As noted in the accompanying article, the Department of Energy has stated that it did not calculate internal doses for workers, and therefore did not integrate them into dose records until 1989. This single fact means that historical worker dose records for 500,000 to 600,000 DOE workers are open to question and that a large number of them -- those belonging to workers at risk of internal exposure -- are flawed.

The DOE was not actually required to do such integration of internal and external doses, as we note in the article. Still, in the 1950s it was possible to crudely calculate internal worker doses and enter them into worker dose records (though such estimates would often have underestimated exposures). Relatively precise estimates were possible after the mid-1960s by matching up urine data with direct measurements of lung burdens, as IEER did in the case brought against National Lead of Ohio by workers at the Fernald Plant in 1991. (See SDA Vol. 5 No. 3). But the AEC, its successor agencies, and their contractors did not make the effort until 1989, when new regulations required it.

As the case of iodine-131 in fallout out shows, (see iodine article) the nuclear weapons establishment chose not to properly inform the public about the risks and sacrifices that it was imposing upon them. The counterpart for workers of the public relations campaign that accompanied atmospheric testing was constant reassurances that doses were under allowable limits -- and vigorous contestation of worker compensation claims even though the DOE and its predecessor agencies had failed to do their homework on what worker exposures actually were, and though relatively accurate estimates were possible after the mid-1960s.

It is time for the DOE to straighten out the mess by commissioning an independent assessment of the state of internal and external dose data. Simultaneously, the DOE must expeditiously review workers' records to determine which groups of workers who labored to make and test this country's huge nuclear arsenal were at risk of high internal exposures and/or high lifetime exposures. The reconstruction of individual worker doses would be a very costly and difficult exercise, which would in many or most cases also be frustrating because huge uncertainties will inevitably remain. That is why we advocate the calculation of doses to groups of workers to determine at-risk groups for the purposes of medical monitoring and, if warranted, compensation. That way most resources can be devoted to workers rather than technical studies.

It is also possible that the DOE and its contractors have used incomplete dose records to argue its case in compensation cases and other lawsuits. It is improper for the government to continue to fight workers' claims based on exposure data that systematically underestimated doses. A review should be conducted to determine if DOE or its contractors have presented any pre-1989 records as accurate data on internal worker doses.

Private industry also failed to calculate internal worker doses until the 1991-1994 period. We have not examined any set of data relating to workers in the private sector of the nuclear industry. The industry's failure to measure internal doses needs to be reviewed and an assessment should be made of its impact on workers.

There are two rays of hope in this dismal picture. One is that DOE began in 1989 to incorporate internal dose estimates into worker dose records. The other is that DOE and its predecessor agencies appear to have taken sufficient measurements to enable group worker doses to be approximately calculated, at least in the one instance where IEER has had access to the raw data. Since its inception, the DOE has made some effort to track individual worker exposures, which has undoubtedly resulted in lower overall exposures then would have occurred if no effort were made. But these measures have been grossly inadequate. If the DOE can spend $4.5 billion a year on laboratory testing and computer simulation of nuclear weapons, which we have found to be essentially unnecessary for maintaining safety (See SDA Vol. 5 No. 2), it can find the resources to do justice to the people exposed to radiation while building nuclear weapons.

--Arjun Makhijani and Bernd Franke