another cause for the (increased) presence of strontium-90 in teeth.

A comparison of the 461 baby teeth from six southeast counties near the two NPPs with 24 teeth from 12 other Florida counties (more than 40 miles from any NPP) showed that strontium-90 levels in the six southeast counties have a significant 44% higher concentration of strontium-90.

In 1982, the average concentration of strontium-90 in southeast Florida baby teeth was 2.23 picoCuries per gram Calcium. By 1995, it reached 5.29 picoCurie/g Calcium. That significant rise of +137% makes it almost impossible to ascribe the current levels to past atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. That is because of the fact that one would expect a decline in strontium-90 levels as the atmospheric tests had ended and strontium-90 from that cause is more and more disappearing from the natural environment.

From 17 teeth from children diagnosed with cancer and living in the counties near the NPPs, 14 were found to have strontium-90 levels above the average for those without cancer in the same counties. Furthermore, 11 out of these 14 teeth have significantly higher strontium-90 concentrations. On average, strontium-90 levels in cancer teeth were 85% higher than those found in non-cancer teeth.

Conclusions and recommendations

The authors conclude that the radioactivity releases from the Turkey Point and St. Lucie NPPs are the primary cause of rising strontium-90 levels in southeast Florida baby teeth, which is the highest in the counties near the plants.

Strontium-90 levels are significantly higher in teeth from children with cancer. The higher levels of strontium-90 in children with cancer raises the question whether exposure to emissions by the two NPPs may be a possible cause for the cancer. The authors are quite strong in their conclusions when they state that "there is now substantial evidence that exposure [...] is a significant causal factor". But as this is only a first study on strontium-90 levels in Florida they also recommend that more detailed studies on cancer rates and a relation with strontium-90 levels are necessary before full conclusions can be drawn.

The possible radiation-cancer link should also be considered in future federal policies regulating the operation of nuclear reactors, especially on renewal or extension of the licenses of aging reactors.

More information about the Radiation and Public Health Project can be found at their website: www.radiation.org. The website also includes earlier study results of the project.

Sources:

Environmental Radiation from Nuclear Reactors and Childhood Cancer in Southeast Florida, Radiation and Public Health Project, 9 April 2003
Press release RPHP, 9 April 2003
Contact: J. Mangano, National Coordinator, RPHP, 786 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215, U.S.
Tel: +1 718 857 9825
Email: odiejoe@aol.com
Web: www.radiation.org

[Oscar]

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -chernobyl

A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Oliver Tickell, The Guardian, Thursday 28 May 2009

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957.

The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -chernobyl

[Oscar]

Biggest study ever of leukemia

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 89,00.html

Australian researchers are involved in the world's largest study of childhood cancers, reports Lynnette Hoffman |

February 14, 2009 Article from: The Australian

SAMAR Chahin sensed something strange was happening when her normally bouncy three-year-old, Jordan, suffered yo-yo bouts of sickness in June.

He'd come down with a fever, recover, then fall sick again. His worried mother insisted he be given a blood test and Jordan, now 4, started intensive chemotherapy treatments soon after.

"At the beginning he was really traumatised," Chahin said. It was about a month before doctors installed a port to aid in the process of drawing blood. Injections in his spine caused backpain, and the steroids he was taking made him obsessively hungry.

He gained so much weight on the drugs that he couldn't even walk up the stairs -- his mother had to physically carry him.

Like many parents in these sorts of situations, the Chahins couldn't help but wonder why -- why their child had been affected. But despite lots of suspected links, experts couldn't pinpoint a precise cause.

Sometimes it seems just about everything under the sun -- and the sun itself -- has been named as a cause of cancer, but for all the theories, proven information is still lacking.

Why does one child get cancer, while a sibling or neighbour exposed to similar environmental factors does not?

An international collaborative study into the causes of childhood cancer is now getting started in a bid to find out.

Researchers at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne are joining forces with research teams from 15 other countries in the IC4 study, the largest prospective cancer study ever conducted.

Already 800,000 babies and their mothers are enrolled, with another 200,000 expected over the next couple of months. Urine and blood samples from the babies and their mothers are being taken, and detailed information on environmental and lifestyle factors is being collected to allow researchers to look comprehensively at genetic and environmental factors previous studies have suggested may contribute to childhood cancer.

Cancer is the third biggest killer of children aged 14 and under, after birth defects and injuries. About 70,000 babies are born in Australia each year, and of those, about 200 will develop cancer before they turn 15.

Leukemia accounts for 80 per cent of all children's cancers, and though survival rates have improved markedly -- rising from a mere 20 per cent two decades ago to 80 per cent today -- the proportion of kids that develop the disease has remained constant.

Chemicals in paints and solvents, pesticides and insecticides, exposure to radiation from X-rays or atomic bombs, and certain infections mothers may have been exposed to while pregnant have all been suggested as possible causes of leukemia.

But MCRI lead researcher professor Terry Dwyer says objective information has been hard to come by.

"This is the first study to look at the healthy child before they get cancer -- all other studies have been retrospective," Dwyer says. "What happens (in retrospective studies) is researchers collect the information as they go along. Children typically develop leukemia at the age of three or four, and so then researchers will ask the mother about exposure to various chemicals or infections, and they might have trouble remembering, or might remember a much stronger exposure than actually occurred. We call it recall bias."

By collecting blood samples, researchers will be able to test for antibodies to various infections to see if changes occurred, so the data is much more objective. The blood samples will also provide more accurate information on genetic factors.

"Just because you have abnormal genes at birth, doesn't necessarily mean you'll get cancer. This will help us see what factors are harmful or protective," Dwyer says.

leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells and bone marrow. White blood cells are responsible for fighting infections -- but the abnormal ones that develop when a person has leukemia can't function properly and leave the person susceptible to infection.

So many white blood cells form that they can over-run the system, causing a drop in the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen. This causes anaemia. Bleeding also increases because of a similar drop in the production of platelets, the cells that cause blood to clot.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia most commonly strikes children between the ages of one and four, appearing suddenly and progressing quickly. Symptoms include tiredness, easy bruising, susceptibility to infections and paleness. Other forms of leukemia include acute myeloid leukemia, and chronic leukemia, both more common in adults.

Even with the dramatic improvements in survival rates, about 20 per cent of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia will relapse and more than half of those will die.

A study published in The Lancet Oncology last month (2009;10(2):147-56) concluded that some of the children who don't respond to chemotherapy may have a newly identified subtype of the disease, called EPT-ALL.

Standard chemotherapy is designed to eliminate lymphoid cells, but the researchers found other very different cells at work in the patients that didn't respond to the treatment. These cells had a genetic profile known as early T-cell precursors (ETP) -- very immature cells which lack many of the features of lymphoid cells.

Researchers looked at 239 lymphoblastic leukemia patients in Italy and the US and found 30 who had ETP. When survival rates were compared, these patients had much worse prognosis than patients with the typical lymphoblastic leukemia.

In the US sample, 72 per cent of patients with ETP-ALL failed to achieve a complete remission or experienced a relapse within 10 years, compared with only 10 per cent of typical patients.

The Italian sample was similar, with 57 per cent of ETP-ALL patients relapsing within two years, compared with 14 per cent of the typical patients. The authors say new therapy strategies are needed since most patients with ETP-ALL cannot be cured with conventional chemotherapy.

Instead, they are planning to offer these patients bone marrow transplantation -- first using irradiation and drugs to eradicate the patient's bone marrow cells, then transplanting new blood-forming stem cells.

Associate Professor David Ashley is director of the Children's Cancer Centre at Royal Children's Hospital and head of cancer research at the MCRI. He says the new research provides a more accurate way for researchers to identify those patients who are at most risk.

"In the past there have been a limited number of predictors of poor outcomes with the standard treatment. As an example, one predictor is a very high white blood cell count, and another is age: patients who are less than 1 or older than 10 at the time of diagnosis are at increased risk.

"But neither of these predictors is very reliable, and there are a significant number of patients who don't have either of those who still relapse -- so this research will allow us to narrow down that group and determine who would benefit from a different or more intensive treatment."

A course of chemotherapy for children with leukemia typically lasts two years for girls and three years for boys. The first six months can be particularly challenging. The child will often miss substantial amounts of school, and one parent usually needs to stop working to take full-time care of them.

Children who relapse a year or more after the initial treatment will often respond to further chemotherapy, while those who relapse during or immediately after the treatment will probably need a bone marrow transplant.

But regardless of whether the child relapses, long-term studies have shown that childhood leukemia significantly increases the risk of other health problems later in life.

Studies comparing the long-term health outcomes of children who had leukemia with their siblings who didn't found those who had cancer as kids were twice as likely to have to see a doctor for a mild condition such as a respiratory illness, and were four times more likely to have a more severe condition such as a heart problem or other chronic disease, Ashley says.

"Five years after finishing treatment the children's health looks about the same compared to their siblings, but 25 to 30 years later there are significantly increased risks," he says. Hence the need for more research to prevent the disease or provide better treatment, he says.

"Even with the best treatments and outcomes, some of these children will have serious health impacts."

[Oscar]

Report Faults U.S. Measure of Cancer Risk

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/us/08nuke.html?_r=2

By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: January 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies in charge of radiation protection are struggling to revise their standards to take into account the differences in susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer among men, women and children, and, according to a report released Wednesday, are lagging in that task.

