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New study on 1979 nuclear accident raises debate
February 24, 1997
Web posted at: 9:30 a.m. ESTIn this story:
- Higher cancer, leukemia rates cited
- High radiation plumes may have gone undetected
- Power company: 'Further review not necessary'
- Related sites
(CNN) -- The amount of radiation released in the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant and the cancer rates of residents living downwind may have been higher than previously thought, according to a study questioned by critics.
Three scientific journals have refused to print the findings from University of North Carolina researcher Steven Wing, and some of his fellow epidemiologists dismiss him as an anti-nuclear activist who let his personal views cloud his objectivity.
The study has now been published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The accident south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, occurred through a combination of mechanical and operator errors that allowed the reactor's radioactive core to overheat and partially melt.
Higher cancer, leukemia rates cited
Wing says lung cancer and leukemia rates downwind of the central Pennsylvania reactor were many times higher than upwind rates after the March 28, 1979 accident.
"The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported," he said.
A 1990 Columbia University study said the accident was not responsible for an increase in lung cancer risk downwind from the area because the radiation release was low. That study concluded that other environmental factors were more likely to be responsible for the increased cancer rate.
Where the Columbia study found a 30 percent average increase in lung cancer risk among one group of neighbors, Wing found an 85 percent increase for the same group.
But he also looked at different configurations of residents -- based on their proximity to the escaping radiation -- and found some locations with lung cancer rates four to six times higher than the local average.
High radiation plumes may have gone undetected
Wing also found a different result on leukemia. The original study found little or no increase in adult leukemias and an increase in childhood cases that was statistically unreliable.
Wing concluded that people who were downwind during the most intense radiation releases were, on the average, eight to 10 times more likely to get leukemia than others living within a 10-mile radius of the plant.
"I would be the first to say that our study doesn't prove by itself that there were high-level radiation exposures, but it is part of a body of evidence that is consistent with high exposures," said Wing, an associate professor of epidemiology and chief researcher on the study.
Last year, more than 2,000 damage claims filed by residents in the area of the reactor near Harrisburg were dismissed in U.S. District Court.
While the government and other studies have said radiation releases into the atmosphere were low, Wing said plumes containing higher radiation could have passed undetected.
Power company: 'Further review not necessary'
However, researchers on the 1990 study said in a rebuttal that they examined data that showed radiation releases were in the range of official estimates.
"I think our findings show that there ought to be a more serious investigation of what happened after the Three Mile Island accident," Wing said.
At General Public Utilities, the company that operates Three Mile Island, a spokesman said further review is not necessary because Wing's peers have dismissed his work as biased.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related sites:
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- The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
- General Public Utilities (nuclear division)
- Three Mile Island sites (Lycos list)
- Scientist offers a new take on Three Mile Island (Phildelphia Inquirer - February 24, 1997)
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