Downwinders, RECA, and Compensation
by Trisha Pritikin of Hanford DownwindersApril 16, 2000
This new compensation/health care initiative must not deprive RECA (as amended) of the funding it needs to do what it was intended to do.
To the best of my understanding (correct me if im wrong), RECA was envisioned and enacted at a time when only Bruce Wacholz and a very small group of his colleagues at NCI knew of the true potential scope of fallout exposures within our country, and that "hot spots" existed not just in areas close in around the Nevada Test Site, but also in a number of areas geographically remote to the test site. That is, RECA was designed, within its eligibility group, to compensate downwinders exposed significantly, in areas close in to the Nevada Test Site.
At that time, it was not known that a person exposed to NTS fallout in an area geographically remote, such as Albany, New York could have received a dose which was as high as that received by exposed populations close in to the Nevada Test Site, due to a number of thunderstorms and other weather patterns which brought NTS fallout down heavily in those remote areas.
Therefore, RECA did not address the health problems of highly exposed individuals exposed to NTS fallout in Northern UT, MT, and other remote geographic regions.
This compensation initiative, as I see it:
l. Needs to avoid any depletion of funds which need to go towards RECA and its amendment provisions.
2. Needs to be expanded, when pen goes to paper on Monday over there in D.C., to include those ("downwinders") exposed to emissions within the nuclear weapons production and testing complex, who are at HIGHEST risk.
These individuals would have the following individual risk factors helping to determine their eligibility for this compensation/health care initiative:
- a. Exposed at least, in part, during childhood (approx when 19 years of age or younger when the developing body is most susceptible to radio-chemical exposures)
- b. If I-131- drank milk as infant/child (cows' or goat's milk- although goat's milk retains a higher level of radioiodine than cows milk) THis is a principle radioiodine pathway.
- c. estimated dose (this is often difficult to reconstruct and should not be the primary determining factor)
This would define the HIGHEST RISK exposed downwinders, from NTS (many are not currently eligible for compensation under RECA), and highest risk exposed from individual DOE (formerly, AEC) facilities.
CONTROLLABLE NUMBERS: when this expansion of the compensation initiative is mentioned, the first reaction of the uninitiated is usually "we are all downwinders", or "this would be millions and millions of people."
Not true. Some individuals were exposed heavily during the most vulnerable times in their lives, and have very serious health outcomes to deal with. We are not all downwinders to the same degree. To illustrate, the Hanford Medical Monitoring Program (HMMP) identified 16,000 people, exposed in childhood to certain reconstructed doses of I-131, as highest risk and eligible for the HMMP . There were potentially two million people exposed to Hanford's rad emissions. The highest risk exposed group of "downwinders", as can be seen, is much, much smaller.
By similarly identifying the group at highest risk from NTS and individual site exposures, a definable number of individuals at highest risk could be identified.
I feel that downwinders are being left out of this compensation/health care initiative because:
- a) people are under the misconception that a highest risk subgroup downwinders could not be identified, and thus the number of people filing claims would be astronomical.
- b) People do not understand that, in many cases, these downwinders, exposed in infancy and childhood, may have received doses equivalent to those of workers. And, downwinder exposures were repeated, day after day, year after year.
- c) People may be under the misperception that RECA covers downwinders broadly. Not true. Only a small, geographically close-in group are included under RECA. Again, RECA was drafted before the extent of NTS fallout dispersion was known or understood.
RECA does not cover downwinders from any other portions of the nuclear weapons production and testing complex.
I look forward to peoples' thoughts on this expansion proposal.
I close on an ethical point: Downwinders at highest risk were exposed in utero, as infants, and as children. These were obviously not voluntary exposures.
Workers at least knew they might possibly be placed in some sort of harm's way- hazmat work does have its dangers. The extent of exposures and health implications were not known completely by most (my parents were both workers in the nuclear weapons complex- they did not know the extent of possible exposures and health implications thereto), but at least they had a choice of what sort of work they wanted to go into, and chose nuclear weapons production related jobs.
Downwinders' exposures occurred during their most vulnerable period of life.
The Ethical Dilemma: this compensation/health care plan leaves OUT the childhood involuntary,unpaid, highest risk exposures, and includes the adult worker exposures. Is there not something completely and ethically backwards about this? Why should highest risk exposed babies and children with devastating radiogenic disease be overlooked? Is this group invisible? Wish we had a union to go to bat for us. Instead, all we have is disease and, apparently, invisibility...
In unity,
Trisha Pritikin
Hanford Downwinders