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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The Centers for Disease Control has posted its final report on the feasibility of studying health problems caused by nuclear-testing fallout, concluding that a detailed study was technically possible.
However, it said this would require significant resources and that "careful considerations should be given to public health priorities before this path is taken."
Congress requested the feasibility report in 1998. The final report was posted on the Internet on Friday, a spokeswoman said.
At issue has been the long-term effect of radioactive fallout from the aboveground tests conducted in Nevada in the 1950s and early 1960s. Studies have produced conflicting conclusions as to whether the fallout caused increased incidences of particular types of cancer in the residents living downwind in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 provides for compassionate payments to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases.
The report referred approvingly to a study that Dr. Joseph Lyon of the University of Utah was conducting related to the connection between thyroid abnormalities and fallout. However, Lyon's study was killed by the CDC last year. Lyon estimated his study was about two-thirds completed.
"We should be doing that study," he said Tuesday. "The CDC shut us down and told us it was a waste of their money and time."
The final feasibility report described the harm from fallout as small.
It said that about 11,000 "extra cancer deaths from all cancers, including leukemia, would be predicted to occur among the population of the United States alive at any time during the years 1951-2000 as a result of external exposure to fallout."
When nonfatal cancers are included, the number of cases double to 22,000, it said. That is a relatively small number compared with the millions of cases that harm Americans.
The most heavily impacted by fallout are the 3.8 million Americans born in 1951, because that group had higher doses at younger ages than others. Fallout was expected to cause "fewer than 1,000 extra fatal cancers" among them. By comparison, for people born in 1951, about 760,000 fatal cancers could be expected if there were no fallout.
"Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout, and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure," the report said. About 100 nuclear bombs were detonated above ground at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and 1960s.
The new report said fallout deposition maps are available, and a detailed study of health impacts is technically possible
"In spite of the large uncertainties, it is likely that there is an increased risk of cancer from fallout, but it is also highly likely that this increase is very small relative to the usual risk of cancer in the absence of fallout exposure," it said.
The report also said the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, "could help to clarify the extent to which the Nevada tests increased the incidence of thyroid cancer.
The report said regarding Lyon's study that "The University of Utah is currently extending the follow-up for a previous epidemiological study of children who lived in the vicinity of the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s; the results are expected to be available in a few years."
However, that study was canceled by CDC before the final report was completed.
"Obviously, the Institute of Medicine must disagree with the leadership of the CDC" about the value of his study, Lyon said.
Preston Truman, a former southern Utah resident now living in Malad, Idaho, and director of the activist group Downwinders, said he was amazed by the lack of attention paid to Lyon's study.
After it was canceled, "the politicians never really applied the pressure they could have," he said. He said a fallout study should be made to get answers to questions that persist.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