The report, from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said the rules were still too heavily based on “Reference Man,” a standard created by the International Commission on Radiological Protection in 1975. That standard is a 5-foot-7, 154-pound man who is “Western European or North American in habitat and custom.”

But the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they now considered the average sensitivity of different groups to radiation, although the agencies were still trying to translate radiation into dose levels. In separate interviews, scientists at each agency said the difference in cancer susceptibility was one of several uncertainties, including precisely how many cancers a dose of radiation would produce.

In May, Senator Barack Obama and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, now the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, raised concerns about the standards in a letter to the environmental agency.

Experts agree that women face a risk about 50 percent higher than the Reference Man from the same amount of radioactive material, while the risk for children is several-fold higher.

“Using a white Caucasian male model is too narrow a brush for the world we live in,” said Arjun Makhijani, the author of the report and the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit group in Takoma Park, Md., that has found errors in government regulation of nuclear matters.

The E.P.A., responding in July to the letter from Mr. Obama and Mr. Waxman, said it was “in the forefront of incorporating age- and gender-specific differences in our risk-based radiation protection guidance and regulations.” The letter said the agency “does not believe in continued use of Reference Man, and generally stopped using it in 1990.” But, the letter noted, the agency has not published separate risk numbers for men and women, saying it is “now examining how best to account for this difference in future guidance and regulations.”

Jonathan Edwards, director of the radiation protection division at the E.P.A., said his agency used a standard based on 30 years of exposure. But a child would not be exposed that long.

At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Donald A. Cool, senior adviser for radiation safety, said the most vulnerable group might vary according to the setting, depending, for example, on whether exposure was in a residential or industrial area.

[Oscar]

Uranium health effects

Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:41:49 -0400
From: "Velma Smith" <VSmith@net.org>
X-ASG-Orig-Subj: [wmanuranium] uranium health effects
Subject: uranium health effects

Folks may be interested in this technical paper looking at the question of whether uranium can act as an endocrine disruptor. http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/9910/9910.pdf

Conclusion of 34 page study:

"Our data supports the conclusion that uranium is an endocrine disrupting chemical and populations exposed to environmental uranium should be followed for increased risk of fertility problems and reproductive cancers."

Velma M. Smith
Senior Policy Advisor
National Environmental Trust
1200 Eighteenth St, NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036
202-887-8859
c ll: 202-258-4320
vsmith@net.org

[Oscar]

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -chernobyl

A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Oliver Tickell, The Guardian, Thursday 28 May 2009

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957.

The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the light of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.

The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO's European Office from 1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.

Now a professor at the University of Kuopio, Finland, Baverstock finally published his paper in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival in April 2005. He concluded by calling for "reform from within the profession" and stressing "the political imperative for freely independent scientific institutions" – a clear reference to the non-independence of his former employer, the WHO, which had so long ignored his concerns.

Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a daily "Hippocratic vigil" has taken place at the WHO's offices in Geneva, organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO's 62nd World Health Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO's member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection(ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:

"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."

Some birthdays deserve celebration – but not this one. After five decades, it is time the WHO regained the freedom to impart independent, objective advice on the health risks of radiation.

[Oscar]

Half-truths on reactor deplorable

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/opinion/H ... story.html

By Jean-Pierre Ducasse, Special to The StarPhoenix June 4, 2009

Following is the viewpoint of the writer, a member of the Green Party of Saskatchewan and a biology teacher at Mount Royal Collegiate.

A half-truth is worse than a lie because a half-truth misleads people under the pretense of truthfulness.

Bruce Power has told us many half-truths. It has told us that the funding of the proposed nuclear reactor will come entirely from private enterprise. It has told us that no taxpayers' money will be spent on this project.

One-third of the money for the reactor is coming from TransCanada, one of Canada's largest oil and gas companies. You can be certain that if TransCanada is spending billions of dollars to build a reactor, it will pass its costs on to you and me in terms of higher costs at the pump and higher heating costs of our homes.

The last nuclear reactor built in Canada cost $14.4 billion. TransCanada can bill us whatever it likes and we have to pay it. A tax by any other name is still a tax. Saskatchewan taxpayers will pay for this reactor out of their own pockets.

Bruce Power has told us that nuclear energy is clean, as it does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Its main market for the 320 MW of extra electricity is TransCanada. This company has been thinking for some time of building a nuclear reactor to provide the energy necessary to extract the oil from the Saskatchewan and Alberta oilsands.

If Bruce supplies the energy, TransCanada would be able to produce 1.75 trillion barrels of oil. When Canada was still in the Kyoto accord, our carbon dioxide emission goal was 558 megatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. If 1.75 trillion barrels of oil is used, 554,750 megatonnes of carbon dioxide will be produced. This amount of carbon dioxide liberated into the atmosphere would result in the catastrophic destruction of all life on Earth.

Bruce Power says nuclear energy is clean, with one kilogram of uranium producing as much energy as 1,500 tonnes of coal. But it does not tell you that one kg of plutonium waste from one of its reactors is enough to kill every human being on the planet.

A study done by Claudia Spix at the University of Mainz in Germany found that children under five years of age who live close to nuclear reactors have their chance of developing leukemia increased by 50 per cent. In its website, Bruce Power says the choice of the reactor site will depend on its proximity to aquifers, water wells and the location of endangered species.

If its reactor is so clean and does not pollute, then why would Bruce take these factors into account when choosing a site? The company is acknowledging that the nuclear reactor is unsafe and wants to locate it as far away as possible from these areas.

My baby boy, Gabriel, was born this week. He is 7 lbs. 12 oz, 20 inches long and has lots of curly black hair. He is the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. If we build a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, there will be boys like Gabriel who will stop having birthdays, who won't grow old like the other boys. They'll never drive a car or kiss a girl, never fall in love or get married.

Half-truths are dangerous because they are easy to mistake for the whole story.

This is the whole story.

Bruce Power wants to build a reactor that will be paid for by the residents of our province. It wants to cheaply develop the Athabasca tarsands and produce large amounts of oil that will spew catastrophic levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It wants to build a reactor that will make some children deathly sick.

This is the truth that Bruce Power isn't telling you.

© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix

[Oscar]

The dark ages in radiation protection

Tritium Awareness Project Media Release June 9, 2009
For Immediate Release

Canada is in the dark ages when it comes to radiation protection thanks to its deeply flawed nuclear regulatory agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

Four breaking news stories highlight these flaws:

Story 1.

Tritium-contaminated water from the NRU reactor at Chalk River, currently stored in hundreds of barrels onsite, may soon end up in the Ottawa River – a decision by AECL, sanctioned by CNSC, is imminent.

Story 2.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, CNSC will decide on the licence renewal of a plant in Peterborough that has caused widespread radioactive contamination of its environment (this plant manufactures tritium-filled glow-in-the-dark signs);

Story 3.

The day after tomorrow, on Thursday, CNSC Commissioners will be asked to approve a document that uses invalid methods to deny that the health problems documented among the citizens of Port Hope are radiation-related;

Story 4.

At the end of the week, on Friday, a team of 20 investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency will conclude their 10-day review of CNSC compliance or non-compliance with international guidelines.

We don’t know what IAEA may find, but the Tritium Awareness Project (TAP) has identified six fatal flaws in the CNSC.

Flaw 1. Meaningless Release Limits.

If the speed limit were 1000 km/hr, drivers would never get a speeding ticket, and they could go as fast as they want. In a similar vein, the CNSC allows its nuclear industry licensees to set their radiation release limits so high that those limits cannot possibly be violated. A case in point: the Shield-Source Incorporated (SSI) plant in Peterborough has a tritium release limit of 34 million trillion becquerels per year (34,000,000,000,000,000,000 = 34 x 1018 becquerels per year). Ole Hendrickson of Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County points out, “According to an IAEA safety standard, regulatory limits on radioactive emissions should be close to actual releases. The CNSC is clearly not following IAEA guidance.”

Flaw 2. No Medical Studies.

The CNSC has declared that it will no longer do medical studies on communities exposed to radioactivity from nuclear facilities. The Tritium Awareness Project sees this as an abdication of the regulator’s responsibility to protect the health and safety of Canadians. In Port Hope, disturbing increases in such diseases as childhood leukemia and brain cancer have been documented, but CNSC dismisses these as “statistically insignificant” instead of doing followup studies to learn more. An international study of atomic workers in 15 countries has shown statistically significant increases in radiation-induced cancers, and revealed that Canadian workers have a much higher risk than workers in other countries. Yet the CNSC has done nothing to investigate the reasons for this elevated risk factor among Canadian atomic workers. Robert Del Tredici of the Atomic Photographers’ Guild asks, “Is it possible that the extra risk for Canadian workers is due to the high levels of tritium they are exposed to?

No other atomic workers get so much tritium exposure – shouldn’t the CNSC be checking this out?”

Flaw 3: No Protection for Populations.

The damage caused by atomic radiation is directly related to the total dose delivered to an entire population. For example, if you double the number of people exposed to a given radiation dose, you double the number of cancers that result. The CNSC ignores this fundamental principle underlying radiation protection by looking only at individual doses, not population doses. So when it allows tritium to be dumped into the Ottawa River, which becomes drinking water for a million people, the CNSC insists there is no problem because individual doses are small. But as Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility points out, “The CNSC refuses to acknowledge that the public health burden is greater when the population exposed is larger. It is irresponsible to subject thousands of men, women, children , and foetuses to unnecessary radiation exposures.” Exactly the same principles apply to the Port Hope situation. You cannot use individual doses as a yardstick to measure radiation impacts on a whole community.

