The Public Health Service has under consideration long-range plans for monitoring the radioactivity content of man's environment with the ultimate objective of estimating radiation exposures to the population. Food collections and analyses are a part of these plans and include drawing upon the extensive capabilities of the State health departments throughout the United States. Other Federal Government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission have additional plans for food monitoring and you may wish to contact them. A second principal point introduced by Dr. Michelson in his testimony was the desirability of large scale epidemiological studies. The design and conduct of epidemiological studies are most difficult tasks even under favorable circumstances. For example, epidemiological studies proposed to reveal biological differences in radiation exposure must depend on techniques, as yet incompletely developed or not existing at all, in order to differentiate one cause (radiation) from many possible causes. Further, the variances within this one cause between different population groups are relatively small. Despite these difficulties engendered by the necessity to develop techniques and competencies in these type of epidemiological studies, we have selected certain areas such as the San Juan Basin in New Mexico to conduct pilot epidemiological studies. We are planning to proceed with additional efforts in this field as rapidly as technological achievements permit. We believe that such efforts will gradually increase our technical competencies and add to our knowledge respecting the effects of exposure to radiation in the environment. If we can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to let me know. JULY 21, 1960. Dr. IRVING MICHELSON, Director, Public Service Projects, Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., Mount Vernon, N.Y. DEAR DR. MICHELSON: Attached for your information is a copy of a letter received from the Public Health Service in response to our request for comments on parts of your testimony at our recent hearings on "Radiation Protection Criteria and Standards." Sincerely yours, JAMES T. RAMEY, CONSUMERS UNION, Dr. JAMES T. RAMEY, Mount Vernon, N.Y., August 8, 1960. Executive Director, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States. Washington D.C. DEAR DR. Ramey: Thank you for your letter of July 21 with its enclosure containing the comments of Dr. Kurlander on my testimony at the recent hearing on "Radiation Protection Criteria and Standards." I believe the Public Health Service is doing as much as it can with the funds available to it. If I did not make it clear in my testimony, I believe the Public Health Service would need more funds to embark on any additional work. Regarding epidemiological studies, I am fully aware of the tremendous difficulties inherent in such studies, but I believe that pilot studies at least should be done as soon as possible in order to make it possible to obtain information of this nature, by finding what the difficulties are and overcoming them. Sincerely, IRVING MICHELSON, Director, Public Service Projects. Representative HOSMER. The next witness is Dr. Allan M. Butler, representing the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee. Dr. Butler, will you come forward? 1 STATEMENT OF DR. ALLAN M. BUTLER, PROFESSOR OF PEDIATRICS, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, AND CHIEF, CHILDREN'S MEDICAL SERVICE, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR A SANE NUCLEAR POLICY Dr. BUTLER. I am Dr. Allan M. Butler, professor of pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and chief of the Children's Medical Service, Massachusetts General Hospital. I represent the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. As a physician, my concern regarding radiation hazards pertains to the public's present and future health. Certainly, the establishment of standards of maximal permissible exposure of individuals and maximal concentrations of water, atmosphere, and food are highly desirable, either as a limit or as guides, if the scientific knowledge of thermonuclear reactions is to be used constructively to society's benefit and not irresponsibly with unknown risks to our present society and future generations. To answer one of the questions posed to those appearing here by the committee, it should be emphasized that the problems of radiation protection are so unusual that they have little analogy to those in other fields of hazard protection. As Viscount Hailsham, speaking this winter as Minister of Science in the House of Lords, England, commented: I believe that it is worthwhile bearing in mind the nature of the particular hazards and the characteristics of the particular material, danger from which it is the object of the bill to prevent. First, I would draw your attention to the difficulty of detecting at all, by any of the senses or by measuring without highly specialized equipment, what substances are radioactive and what are not. This fact, in itself, renders the task of safeguarding the public against the consequences of injudicious disposal of radioactive waste somehat different in character from that of dealing with the kind of nuisance or danger to health which the Local Authority Acts of one kind or another require local authorities to prevent. Secondly, I would draw attention to the long lapse of time which inevitably is likely to occur before any