Reply #20: Three Mile Island: Health Study Meltdown

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/t0778475220w1365/fulltext.pdf

September/October 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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After the meltdown one would have expected to see some articles featuring local health statistics especially statistics relating to the very young. The developing fetus and infant are much more susceptible than adults to the effects of ionizing radiation. In addition, reports of elevated disease rates in the youngest residents near the plant quickly surfaced.

Pennsylvania Health Commissioner Gordon MacLeod publicly stated that downwind from the plant the number of babies born with hypothyroidism jumped from nine in the nine months before the accident to 20 in the nine months after.

MacLeod reasoned that the thyroid gland was affected by the large amount of thyroid-seeking iodine 131 released from the plant. He also emphasized the increase in deaths of infants within a 10-mile radius, as did Ernest Sternglass, a University of Pittsburgh physicist. In the six months after the accident, 31 infants living within 10 miles of the plant died, more than double the 14 deaths during the same six-month period the previous year.

Vital Statistics of the United States, an annual volume issued by the National Center for Health Statistics, showed that the 1978–1979 rate increase in Pennsylvania exceeded the national increase in three crucial categories: infant deaths, births under 3.3 pounds, and percent of newborns with low Apgar scores. In Dauphin County, where the Three Mile Island plant is located, the 1979 death rate among infants under one year represented a 28 percent increase over that of 1978; and among infants under one month, the death rate increased by 54 percent.

But no articles were published. MacLeod was fired by Gov. Richard Thornburgh just six months after taking office; Sternglass was described by health officials as an alarmist.

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