Flaw 4: No Safe Dose.

All independent scientific bodies – such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as the IAEA – agree that there is no such thing as a safe dose of atomic radiation. Yet the CNSC steadfastly maintains that “permissible doses” of radiation are safe. This is wrong. Accordingly, CNSC shows little concern with radioactive pollution of the environment and of people as long as their exposures are within the limits set by the regulator. Lynn Jones of the Tritium Awareness Project said, “In effect, this is a licence to pollute.” CNSC President Binder has said that dumping tritium into the Ottawa river within regulatory guidelines is absolutely safe.

Such a statement is inconsistent with the CNSC mandate to protect the health and safety of Canadians, and contrary to its own ALARA principle: to keep radiation exposures “as low as reasonably achievable”. Speaking of the SSI plant, Jeff Brackett of Safe and Green Energy (SAGE) from Peterborough observes that “Soil contaminated with tritium in concentrations averaging several hundred thousands of becquerels per kilogram occurred while the CNSC was supposed to be on watch to prevent such problems.” Tritium levels in a well sixteen kilometres away from the plant measure 100 becquerels per litre – that’s about 15 times greater than the already elevated tritium levels measured in the Ottawa River.

Flaw 5. No Independence.

The CNSC reports to the Minister of Natural Resources – a Minister committed to the promotion and expansion of the nuclear industry in Canada. As Ole Hendrickson remarks, “This flies in the face of IAEA guidance that the regulator ‘should be independent of any government department and agencies that are responsible for the promotion and development of the practices being regulated’.” Just 18 months ago, Linda Keen was fired as President of the CNSC for refusing to condone the restart of the NRU reactor, which was out of compliance with its licensing requirements. The Minister insisted that the CNSC defer to the needs for AECL to produce medical isotopes. As Gordon Edwards observes, “These actions by the government deprive the CNSC of any independent status and reinforce its role as an integral part of the nuclear industry. The conflict of interest could not be clearer.”

Flaw 6. No Health Expertise.

The CNSC is obligated by law to protect the health and safety of Canadians and to disseminate objective scientific information on the nature of the risks associated with the operation of its licensed facilities. However, it has no health department, nor does it have a cadre of well-trained bio-medical professionals capable of assessing the radiation risks and providing accurate information on health risks to workers and the public.

Conclusion.

The Tritium Awareness Project believes that CNSC cannot fulfill its legal health-related obligations under existing circumstances. Two recommendations that can help steer this agency onto a better path are:

Recommendation 1:

Eliminate all ties between the CNSC and the Ministry of Natural Resources. As long as CNSC reports to the same minister as AECL does, the regulatory agency will not be independent of the nuclear industry. This change will not require any amendment to existing law.

Recommendation 2:

Require CNSC to establish a world-class health department with a cadre of well-trained professionals in the biomedical field who are not linked to the nuclear industry or to agencies promoting nuclear power.

Contacts

Gordon Edwards, (514) 839 7214 (cell), ccnr@web.ca,
Lynn Jones, (613)735-4876/ (613) 735-6444, ljones@nrtco.net
Robert Del Tredici, (514) 884 3885 (cell), bdeltredici@hotmail.com
John Miller (Port Hope), (905) 885 5553.
Jeff Brackett (Peterborough), (705) 932 2551.

[Oscar]

Human Health Impacts of Uranium Mining and Nuclear Power Generation

http://www.safewater.org/PDFS/reportlib ... uclear.pdf

Dr. Cathy Vakil, M.D., C.C.F.P., F.C.F.P.
Dr. Linda Harvey, B/Sc., M.Sc., M.D.

May 2009


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Ever since the discovery of radioactivity at the turn of the last century, it has been recognized that ionizing radiation has a deleterious impact on human health. Radiation damage can affect any part of the cell and can interfere with many cellular processes. Most importantly, damage to the genetic material of the cell can lead to cancer, birth defects and hereditary illness. It is generally accepted by the scientific community that there is no safe level of radiation exposure, and that any amount of exposure to ionizing radiation is harmful. Standards of acceptable exposure in Canada and elsewhere have been reduced many times over past decades, as evidence has mounted of more deleterious health effects. Effects of chronic low-level exposures are poorly understood, especially in children. All stages of the nuclear fuel chain have their associated toxicity. There is also the continuing risk of accidents or meltdowns, which could release massive amounts of radioactivity, such as occurred at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Much of the long-lived radioactive contamination we are spreading into our environment now is essentially permanent and irreversible. This paper will examine the health risks associated with the nuclear power industry at all stages - from uranium mining, to the fission process in reactors, to radioactive waste, and will comment on the risk of nuclear war, which we regard as the ultimate public health issue. Uranium mining contaminates air, water and soil. Crushing tons of radioactive rock produces dust, and leaves behind fine radioactive particles subject to wind and water erosion. Radon gas, a potent lung carcinogen, is released continuously from the tailings in perpetuity. Drilling and blasting disrupt and contaminate local aquifers. Water used to control dust and create slurries for uranium extraction becomes contaminated. Tailings containments can leak, leach or fail, releasing radioactive material into local waterways. Various organisms can transport radioactive material away from contaminated sites. These sites remain radioactive for many thousands of years, and will be unsafe to use for most human purposes for that long, as well as being a source of continuing contamination for surrounding populations.

Uranium refining and enriching facilities release radioactive contamination which can impinge on nearby populations. These processes also necessitate transporting many tons of radioactive material by rail or truck. This carries with it the risk of accidents or spills, with further risk of air, water and soil contamination.

All functioning reactors routinely release radioactive material into the air and into the water used to cool them. Tritium, a carcinogen, mutagen and teratogen, is one of these. It is given off in abundance by Canadian reactors because of their dependence on heavy water as a moderator. Several Canadian reactors, particularly those at the Pickering and Darlington facilities in Ontario, are near large populations. Despite this, relatively few studies have been done on the health impacts of these releases. One of the major health risks of this industry is the highly toxic spent fuel produced by the reactor. There is no safe way to dispose of this spent fuel, which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. “Geologic storage” which consists of burying the waste deep underground, is being considered, but carries the risk of potential contamination of air and water, and other as yet unknown risks. A number of health studies done worldwide and in Canada have uncovered some alarming links between chronic low-level radioactive emissions from nuclear reactors and cancer, especially childhood leukemia. Experts continue to claim that the radioactive emissions are too low to explain these cases. In 2008 the German KiKK study provided compelling evidence of an unequivocal positive relationship between a child’s risk of leukemia, and residential proximity to a nuclear power plant. This effect was consistent across all sixteen nuclear power plants in Germany meeting the researchers’ criteria for size and duration of operation, and was detectable as far as 50 km from the nuclear facility. A number of studies of nuclear facility workers have shown elevated risks of cancer. Though there are relatively few Ontario studies on this subject, the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada (AECB) undertook several studies in 1989 and 1991 which found an increased prevalence of leukemia in children living near nuclear facilities. Another AECB study found higher rates of childhood leukemia corresponding to higher radiation exposure of fathers, the largest risk being associated with the fathers who worked in uranium mining. Because few of these findings reached statistical significance, possibly due to very small numbers, the authors claim that these could have been due to chance.

Other studies have found elevated rates of some congenital abnormalities including Down syndrome in proximity to some Ontario nuclear stations. These showed a relationship to tritium releases from the plant during the prenatal period, and to paternal radiation exposure.

However, because numbers were again small, most results did not reach the level of statistical significance and were deemed to be due to chance. The Radiation and Health in Durham Region Study, 2007 was an ecological study looking at a number of health outcomes in the vicinity of the Pickering and Darlington nuclear reactors. Authors found statistically significant increases in combined cancers, breast cancer, thyroid cancer, bladder cancer, multiple myeloma, leukemia and congenital neural tube defects. Rates of several other cancers and congenital diseases such as Down syndrome were also elevated, though the increase was not found to be statistically significant. There is mounting evidence that even very low levels of radiation exposure may have deleterious health effects over the long term, some of them serious. These are detectable in nuclear workers and in the general population in the vicinity of nuclear installations. Some of these involve genetic material and may affect generations to come. Our understanding of the cellular processes affected by this damage, and the implications for the health of the affected individual and his/her descendents is far from complete. Given that the dissemination of contaminated material, particularly the long-lived radioisotopes, into the environment is essentially irreversible, and that these will remain toxic for thousands of years, a precautionary approach is advisable. Much genetic damage is irreversible, and may be cumulative, so this becomes doubly important. We as family doctors are concerned about the public health risks of every stage of the nuclear industry. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Full Report: http://www.safewater.org/PDFS/reportlib ... uclear.pdf

[Oscar]

Letter to CNSC from Families Against Radiation Exposure

Families Against Radiation Exposure
P.O. Box 202
Port Hope, ON L1A 3W3

May 12, 2009

Michael Binder
Chairman and CEO
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
280 Slater St.
P.O. Box 1046, Station B
Ottawa, ON K1P 5S9

Dear Mr. Binder:

In this letter we demonstrate to you, and to the citizens of Port Hope and the public at large, that the conclusion of your staff that Port Hope is safe from the nuclear industry does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

The April 29 meeting of your Commission in Ottawa made it quite clear that the information your staff presented in its “Synthesis Report: Understanding Health Studies and Risk Assessments Conducted in the Port Hope Community from the 1950s to the Present” does not support the Report's own conclusion that our community here in Port Hope is not at any risk because of the operations of the nuclear industry in the past, present or future.