damage caused by exposure to radioactive substances is actually detected, and the consequent difficulty—and perhaps impossibility—in most, if not all, cases, of being able to attach the damage to any particular exposure which has taken place and to relate the cause to the effect, when the effect is seen, The special problems thus created are mentioned in your Joint Committee Print on Selected Materials on Radiation Protection Criteria and Standards by Dr. Weber of the U.S. Public Health Serv ice, Mr. Dresch of Stanford Research Institute, and Mr. Healy of the Hanford Laboratories. Even if the difficulties in appraising and enforcing such standards as mentioned are overcome, certain particularly serious hazards remain. For example, there is a bill before the Massachusetts Legislature, House 2904, establishing an atomic fuel reprocessing plant (misleadingly referred to as a nuclear park), at Camp Edwards adjacent to the Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. Standards for maximal permissible contamination of the atmosphere, water, vegetation, beasts, fowl, and fish in microcurie orders of magnitude could reduce the hazards incident to the continuing operations of such a plant if effectively enforced. But how can such standards protect against the hazards of accidental leakage, spillage or other operational accident that would disseminate megacurie amounts of the high activity waste produced by the routine operation of such a plant? The unsolved problems of operational nuclear accidents and disposal of high-potency waste are mentioned in your Joint Committee print by Dr. Chauncey Starr of North American Aviation and Mr. J. F. Fairman of the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York. It is generally agreed that such waste cannot be disposed of at sea and must be buried on land. As far as I know, no standards pertaining to the density of population, water table level, drainage, nature of soil and atmospheric conditions within a certain area of such a plant have been established, though precautions have been taken as, for example, at the plant near Arco, Idaho. Mr. Sandbank of the American Municipal Association indicated the lack of standards this morning. Certainly no such standards have been mentioned in the Massachusetts Legislature's special report, House No. 2290, of its investigation and study relative to the establishment of the Cape Cod plant. Indeed the scientists appearing at the hearings felt the risk to be so great that they all opposed the project. Among them were Dr. Shields Warren, Boston, consultant in biology and medicine for the AEC; Prof. Charles Coryell, nuclear chemist at MIT, and formerly associated with the Manhattan project; Dr. Bostwick Ketchum, senior oceanographer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Dr. Alfred Redfield, past professor of physiology, Harvard, and senior oceanographer emeritus, Woods Hole; Dr. Andrew Bunker, meteorologist at the Woods Hole Institute; Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi of the Marine Biological Laboratories, Woods Hole, and Prof. Cyrus Levinthal, biochemist, MIT, Cambridge. I would like to quote from Dr. Warren's comments published in the Falmouth Enterprise, April 29, 1960. I will make the quotes from his comments brief. Representative HOSMER. Do these pertain to the issue in Massachusetts on the so-called Nuclear Park? Dr. BUTLER. They do. They give an example of the toxicity to which the public will be subjected by such a plant by such an authority as Dr. Shields Warren. I give them for that reason. Representative HOSMER. Would you rather put those in the record at this point? Dr. BUTLER. I would like to put his full comments in the record and I will very briefly mention a few sentences. Representative HOSMER. You may select out what you choose. The reason, Doctor, is that I personally dislike to get various statements in the record when we do not have an opportunity to examine the person who made them. We will take them as statements of which you ap prove. Dr. BUTLER. Right; then I will quote briefly from his comments. The nuclear business is one that poses some unusual problems. Many types of nuclear reactors require large volumes of water for cooling and other purposes. If the water is used for cooling within the reactor it is dangerously radioactive and cannot be discharged back into the water table. It would have to be wasted into the sea. This would be tragic for an area such as Cape Cod with no major rivers and where, in times of drought, water can be an acute problem. Representative HOSMER. Dr. Warren there is referring to high level radiation or low level radiation? Dr. BUTLER. He is referring to the high level radiation which is characteristic of the waste from a fuel reprocessing plant. Sea water cannot be used because of the radioactivation of the contained salts. If water is not used within the reactor but for condensing purposes, huge volumes, as much as 130 million gallons per day, are required and the evaporation lost from a cooling tower is still great. The chief industry spoken of for the proposed nuclear park is a chemical processing plant. This is the most dangerous type of business in the nuclear field (1) Because the materials brought to the plant are highly radioactive and may well include plutonium, the most dangerous chemical element known to man, and numerous radioactive fission products such as iodine 131, strontium 90, and other undesirable