
          Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience
with Atomic Radiation. By Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon
with Robert Alverez and Eleanor Walters, New York: Dell Publishing
Co., 1982, $12.95.
          By Northrop, JohnJohn Northrop
          Vol. 4, No. 6, 1982, pp. 19-20
          
          Hiroshima proved that the atomic bomb could wipe out cities, but it
was years later before many people began paying much attention to the
possible side effects of radiation. Big mistake.
          Evidently, Americans have paid an extraordinary price for nuclear
technology from almost the very beginning. Immediately after the war,
American G.I.'s were assigned to help sweep up the rubble in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. A few years later the veterans were dying from cancer in
unusual numbers. Soldiers who had served as observer/guinea pigs near
subsequent bomb tests also fell victim to cancer at an unusually high
rate. Adding insult to injury, the Veterans Administration has denied
most claims, refusing to acknowledge the apparent connection between
radiation and the atomic veterans' diseases.
          True enough, it's nearly impossible to prove exactly what has
caused any given individual's cancer, but statistics and common sense
should tell us something. When men are dropping dead of the disease at
rates of up to ten times greater than the rest of us, and the obvious
common denominator is uncommon radiation exposure, we at least should
give them the benefit of the doubt.
          But there, precisely, is the problem. From the beginning, the
burden of proof has fallen on those who believe that atomic radiation
is dangerous, not on those who would have us think it safe. As a
watchdog, the federal government has shown a feeble bark and a more
feeble bite, proving most attentive to safety claims by pro-nuclear
radiation authorities. Official radiation standards have tightened
only as embarassing evidence has mounted that no amount of radiation
can be considered "safe."
          Killing Our Own surveys the damage. Chapters discuss
a host of radiation issues, including the use and misuse of medical
X-rays, the hazards of occupational radiation exposure, and the health
threat of routine releases from nuclear power plants. One of the
worrisome problems with even low-level radiation is its potential
impact on later generations. Genetic damage to a few individuals now
can show up as widespread birth defects a few decades down the
road.
          Not that we'll have to wait for other damage. In 1976, the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commisssion admitted that the nation's nuclear
power program will cause 1,1001,300 cancer deaths and 2,100-2,400
genetic defects by the year 2000. This may seem a piddling sum
compared with annual U.S. traffic deaths of up to fifty thousand each
year. However, the NRC figures fall low in the range of atomic
casualty estimates, and they don't consider the consequences of an
accident.
          Like at Three Mile Island. In a chapter entitled "People Died at
Three Mile Island"--an ironic reference to bumper stickers claiming
otherwise--the authors point to official Pennsylvania state health
statistics which show a sudden rise in neo-natal and infant deaths in
the TMI area shortly after the 1979 power plant accident. The authors
also show how Pennsylvania health officials have been playing games
with the same statistics, trying to prove their own figures lie.
          The authors don't guess why, but one reason is plain enough. The
state was a bit slow to order an evacuation of young chidren and
pregnant women during the TMI crisis. If TMI radiation did kill those
babies, who deserves at least some of the blame . . . ?
          Which brings to mind a story from a quarter-century earlier than
TMI. Atom bombs and reactors have much in common, as would any parent
and child. Certainly their 

radioactive by-products are similar, as
well as the health effects of these substances. For years, the bomb
people freely polluted the atmosphere and wide areas of the American
west with weapons test fallout. Until the 1960's, the old Atomic
Energy Commission, now broken up into the NRC and other agencies,
steadfastly held that the fallout was almost harmless, despite a
growing clamor by knowledgeable scientists that thousands of human
beings would die from radiation effects.
          In 1954, a Hollywood movie crew came to St. George, Utah, a bit
downrange from the government's Nevada bomb test site. The crew stayed
three months filming The Conqueror, featuring John
Wayne. By 1979, ninety-one of the crew's 220 members had developed
cancer, and half of those had died of the disease. Among the victims
were the film's stars--Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Dick Powell and
Wayne himself.
          When People magazine put it all together in 1980,
the implications were embarassing. "Please, God," a Pentagon official
was quoted, "don't let us have killed John Wayne."
          The Duke is dead, but nuclear energy lives on. Every section of the
nation has its share of nuclear facilities. In the South, Mississippi
was the site of two underground bomb tests in the
mid-1960's. Tennessee Valley Authority electricity has powered uranium
enrichment facilities since the beginning of the A-bomb program. Even
with recent cutbacks, TVA's nuclear power plant program is one of the
largest in the world: South Carolina hosts one of the nation's two
major high level waste dumps. There's even uranium mining in
Florida.
          As the nation's poor (and everyone else) struggle through our new
era of limitations, at least one industry maintains its favored status
at the government trough. Big federal bucks still go to nuclear
research and development despite ham-fisted cutbacks in alternative
energy programs. Indirect nuclear subsidies also continue, like the
legal monstrosity known as the Price-Anderson Act. Price-Anderson
limits government and industry liability to a mere fraction of the
multibillion dollar costs possible in an all-out nuclear power plant
disaster. This means that if your neighborhood nuke goes haywire and
your property is rendered uninhabitable for centuries, you'll have to
swallow most of those losses.
          One suspects there won't be much change soon in federal performance
where radiation and health are concerned. Over the years, federal
officials have ignored and even suppressed evidence that radiation is
far more dangerous than atomic promoters would like.
          Much of this is not particularly new. Killing Our
Own consolidates a wealth of information from Peter Metzger's
The Atomic Establishment and other sources, all
carefully noted. Indeed, this is one of the book's strong points; it
is an efficient overview of radiation information from a perspective
not backed by industry money or government promotion.
          The book's other strong point is people. The authors have
incorporated the personal stories of a good many radiation
victims. Confronted by their anguish, the reader sees beyond the
statistics and finds human faces. Individual agony speaks more
directly to our sympathies and reinforces the impression that
government and industry have behaved with insensitivity, even
criminality.
          Critics already have accused Killing Our Own of
trafficking in hearsay. That's a bit much, although it's fair to
concede that some of the evidence against the radiation establishment
seems circumstantial. No matter. Convictions are won--and conviction
shaped when circumstantial evidence is cogent. Killing Our
Own probably won't be the last word on its subject, but it
will help shift the burden of proof in the court of public opinion. As
the public grows more aware of the real and potential threats of
atomic radiation, the nuclear establishment--including cooperative
federal and state "regulatory" agencies--will be forced to admit the
danger of its wares.
          At last we'll get to the real issue: Is nuclear energy really worth
its high human costs?
          
            John Northrop is a member of the Conservation Committee
of the Birmingham Audubon Society.
          
        