You and some of your staff at that meeting made a number of scientific blunders and assumptions that are embarrassing to the public esteem of the CNSC and its commissioners, mislead the citizens of Port Hope, and ultimately bring disrespect to the CNSC.

F.A.R.E. is very respectful of the dignity of the hearing process and has taken steps to consult an academic adviser, who is a geneticist and who watched the April 29 meeting on webcam. We have since reviewed the transcript of the meeting, in order to substantiate our concerns below.

It is also not clear from the transcript what action the Commission took on two key recommendations of staff – that this document should stand as a “primary reference” on the state of health of people who live in Port Hope vis a vis the nuclear industry; and that no further health studies need to be done. Previous experience suggests that unless staff are told otherwise, they proceed on the assumption that their recommendations have been approved.

This causes us great concern, because we feel the "Synthesis Report" itself is deeply flawed and relies on unwarranted assumptions. We trust that you will give us a proper explanation for the following evident blunders by you and your staff, and provide the public with appropriate corrections of the misinformation that was dispersed at the hearing.

1. The “No Threshold” Principle – the scientific fact that there is no level of radioactivity so low that it does not cause genetic mutation which can result in cancer.

Possibly the most embarrassing of the many scientific blunders was when you, as president of the country’s commission on nuclear safety admitted, and then demonstrated, that you do not understand the fundamental health-safety principle of radioactivity – that there is no safe dose. This has been known to scientists for 70 years.

You said that you do not understand the term “No safe level of radiation” and you went on to ask, as if you found the idea absurd, whether this means that the background radiation is not safe.

Yes, Mr. Binder, it means exactly that. We are disturbed to learn that it is necessary to explain this fact about nuclear energy to the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ... but better late than never.
All radiation, even in minute doses, can and does cause damage to the genetic material, DNA. This damage is called mutation. Virtually all mutation is harmful and much of it causes cancer. Just as there is something called “background radiation,” so too there is something called “background (spontaneous) mutation rate.” This is the frequency with which mutation occurs in the population, as a result of “background” radiation and other non-specific effects.

While we are surprised to discover that you did not know this, we are happy to be able to provide what is evidently new information to you.

Relevant scientific references concerning the “No Threshold” Principle are provided in the list of References given below. For the original research work see Muller HJ (1939); Ray-Chaudhuri SP (1939). For more recent work see Nussbaum RH (1998); Wakeford R (2002).

The web site of UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) states: “Consensus reports by the United States Research Council and the National Council on Radiation Protection and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) [web sites given in list of References below] have upheld the Linear No Threshold model (LNT), concluding that radiation is dangerous no matter how low the exposure and discounting the existence of radiation hormesis in humans.” (Hormesis is the discredited claim that radiation exposure can be beneficial).

2. The known cancer-producing effects of low levels of radiation.

Closely rivalling our surprise at hearing your pronouncements on the “No Threshold” Principle was our unpreparedness for the remarks by Dr. Patsy Thompson, the CNSC’s Director-General of Environmental and Radiation Protection and Assessment, and presumably lead author of the "Synthesis Report", indicating that she evidently knew of no studies that have ever shown health effects of lowlevel radiation. She stated that when the scientific literature refers to low doses of radiation, the doses they are referring to "are in the hundreds of millisieverts" (emphasis added by us).

It has been known for over half a century that a single X-ray given to a pregnant woman (a dose of about 10 millisieverts) can cause leukaemia in the baby that was exposed as a fetus in the womb (Stewart et al., 1956: Stewart et al., 1958).

In case any CNSC personnel are tempted to cite work by the famous Sir Richard Doll and co-worker Court Brown, with Bradford Hill, which disputed those original findings, we mention that Doll later recanted that opinion, admitting that the work with Court Brown had been “not very good,” that the results were “unreliable,” that the study “was too small” and that he had “never been happy with that study.” The original findings of Stewart and colleagues were confirmed and reinforced by a large study by MacMahon in 1962 (see Reference list), and later by many others including R. Doll himself in 1997.

The latter concluded, in an article with R. Wakeford, in 1997, that a dose of the order of 10 mGy (equivalent to about 10 millisieverts) received by the fetus causes a consequent increased risk of 40% for childhood cancer, and that the results of their study “strengthens belief in the idea that there is no threshold dose below which no effect is produced” (Doll and Wakeford, 1997).

Since CNSC appears to have been unaware of the above, it is possible that this information may give CNSC co-workers the impression that cancer from low-level radioactivity concerns only fetuses. We mention therefore, as just one example amongst many reports on cancer in workers in the nuclear industry, the Hanford study (Mancuso et al., 1997). This study is well known also for the pernicious persecution of the researchers by U.S. government agencies, because of the scientists having exposed the risks of the industry, even at low levels of exposure. This notorious tradition of persecution is a very disturbing fact of the history of radiation research (Hardell et al., 2007; Nussbaum, 2007).

The literature is rife with reports on cancer-producing mutation at low levels of radiation (e.g. also Nussbaum and Koehnlein, 1994). It is astonishing and unacceptable that your senior CNSC spokesperson publicly declared herself unfamiliar with these facts at your meeting on April 29.

3. Citations in the “Synthesis Report” showing significantly elevated frequencies of diseases, including cancer, in Port Hope, compared to other areas.

In response to the "Synthesis Report" FARE's written Submission (which we will refer to as FARE's Submission) cited verbatim comments from the Report which indicated the occurrence in Port Hope of various diseases, in frequencies statistically significantly higher than in the control areas that the Port Hope figures had been compared to.

The list included statistically significant elevated frequencies of:

"Coronary heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver";
"Male lung cancer";
"Influenza and female skin infections";
"Cancers of the pharynx";
"Lung cancer (trachea, bronchus and lung)";
"Lung cancer in women";
"Cancers of the nose and sinuses";
"Excess nose and sinus cancer";
"Childhood brain and nervous system cancer";
"Circulatory disease, cancer and respiratory disease";
"Brain and nervous system cancers in women";
"Lung cancer";
"High blood pressure (hypertensive disease)".

It did not escape the notice of at least some Commissioners that the "Synthesis Report" had not accounted for these data. In response to a question by Dr. McDill on this issue, Dr. Thompson gave the astonishing answer that “there are elevated diseases but we also make the comment that these diseases are not associated with radiation doses at those levels of uranium or other contaminants...”

This appears to have satisfied you, as President, and the CNSC as the official body designated to care for the Nuclear Safety of the nation. We might naively have thought it unnecessary, but now realise it is indeed necessary, to point out to the CNSC that:

a) This list contains repeated mention of numerous cancers. For anyone even peripherally in contact with the issue it is well known, or should be, that radioactivity is causative of cancer. It is unacceptable for a senior CNSC official to brush aside these data with the off-hand comment that we say "these diseases are not associated with radiation....”

b) With respect to the non-cancer diseases in this list, and other long lists of diseases known to be abnormally frequent in Port Hope, the following applies: If a disease occurs in excess numbers in an area of high exposure to a cancer producing agent, both good science and good ethics dictate that the compelling and imperative working hypothesis is that there is a causal relationship, until proven otherwise.

That there may be no previous proof of a relationship is most probably because no adequate studies have been done.

This cannot come as a surprise -- there are probably no sites in the world that have as great exposure to radioactivity in residential urban areas as Port Hope, and certainly no adequate studies of these diseases have been done here.

It is relevant to add here that the "Synthesis Report" makes no mention of other studies that have shown statistically significantly increased frequencies of diseases including cancers in Port Hope. In one study alone, titled "Great Lakes Health Effects Program: Port Hope Harbour Area of Concern: Health data and statistics for the population of the Region (1986-1992)", over 40 diseases are listed in which either mortality or morbidity numbers were higher in Port Hope than in the areas being compared.

As we indicated in our Submission, we have previously brought these and other similar data to the attention of the Mayor of Port Hope, and pointed out the fact that she has misled the citizens in telling them that existing studies show no health problems in Port Hope. Your "Synthesis Report" perpetuates this misinformation.

Furthermore, in releasing your "Synthesis Report" in Ottawa instead of in Port Hope, without any opportunity being offered to us or other concerned citizens to respond, you sent the clear message that input from Port Hope citizens would not be welcome, thus reinforcing the Report's conclusion that essentially no further discussion on the issue will be entered into by CNSC. When we heard of the scheduled release in Ottawa, we requested and received the opportunity to participate. The Mayor of Port Hope immediately received permission to also appear, and she used the opportunity to echo the Report's message that there is no problem. Thus both CNSC and the Mayor and Council of Port Hope are denying the facts that are clearly revealed in our Submission and explicitly summarised above.

The data are being brushed aside. To err on the side of complacency rather than on the side of caution, as the CNSC has done here, is unconscionable.

Port Hope citizens legitimately demand that the CNSC distance itself from the comments made in the "Synthesis Report", and instead take immediate action to deal with the fact that there is a large number of diseases that have been shown to have occurred in excess in Port Hope, that the list includes cancers of various types, and that a causal relationship to the nuclear pollution is presumed until proven otherwise. We feel the time has arrived when the public must be informed of the facts.