isotopes. (2) Because the chemical processing consists essentially of separating the uranium of the fuel elements from these components and these radioactive components must be stored or disposed of. Because of the sandy nature of the cape soil, because of the character of the water table in that soil, it would be impossible to store radioactive waste without at least potential danger of contamination of the water supply of most of the cape. Obviously discharge of radioactive waste cannot be made in the Massachusetts Bay as this might provide a troublesome level of contamination to many of our most valuable resort beaches and ruin the fishing industry. Finally, even in the best regulated of operations, such as those performed by the Atomic Energy Commission, contractors, there are still possible dangers of accident. Consequently, chemical processing plants have been placed in relatively isolated areas, certainly not a region immediately adjacent to a vital airbase and fairly close to sizable centers of population such as Cape Cod provides in the summertime. One might well conceive of an accident that required the evacuation of thousands of vacationists from the Cape Cod area which might have to be by boat since Routes 6 and 28 are close to the proposed site. A blow such as this once sustained would be ruinous to the vacation industry of the cape which is far more vital and remunerative than the nuclear park could hope to be. I would advise, in the light of the foregoing, that the Falmouth Enterprise fight the establishment of the nuclear park in spite of the fact that the park is desired by many businessmen. I am sure that if these businessmen were as familiar with the health and safety problems of the atomic energy industry as I am, they would be fighting as hard against the establishment of the nuclear park as they are fighting for it at the present time. Dr. BUTLER. No scientist spoke in favor of the bill. Proponents were interested primarily in the business involved in constructing the plant, making no quantitative comparison of the small order of magnitude of the employment and business provided by the operation of the plant relative to the employment and income derived from the $100 million annual business of the traditional industries of Cape Cod. This committee asks to what extent should the necessary technical subject matter behind radiation protection criteria and standards in the application be explained to the public. I would suggest, as have the representatives of the AFL-CIO, that they should be explained to the fullest extent possible. Though it seems unlikely the legislature will approve the bill, the pressure for approval by the private industry and the Navy is disturbing in view of the opinion of the experts and a 20 to 1 public vote against the proposal. The contributions of the scientists were unfamiliar to some of the legislators and proponents. Some considered the scientists as "eggheads" and some comments reminiscent of McCarthy even insinuated the scientists were fellow travelers or Communist sympathizers. Many felt the bill should be passed, leaving it up to the AEC and the Department of Health to stop construction or operation unless the safety standards are met. We may hope this trust is justified, but the possibility would seem better were the U.S. Public Health Service to be more directly given the principal responsibility for standards, inspection, and control; the AEC, for example, having in a sense special interest in the expansion of the industry. The question still presents, what standards are there that protect against the hazards of the accidental dissemination of megacurie amounts of radioactive waste that may persist for hundreds of years. As Dr. Starr states in your print Unforeseen events may occur during the operation of nuclear plants. The maximal permissible emergency exposures have not been officially established. Thus the problem facing Massachusetts and the cape is a specific instance of one of the most serious problems facing civilization in the development of atomic industry. It deserves to be dealt with as factually and adequately as possible. Certainly we should make use of the scientific knowledge that provides the possibility of using thermonuclear energy for constructive purposes but just as certainly we should realistically face the inevitable problems that confront civilization in an expanding utilization of thermonuclear energy. At the present time no one has answers that solve the problem of how to dispose of hot atomic waste or weigh the hazards of nuclear accidents. Until answers are at hand, we should go slowly in expanding the industry and in creating such waste prior to having obtained knowledge of how to manage hazards that are of an entirely different order of magnitude than any society has faced heretofore. Thank you. Representative HOSMER. Dr. Butler, as I understand it, the Atomic Energy Commission has never been contacted relative to this site at Cape Cod. I am relatively certain that it would not be authorized if it were. The committee also has gone into this matter of waste disposal rather thoroughly. I assume you are familiar with the hearings held last year. Dr. BUTLER. I am familiar with some of the statements. I am also familiar with some of the statements of the international meeting held last fall. As far as I know, the problem of safe disposal of high energy atomic waste is still unsolved. Representative HOSMER. Mr. Ramey? |