Where mechanical dosimeters failed, residents’ blood did not.Ĭitizens voiced their health concerns just months after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in a protest at Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital. Using a chromosome test initially established in the 1960s and honed during examination of Chernobyl liquidators, researchers determined that the public in these plumes received 600-900 milligrays of radiation exposure - thousands of times higher than annual natural background doses and very much higher than research paid for by the Fund could ever have assessed.
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Researchers then drew blood from people in these plume pathways who complained of symptoms associated with higher radiation exposure: vomiting, diarrhea, skin reddening (erythema). To arrive at these doses, researchers (see the Wing study, below) used meteorological data to establish where the radiation plumes traveled that were released from TMI. ” (from Beyea) Without properly functioning monitoring equipment, dose reconstruction - the method used to figure out how much radiation people were exposed to - is at best unreliable, at worst, deceptive.īiological data show some residents’ exposures were much higher - 60–90 rads - than officials or industry admitted at the time. The Kemeny Commission concluded “An exceptional percentage (well over half) of health physics and monitoring instruments were not functional at the time of the accident.
We don’t know how much radiation was released because monitors were non-functionalĭata from radiation monitors from the time were unreliable. If a researcher wanted to claim more harm or investigate a worst-case scenario, an expert selected by nuclear industry insurers would have to “concur on the nature and scope of the projects.”.Those studying the health impact of Three Mile Island radiation emissions were prohibited from assessing “worst case estimates” of radiation releases unless such estimates would lead to a conclusion of insignificant amount of harm - that being “less than 0.01 health effects”.If a researcher wanted to conduct a study using money from this Fund, they had to obey two main parameters set forth by Federal Judge Sylvia Rambo, who was in charge of the Fund.*
(Photo: Child Aloft by Robert Del Tredici)Īfter the Three Mile Island reactor core melted and radioactivity was released to the surrounding population, researchers were not allowed to investigate health impacts of higher doses because the TMI Public Health Fund, established to pay for public health research related to the disaster, was under a research gag order issued by a court. Residents at the time had questions about health risks but the fund established to pay for public health research related to the disaster was under a research gag order issued by a court.