4. Statistical significance.

In the context of the above-mentioned long list of diseases, including cancers, that have occurred in statistically significantly increased frequency in Port Hope, a question from the floor raised the issue of a previous review of the Port Hope problem by Dr. Eric Mintz, a distinguished professor of epidemiology, commissioned by the CNSC. Dr. Mintz had found problems in Port Hope, but curiously this report, done for the CNSC, was not mentioned in the "Synthesis Report". Almost incredibly, the explanation for this given by Ms. Rachel Lane, CNSC Staff Epidemiologist, was that "the CNSC does not agree with" Dr. Mintz. Thus results that the CNSC does not agree with are excluded from consideration.

Ms. Lane did give further explanation. She stated that "Dr. Mintz makes very basic misinterpretations of statistical concepts and epidemiological methods", and that he was dealing with small numbers, on which "any epidemiological university book on epidemiology" (sic) advises "to take great caution". Indeed, she went on to point out, as if in criticism, that the numbers were often small, and that a difference of one or two cases can make the difference between highly statistically significant and not significant.

This demonstrates a deeply concerning misunderstanding of the concept of statistical significance on Ms. Lane's part. As anyone who understands the concept knows, the techniques for determining whether results are significant (meaningful) or not take into account the size of the samples being compared. An apparently big difference in frequencies of a disease between e.g. Port Hope and the rest of Canada could be non-significant, and an apparently small difference could be significant, all depending on the size of the samples from Port Hope and Canada respectively.

And one case more or one case less in a sample can indeed make the difference between significant and non-significant - the techniques are so designed precisely to allow the observer to decide what is meaningful and what is not.

After having heard Ms. Lane make her facile comment on statistical significance, we question whether she is qualified to comment on the work of a recognised expert such as Dr. Mintz. Because Ms. Lane's comments could leave a totally incorrect impression in the minds of listeners and viewers, we plan to bring her remarks to Dr. Mintz's attention, to give him an opportunity for rebuttal.

5. Scientific Peer Review

FARE'S Submission pointed out that the author(s) of the "Synthesis Report" had demonstrated a serious and disconcerting misunderstanding of the concept of scientific peer review. When scientists use the term peer review it is understood to mean that the reviewers are chosen by a third party (a journal editor), without the knowledge or influence of the authors, and known associates or collaborators of the authors are excluded as peer reviewers.

Instead, the CNSC chose its own reviewers, and these included Health Canada scientists who were reviewing the CNSC's review of work by, amongst others, Health Canada scientists.

Two astute Commissioners, Dr. Barnes and Dr. McDill, themselves both distinguished academics, challenged Dr. Thompson with this fact, endorsing FARE's statement that Peer Review implies that reviewers are at “arm's length” from authors. These Commissioners pointed out that what had been called “Peer Review” in this case was in fact nothing more than “external review,” and by collaborating colleagues at that.

Both Dr. Thompson and Ms. Lane further compromised CNSC's integrity on this issue by obstinately maintaining the correctness of the claim that the Report had been “peer reviewed,” even though the reviewers had been selected by the author(s) and included Health Canada employees reviewing comments on Health Canada studies.

6. The “Healthy Worker Effect.”

FARE's Submission pointed out that the "Synthesis Report" mentions two studies on former workers at Eldorado (now Cameco), and that these studies found that the “only cancer death, which showed statistically significant excess, was cancer of the rectum, based on 7 deaths.” However, this result is quite different to that reported in the study (designated RSP-0205) from the same series, on Eldorado workers, listed in the Port Hope Mayor's so-called “peer review studies,” which found statistically highly significant levels of lung cancer. We commented that it is most curious that this article, which is in the same series of studies on former Eldorado workers as others mentioned in the “Synthesis Report”, is not mentioned in this Report.

Similarly, a “Health Canada Fact Sheet,” in referring to RSP-0205, erroneously stated that this study showed that “there was no significant relationship between occupational exposure and cancer incidence, cancer mortality or other causes of death.”

At the meeting on April 29, Ms. Lane repeated the claim that studies on Eldorado workers had found no problems and she added, as also stated in the "Synthesis Report", that Eldorado workers were found to be as healthy as members of the general public. In stating this, Ms. Lane has inadvertently drawn attention to an apparent flaw in the studies she was citing.

Epidemiologist Ms. Lane and CNSC appear to be unaware of what is known, in the scientific and specifically the epidemiological literature, as “The Healthy Worker Effect”. This term was coined by the Australian researcher Anthony McMichael (see e.g. McMichael, 1976). Workers in hazardous occupations as in the Nuclear Industry are highly selected on the basis of being in good health to start with. In epidemiological studies of people exposed to health hazards such as radioactivity, the cohort of exposed people should be compared to a “control” cohort of nonexposed individuals who are not only matched in all other respects, including age, sex etc. but who are also selected for being “healthy.” The latter has been historically ignored in studies on nuclear industry workers, with the result that the harmful effects are often masked, because the workers, being healthier to start with, withstand the onslaught of radiation better than average people would. This fact makes the previously reported occurrence of lung cancer and other diseases in former Eldorado workers far more significant than previously suspected.

It is shocking that CNSC appears to be unaware of this fact, is unaware of previous studies on Eldorado workers that show increased incidence of lung cancer, and is willing to uncritically accept a “Synthesis Report” that brushes the data aside.

Besides those scientific points, we would like to draw your attention to two examples of questionable procedure.

1. On two separate occasions, Ms. Lane appeared to be reading out prepared answers to supposedly impromptu questions from commissioners.

On the webcam she appeared to be reading verbatim answers to questions asked by yourself on the Mintz report, and by Dr. McDill on peer review. We would like your explanation for this, because it has the potential to shake public faith in the integrity of the hearing/meeting process, and raises questions about your own role, Mr. Binder, as both CEO of the staff (their boss) and chairman of the commission (supposedly conducting a hearing in the interest of public safety). We cannot imagine anything more hurtful to the credibility of the CNSC than this visual evidence that your hearings and meetings may be staged in advance.

2. Commissioner Harvey asked Dr. Thompson why the "Synthesis Report" was translated and put on the Commission’s website before it came before the Commission and underwent public scrutiny.

He did not get an adequate answer to his question, other than that staff did what they understood they were asked to do. This makes it incumbent on the Commissioners to make explicit and public their decision on the staff’s two main recommendations – that the "Synthesis Report" is now a “primary reference” for health effects in Port Hope, and that no new health studies are needed here, despite the fact that our community is supposed to be about to host the largest clean-up of radioactive waste in Canadian history. (Dr. Patsy Thompson’s assurance that health effects will be tracked “indirectly” by environmental monitoring was not adequate, since the Environmental Assessment for the low-level clean-up has already stated that there are not likely to be any adverse health effects.)

But there is an even more fundamental reason to question the Commission’s procedure for dealing with this Report. Asked by Commissioner McDill if the Report is final or will staff amend it, Dr. Patsy Thompson said “the intent is that the Report will stand as a final report” (though suggestions from CNSC Staff could be taken into consideration). Since it was posted on the CNSC website on April 15, well before public comment from F.A.R.E. and the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee was received, that means your public consultation on the Report was a sham, and it would appear that the intention has been that none of the concerns raised in our interventions – some of which seemed to be supported by one or more commissioners – would be taken into account.

We absolutely demand your explanation for this, sir, as well as to the other points raised in this letter. In light of the large number of scientific and procedural flaws in the "Synthesis Report" and its release on 29 April, 2009, we respectfully suggest that it is absolutely imperative that this Report be completely revised, to take into account the issues we have raised. Most importantly it must be acknowledged publicly that there is no scientific evidence that Port Hope is safe, and that there is a serious unsolved problem of radioactive contamination.

Sincerely,

Louise Barraclough
Interim President
Families Against Radiation Exposure

C.c. All CNSC Commissioners
Mayor of Port Hope
All Port Hope Councillors
Federal Minister of Natural Resources
Federal Minister of Health
Ontario Minister of Health
Ontario Minister of the Environment
Northumberland Today
Northumberland News
Medical Officer of Health
President, Council of Canadians
Waterkeepers
President, Canadian Medical Association
President, Ontario Medical Association

References
Doll R, Wakeford R (1997) Risk of childhood cancer from fetal irradiation. British Journal of Radiology 70, 130-139.

Hardell L Walker MJ Walhjalt B Friedman LS Richter ED (2007) Secret ties to industry and conflicting interests in cancer research. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 50, 227-40.

MacMahon B (1962) Prenatal X-Ray exposure and childhood cancer. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 28, 1173-1191.

Mankuso T, Stewart A, Kneale G (1977) Hanford I: Radiation exposures of Hanford workers dying from cancer and other causes. Health Physics 33, 369-384.

McMichael, AJ. (1976) Standardized mortality ratios and the "Healthy Worker Effect": Scratching beneath the surface. Journal of Occupational Medicine 18, 165-168

Muller HJ (1939) Report of investigation with radium. Medical Research Council Special Report Series no. 236 (London, 1939).

National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement
www.Righthealth.com/topic/national_coun ... radiation_
protection_and_measurement.

Nussbaum RH, Koehnlein W (1994) Inconsistencies and open questions regarding low-dose health effects of ionizing radiation. Environmental Health Perspectives 102, 656-667.

Nussbaum RH (1998) The linear no-threshold dose-effect relation: is it relevant to radiation protection? Medical Physics 25, 291-9.

Nussbaum RH (2007) Manipulating Public Health Research: The nuclear and radiation health establishments. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 13, 328-330.

Ray-Chaudhuri SP (1939) The validity of the Bunsen-Roscoe Law in the production of mutations by radiation of extremely low intensity. Journal of Genetics, Supplement (1939).

United Nations Scientific Council on the Effects of Atomic Radiation www.Righthealth.com/topic/united_nation ... ouncil_on_
the_effects_of_atomic_radiation

United States National Research Council:
www.Righthealth.com/topic/united_states ... ch_council

Wakeford R (2002) Evaluation of the linear-nonthreshold dose-response model for ionizing radiation INCRP Report No 136). Journal of Radiological Protection 22, 331-335.
www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0952-4746/22/3/703.

[Oscar]

Nuke plants hike cancer risk: report

By Jeremy Warren, The StarPhoenix Saskatoon June 23 2009

People who work in or live near a nuclear power plant face a higher risk of cancer due to radiation exposure, says a research paper released today.

The 30-page Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes, commissioned by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found nuclear power employees are more likely than the general population to develop cancer or die from it.

Chronic exposure to low doses of radiation causes the higher risk, said the report, written by researcher Mark Lemstra.

A 15-country, 12-year study of nuclear power workers found the employees are twice as likely to die from all causes of cancer than the general public because of the extra radiation exposure.

But in Canada, one of the 15 countries studied, reactor workers were 7.65 times more likely to die from all causes of cancer compared to non-employees, said the report.

Researchers are unclear about the cause of the dramatic rise compared to other countries, said Lemstra.

"We don't know why Canadians are more likely to get cancer than others," he said. "We are going to have to consider revising the protection standards of nuclear workers."

A different Canada-only study still concluded nuclear power workers are 3.8 times more likely to die from radiation-related cancer than non-workers, said the report.

"The results . . . confirm that chronic exposure to low doses of radiation are associated with an excess relative risk of cancer mortality," it said.

The report was presented to a Uranium Development Partnership stakeholder meeting in Regina. UDP, a government appointed board, has recommended Saskatchewan build a 3,000-megawatt nuclear reactor.

Lemstra cited 22 articles in his report, pared down from a review of more than 1,700 articles he found in medical databases, reference lists and on the Internet.

He also contacted 3,042 Saskatchewan nurses through e-mail to gather their views on nuclear energy and health concerns.

Of the 822 replies, 61.8 per cent of nurses do not support the development of a nuclear power facility while 9.49 per cent gave their support. Almost 30 per cent conditionally support a reactor project if health concerns are addressed.

Almost 90 per cent of respondents have concerns about the health implications of a reactor. Ten per cent are not concerned.

The report found outside the nuclear workplace, radiation has effects on the human population.

A German study cited in the report found children under the age of five who live within five kilometres of a nuclear facility are 2.19 times more likely to develop leukemia.

"There's a simple solution: Keep children more than 10 kilometres away from a nuclear facility," said Lemstra.

Children are more susceptible to radiation because in the early stages of development, their bodies are more sensitive to the effects of inhalation, ingestion and other forms of internal exposure, said the report.

"The association between leukemia incidence and mortality from radiation exposure is very strong. The greatest risks are found for youth under the age of 20," said the report.

Health effects of nuclear power go beyond radiation. Consistent cost overruns of constructing a nuclear reactor can siphon off government money that could be spent elsewhere, the report says.

jjwarren@sp.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix


=

Full report:

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/~ASSETS/DOCUMENT/
Saskatchewan_Pubs/2009/Radiation_and_health.pdf

[Oscar]

How Does Radioactivity Affect You?

Published in the Kelvington Radio on July 22, 2009

Editor

This was the question Dr. Dale Dewar addressed in her presentation at the meeting of the Quill Plains Chapter of the Council of Canadians in Wynyard on June 28 as she attempted to strip this huge, complex issue down to an understandable level.

She began by saying that there is no safe level of radiation upon the human body and then briefly reviewed the effects on the human body of the by-products from uranium as it passes through the many stages from mining to processing into fuel for nuclear power plants or into medical isotopes, ending up in storage as so-called ‘waste’ – which is more radioactive than at any other stage of the process and may take many thousands, even millions, of years to decay into non-radioactive lead.

During this decaying process, these radioactive by-products can cause various forms of cancer, leukemia and genetic damage which is sometimes seen as birth defects or chronic disease in future generations. Radiation can also cause cardiovascular and renal disease, immune system damage, cataracts, sterility, premature aging, miscarriages, premature births and increased infant mortality.

Dr. Dewar pointed out that new radioactive substances are currently, or will be shortly, made by using safe alternatives such as particle accelerators called cyclotrons in Edmonton, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa – no need whatsoever for a nuclear reactor!

In closing, she said, “I believe that in a number of years, we will look back on radioisotope diagnosis and treatment like our modern perspective on blood-letting or, more recently, open-abdominal surgery for gall bladders and uteri, beneficial when we didn't know how to do anything else but "out of date" because it will have been replaced with better, less risky treatment.”

So, looks like Brad Wall’s current bid to ‘save the world’ and produce medical isotopes in a nuclear reactor on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan is indicative of another missed opportunity.

Why can’t Saskatchewan spend R&D money on the future instead of flogging this archaic, dangerous and outrageously expensive ‘dead horse’?

Elaine Hughes
Quill Plains Chapter
Council of Canadians

[Oscar]

Israel's Declining Sperm Quality Tied To Depleted Uranium Exposure

http://www.countercurrents.org/king150410.htm

By Tim King 15 April, 2010 Salem-News.com

(TEL AVIV / SALEM) - Israel's population is facing a dire threat: a drastic depopulation, from the use of weapons that leave behind Depleted Uranium (DU). Depleted Uranium leads to the word Omnicidal, as DU kills everything in the food chain, everywhere the wind blows. Experts say the dramatic drop in Israel's sperm count could eliminate their ability to reproduce.

Research by an Israeli doctor shows a significant drop in sperm count level and sperm motility among young Israeli soldiers in recent years. Sperm motility is the ability of sperm to move properly toward an egg.

It is attributed to the inhalation of DU aerosolized nano-particles; the dirty results of extra powerful weapons used by Israel and the U.S.

All of that military might as it turns out, could set the stage for a massive Israeli act of population suicide.

A study by Dr. Ronit Haimov-Kokhman released in November, showed a 40-percent decline in the concentration of sperm cells in Israeli sperm donors from 2004 to 2008, compared to samples taken between 1995 and 1999.

Sperm banks in Israel are now reportedly turning away as many as two-thirds of potential donors, due to the low-quality sperm. In the past, around one-third of the potential donors were turned away.

According to Ofri Ilani's article in Haaretz, Study: Quality of Israeli sperm down 40% in past decade:

"The research confirmed that in 10 years, the average concentration of sperm among donors declined from 106 million cells per cubic centimeter to 67 million per cubic centimeter. The rate of sperm motility has also declined: from 79 to 67 percent, although the profile of donors did not change over that period; they are still young, healthy and do not smoke."[1]

Haimov-Kokhman says the problem is not entirely unique; the quality of sperm has also declined in a number of Western countries. But in Israel he says, it has been particularly rapid.

"If we keep going at this rate, a decline of 3 million cubic centimeters of sperm cells per year, we'll reach an average of 20 million in 2030. The World Heath Organization defines this as fertility impairment."

Questionitnow.com said this about the reported thousands of tons of nuclear waste in the form of armor piercing rounds, referred to as "depleted uranium" or "DU", in the invasion of Iraq:

"The United States and Britain have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis and their own troops, but the entire world. In the first invasion, at least 320 tons of DU were exploded into Iraq, at least 1500 tons were blasted in the second illegal invasion."[2]

They cite Professor Malcolm Hopper of the University of Sunderland in the U.K., whose extensive studies of health effects on British and U.S. soldiers who served in the Gulf War, shows as many as 21,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans have died, "due not just to DU exposure but to the astounding amounts of organophosphate (OP) poisoning from various toxins (or supposedly anti-toxins) given to the troops as 'preventive' medicine."

This human and environmental disaster was reviewed by Bob Nichols, a correspondent with SFBayView who specializes in nuclear issues with an emphasis on the atmospheric contamination from Depleted Uranium. In the article PTSD, Infertility and Other Consequences of War, he discusses how Israel is likely to be depopulated soon[3].

"Israel falls within the region that has been dosed with depleted uranium [DU] [various kinds of munitions] in the West Asian theatre of war. DU kills people at genetic level." A report by Dr. Ronit Haimov-Kokhman, which was debated in the Knesset, is cited in the report by Ofri Ilani.

Arun Shrivastava, a writer with the Centre for Research on Globalization, says this has been known for some time.

"Admiral Bhagwat and I made our presentations at GNDU, Amritsar, in April 2008, social workers among the audience came up and narrated some events that actually provide hard enough evidence of DU contamination the entire North-western India. There was a significant presence of top officers from the Indian Army."

He says they are keenly aware of this silent weapon. "The security forces know what the American and NATO soldiers have done to South and West Asians."

According to Shrivastava, contamination of the total Indian population stands at over 300 million; the total West and South Asian population affected stands at least 900 million, possibly more than a billion.

"None of these would complete their normal life. None of us will. This entire region will be depopulated which is what the PTBs have in mind and they have set in motion processes that can't be stopped. No way," Shrivastava said.

There is little question that this information has tremendous significance for the people of Palestine and Gaza, although these unfortunate people might end up the same way as the Israelis.

Reports from other West Asian countries are identical, Shrivastava says, "Both US and NATO forces have committed genocide right in Asia. Our civilizations may never be the same, may not be viable."

It is important to note how overlooked this significant world problem truly is, and how indicting it turns out to be. Shrivastava says it is also important to remember that the DU is a result of military activity that is illegal under international law.

"Please note that the use of WMD is war crime. There are cases pending under ICCA against three US Presidents and two British PMs and their entire cabinet. DU weapons are WMDs; they are weapons of indiscriminate destruction and environmental contamination....IN PERPETUITY."

As Nichols states in his article, uranium oxide gas weapons are called "genocidal weapons."

"They maim and kill millions of people, their animals and their land. The actual targets by the U.S. Expeditionary Forces are the populations of Central Asia and the Middle East, about a billion people."

He reminds us that more than a million American servicemembers, thousands of contractors, and others, like journalists have had their boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past several years, not to mention the thousands of people from other nations.

"The medical disability rate is over 60 percent and 'PTSD' is a common diagnosis. Soldiers from the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy report similar medical problems as well."

According to figures cited in his article, a milligram (mg) of uranium oxide poison gas is roughly equal in size to one of the periods at the end of these sentences. When this is absorbed by Marines and soldiers, through their skin, no limit exists in regard to their exposure. It could range from to one milligram to a thousand.

Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH said, "Each tiny milligram shoots about 1,251,000 powerful radioactive bullets a day with a range of about 20 cells of the human body for thousands or even billions of years."

Dr. Bertell currently serves on a number of Pentagon radiation committees; she has been in this role for decades.

The worst part is that all of it has taken place under protest by activists, scientists, and defense experts. There has been no doubt in the minds of those who know, but their words have gone unheeded. Orders to use these internationally illegal weapons are made by presidential order in U.S. war zones.

Serious information at a serious time in history. It would truly be ironic if Israel's military machine, so ruthlessly applied over the years on the Arab people, would render the population without the ability to reproduce.

Sources: Links at: http://www.countercurrents.org/king150410.htm

[1] Study: Quality of Israeli sperm down 40% in past decade - By Ofri Ilani

[2] Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq

[3] PTSD, infertility and other consequences of war - by Bob Nichols

Other relevant links:

CIA World Factbook

The Biology of Human Longevity: Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans (Hardcover) Amazon.com


Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines.

Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. You can send Tim an email at this address:newsroom@salem-news.com

[Oscar]

Getting Clear About Nuclear

http://www.vitalitymagazine.com/getting ... ut_nuclear

March 2006 Features

Ontario Residents Mount Fierce Opposition to a Dangerous, Expensive Technology By Liz Armstrong

To local folks, Oshawa is best known as home of The Motors — General Motors, that is — where Colonel Sam McLaughlin’s enterprising little company built some of Canada’s first gasoline-powered automobiles back in 1908. Bought out in 1918 by the far bigger American corporation from Detroit, Colonel Sam would be amazed to see GM Canada nowadays. Its colossal Autoplex plant sprawls over dozens of acres along the shore of Lake Ontario in south Oshawa.

Sam’s father Robert was notable in his own generation for building McLaughlin Carriages, but as the 19th century drew to a close, it was clear he didn’t share his son’s love for the new-fangled, horseless buggies. They were “noisy, smelly and dangerous,” Robert said. (The words “smog” and “climate change” were still quite a piece down the road.)

Energy Future Town Hall
It’s early evening February 15, 2006. Crossing over to the north side of busy Highway 401 from south Oshawa, thousands of the latest horseless buggies are crawling along bumper-to-bumper during a typical GTA “rush hour.” One is hard pressed to find the meeting already in progress at the LVIV Ukrainian Hall & Pavilion. Still, about 200 people have located the place despite its mysterious address, and many of them are lined up behind microphones for their turn to speak up about Ontario’s energy future.

It’s billed as a “Town Hall” meeting, one of 12 such gatherings hastily organized by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government in mid-February to discuss the future of electrical power in our province. Most of the dozen meetings took place in cities, but they were in such remote spots that people were pretty much obliged to get there by car. (This irony was not lost on the Sierra Club of Canada’s Ontario Chapter, which hired a biodiesel-fueled “Magic Bus” to transport folks to Toronto’s decidedly suburban ‘consultation’ in Don Mills). In Kincardine, near the Bruce nuclear plant on Lake Huron, another town meeting proceeded despite fierce winter storms that closed local highways.

Mr. McGuinty’s government is in a hurry to get feedback on the Ontario Power Authority’s December 2005 recommendations for the proposed “mix” of our future electrical supply. OPA is calling for more than $40 billion in new nuclear plants to generate about 50% of our electricity in the decades to come.

Until recently, the prospect of new nuclear generating stations in Ontario was considered almost absurd in view of a lengthy slate of problems associated with their construction and maintenance, plus the very high cost per kilowatt hour. Variously characterized as inefficient, unreliable and/or unsafe by critics, our nukes are also the source of a $20 billion-plus debt that has plagued the province for decades, and will take generations of Ontarians to pay off. This is all aside from the critical problem of what to do with the high-level nuclear waste from Candu reactors, which will burden our descendants for — at the very least — thousands of years.

Until recently, the end seemed near. “In Canada, the troubled nuclear industry, centred in the province of Ontario, may be experiencing terminal throes. Early in 2004, the minister of energy [then Dwight Duncan] for that province announced that his future policies would focus on energy conservation, and on renewable power sources such as wind and solar energy. Public health concerns about reactor safety, the insolvable problems of nuclear wastes, and the astronomical costs to the taxpayer of constructing, repairing, and decommissioning nuclear plants make the future of nuclear reactor construction uncertain,” wrote Mary Louise Engles in 2005.

But there’s a new shine on nuclear these days, and, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of its demise seem greatly exaggerated. What happened? The government’s promise to shut down coal-fired generators (now sometime after 2009; we’re still not sure when), the fact that old nuclear plants will need to be phased out around 2020-30, and the anticipated influx of newcomers to Ontario has made new nukes alluring. At least to Premier Dalton McGuinty and his inner circle.

Ontarians have lived with nuclear stations for nearly four decades now, and polls show that the majority of us would like to see the end of them. But concerns about smog and climate change, and the nuclear industry’s ability to play on the fear that windmills just won’t keep Canada’s industrial heartland humming, has given nukes a new life. That and a lot of heavy-duty lobbying and government subsidy money.

All those “getting clear about nuclear” TV advertisements seem to have worked like a charm too. As journalist Suzanne Elston recently commented, “For people lucky enough to have missed these ads, they feature the word ‘Nuclear’ floating on a bed of fluffy clouds, in a smog-free blue sky. As the letters in the word ‘Nuclear’ are rearranged to spell words like ‘Clear,’ ‘Unclear’ and ‘Clean,’ a voice-over provides statements to help viewers ‘get clear about nuclear power.’” Then Ms. Elston proceeds to deconstruct the myths perpetrated by the ad campaign: they’re neither clean, nor green, nor sustainable, she explains. (www.yourearth.ca/columns/Nuclear.htm)

Nearly all of the citizens standing at the microphones in Oshawa on February 15 want to talk about the very things that inspired former Energy Minister Dwight Duncan not so long ago — energy efficiency, conservation, renewables, and a whole host of alternatives to the nuclear option. The speakers are knowledgeable and articulate, and one of them, Tom Lawson of Port Hope (now 78 and a 30-year veteran of Ontario’s nuclear struggles), is enthusiastically applauded when he calls for a year-long moratorium on this critical energy decision. Not a single hand goes up in opposition to his suggestion.

Jessica Fracassi of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance puts it bluntly in the aftermath of the consultations: “Premier McGuinty: Don’t squander the best opportunity in a generation to move Ontario toward a renewable electricity future by pouring more public dollars into high-cost, high-risk nuclear plants.”

The Health Impact of Nuclear Power
What about our health? It’s an obvious question for Vitality readers. One health-focused critique of the Ontario Power Authority proposal was submitted by the Toronto-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health (founded in the late 1970s by Dr. Ursula Franklin and Dr. Rosalie Bertell, the Grey Nun who led the IICPH well into the 1990s). The group has for many years crusaded tirelessly against nuclear power, including Canada’s Candus. The IICPH critique said, “Setting aside the immense cost of nuclear power plants, their vulnerability to nuclear accidents, earthquake damage (Pickering sits on the side of Frenchman’s Bay near two fault lines), terrorist attacks, their need for shutdowns for expensive repairs, the fact that they leak radioactivity into our environment and, as they age, this leakage increases – setting that all that aside, what is the big problem?”

IICHP’s critique of the OPA report asks the rhetorical question, then addresses several of the big problems in its 10-page submission. One of the biggest is cancer.

Ionizing radiation is known to be a complete carcinogen, one of few substances on earth that can contribute to cancer in three ways: it can initiate, promote and accelerate many different cancers. According to Dr. Bertell, “Virtually every human tissue has been associated with radiation-induced cancer, but some appear to be more sensitive than others, including breast, thyroid, lung, colon, stomach, liver and skin.”

“Radiation damage to genes is cumulative over a lifetime, and repeated low-dose exposures over time may have the same harmful effects as a single, high-dose exposure,” adds the 2006 version of “State of the Evidence: What is the Connection Between the Environment and Breast Cancer?”, edited by Nancy Evans of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund.

“More is known about the relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk than any other human carcinogen, and female breast cancer is the best quantified,” adds Charles E. Land, author of the report, “Epidemiology of radiation-related breast cancer.”

In this country, where cancer incidence has soared to unprecedented levels — a Canadian woman’s lifetime risk of cancer is now more than one in three, and for men it’s closer to one in two — the role of routine nuclear plant emissions shouldn’t be underestimated. Some studies have shown that children within 50 kilometres of a nuclear power station experience higher rates of leukemia, as a controversial 1991 study of the Pickering site concluded, but it is nuclear workers who are at greatest risk.

Among the flood of radiation-cancer studies that have been carried out over several decades, two of the most important have been released in the past year, says Norm Rubin, long-time director of nuclear research for Energy Probe in Toronto. Both studies are acknowledged to be credible — not solely by critics of nuclear power, but by proponents too:

1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 15-country study (which includes Canada), “Cancer risk following low doses of ionizing radiation.” This largest-ever study of nuclear industry workers concluded there is a one to two per cent increase of deaths from cancer even at doses typically received by these workers. The study’s observed cancer rates were higher than the current risk models would predict, but not “significantly” higher.

2) The U.S. National Academies of Science 7th Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR 7) Report confirmed this prior knowledge — there is no threshold or safe level of exposure to radiation. The report also concluded that exposure to natural background radiation causes some cancers, and any additional exposure causes additional risk. The BEIR 7 report also stated that ionizing radiation causes other negative health effects, including heart disease and stroke.

To make matters potentially worse, regulations governing radioactive emissions from Candu reactors operating in Ontario are among the least stringent in the world. For example, for the cancer-causing radionuclide tritium, the provincial standard is 7,000 bequerels (Bq) per litre. The European Union’s upper limit is 100 Bq/litre, and California is recommending a 15 Bq/litre regulation. In the early 1990s, Ontario rejected an advisory panel recommendation of 100 Bq/litre including an intention to shift downward to 20 Bq/litre limit after a five-year phase-in period.

Ontario — and Canada as a whole — also have lax regulatory limits for radioactive materials compared to the more stringent standards imposed on carcinogenic chemicals. The chemical standard defines an “acceptable risk” as one additional cancer for every million population. The “acceptable” risk for radioactive substances is far higher at 10,000 per million, although the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would never express the risk this way, instead comparing their dose limits to natural background radiation levels, which sound protective but are not.

The excellent 1995 report, “Recommendations for the Primary Prevention of Cancer,” commissioned by Bob Rae’s NDP government, recommended that the same methodology for chemical contaminants be applied to radioactive substances. The recommendation was never acted upon, and radioactive substances still have their own “special” regulator, Rubin says.

(Even the one in a million “acceptable risk” for cancer is a dicey proposition, in this writer’s opinion, since risk assessments yielding these numbers are one part science plus a huge dollop of “guesstimation.” Better to err on the side of precaution by eliminating the carcinogens altogether, or replacing it them with a safer substitute whenever possible).

Finally, if Ontarians believe that operators of nuclear reactors will take financial responsibility for accidents at their plants, then Energy Probe says “think again.” Special treatment for the nuclear industry extends to being excused from major liability in case of catastrophes. The industry in Canada has its own federal law, limiting civil liability for off-site damages to $75 million — even if those damages are in the billions. No insurance company will insure private property against the consequences of a nuclear accident. About nuclear industry operators, Norm Rubin says, “Make them responsible! Don’t let them stay in their bullet-proof bunkers telling us that nuclear bullets don’t hurt.”

“Radioactive emissions into air and water at low levels are frequent from nuclear power plants . . . Candu heavy water reactors used in Ontario’s nuclear power plants emit tritium into the air in puffs of steam from their stacks and into surface water on a regular basis. Candus emit more than 100 times the tritium released from other reactor designs, and also 40 times more cesium-141,” says the IICHP critique of December 2005 as part of the OPA Energy for Ontario Recommendations.

My advice: let’s all do our part to ensure Ontario will be a healthy, nuclear-free place to live in the years to come. We’re at a crucial crossroads in Ontario’s energy history, and if there’s ever a time to draw a line in the sand, this is it. Let’s retire those Candu reactors, and get on with the best in energy efficiency, conservation and renewables! Yes, it is our future. But more importantly, it’s our children’s, and their children’s too. Generations to come will face enough challenges without having to keep perpetual watch over mountains of our hazardous nuclear waste, and all the health risks that accompany them.

Resources:

• Primer on the nuclear fuel cycle: Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility: www.ccnr.org

• Smart Generation: Powering Ontario with Renewable Energy, David Suzuki Foundation, www.davidsuzuki.org

• Power for the Future: Towards a Sustainable Electricity System for Ontario. Pembina Institute: www.pembina.org.

• Nuclear is no solution to Climate Change:
www.nirs.org/climate/background/montrealmmstatement.pdf

• Energy Probe has many superb documents and reports about the shortcomings of nuclear energy: www.energyprobe.org

Take Action:

• Go Clean and Green! Send a letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty saying you support a 100% renewable energy future: www.cleanair.web.ca/cg

• You have probably received, by snail-mail, the provincial government pamphlet, Our Energy, Our Future: It’s Time to Talk About Our Electricity Future. Please do respond, although if you’d rather telephone than e-mail or write a letter, here’s the number for the government’s info line: 1-888-668-4636. Address for Energy Minister Donna Cansfield is: 900 Bay Street, Hearst Block, 4th Floor, Toronto ON M7A 2E1.

“Pretty, quaint Port Hope, Ontario,” Alexandra McKee-Bennett is fond of saying just before she drops a few health-related bombshells. Her town's picturesque main street is home to the province’s best-preserved 19th century streetscape. The town boasts over 250 designated heritage homes and buildings. And it’s also home to the world’s only urban uranium refinery, owned by Cameco, which sits not-so-quaintly right in the centre of Port Hope’s harbour on Lake Ontario, the drinking water source for more than six million people. This is the pretty little town so terribly defiled by radioactive waste that Dr. Trevor Hancock, creator of the Healthy Cities movement, has described it as a classic example of “eco-toxicity.” (See www.ph-fare.com)

In her 2004 report, “The Future For Our Children: The Need to Establish a Sustainable Energy Future,” Ms McKee-Bennett, a nurse and midwife, tells the Port Hope council about health problems associated with the refinery. Cancer is one focus, and there are others. The refinery’s emissions of uranium, ammonia and fluoride react with sunlight and nitrous oxides to create a toxic brew that’s a recipe for higher asthma rates and respiratory system inflammations, she notes. As to the toxic effects of flouride, released from Cameco into Port Hope’s air by the hundreds of kilos every year: “A common theme appeared in the reported effects [cited in a 1994 issue of Psychopharmacology]: Impaired memory and concentration, lethargy, headache, depression and confusion. The same theme was echoed in once classified reports about workers from the Manhattan Project [responsible for the world’s first atomic bombs]. The fuel for the Manhattan Project was refined in Port Hope.”

[Oscar]

Childhood leukaemia risk not linked to nuclear plants

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
RS-Childhood_leukaemia_risk_not_linked_to_nuclear_plants-0905118.html

09 May 2011

An extended in-depth study has found no significant evidence of an increased risk of childhood leukaemia for children living close to the UK's nuclear power plants.

- - - -

The 142-page study is available on COMARE's web site.

http://www.comare.org.uk/press_releases/
documents/COMARE14report.pdf

- - - - -
The report, published by the independent Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), presents a new analysis of data on the incidence of leukaemia in children under five years of age living in the vicinity of 13 nuclear power plants in the UK, over the period 1969-2004. In addition, it considers additional factors not addressed in previous COMARE reports which the organisation says may account for differences in leukaemia risks in studies from other countries.

Previous COMARE reports, covering the period 1969-1993, found no evidence that living within 25 km of a nuclear generating site in Britain was associated with an increased risk of childhood cancer. However, prompted in part by the 2007 German study Kinderkrebs in der Umgebung von Kernkraftwerken (KiKK), in 2009 the UK's Department of Health asked COMARE to conduct a further review in addition to its previous studies.

According to the newly released report, the pathology of cases of leukaemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma occurring in children living within 10 km of a UK nuclear power plant did not appear to differ from a larger group of control patients. The risk estimate for childhood leukaemia associated with proximity to a nuclear power plant is "extremely small, if not zero", the study concludes.

The study also looks at other investigations into childhood cancer rates near nuclear power plants in a number of countries, in particular the KiKK study, which found a positive statistical association between the risk of cancer and living within 5 km of a plant for children under five years old. The study was carried out by the German Childhood Cancer Registry on behalf of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenshutz, BfS).

After studying the KiKK results, and corresponding with its authors, COMARE notes that they are heavily influenced by cases in the earliest period (1980-1990), compared with the later periods (1991-1995 and 1996-2003) when the risks are lower. In the later period, COMARE says, the KiKK findings were heavily influenced by a single cluster of leukaemia cases occurring near the Krummel nuclear power plant. COMARE also notes that the KiKK study was not able to take potential confounders, such as socio-economic status, into account, and points out other disparities between additional German geographic studies and the case-control used in the KiKK study.

The COMARE study also considers in utero exposure from discharges of tritium and carbon-14, and finds no current evidence to support the hypothesis that such discharges have been underestimated, nor that they are associated with an increased risk of childhood cancer. [ . . . ]