Portland State Magazine Winter 1991

f • Cummin s, who spent the past three years collecting data on the veterans, has found the hunt fo r names and records of Camp Hanfo rd soldiers stati oned during the military post's Army Corps of Engineers period of 1943 to 195 I laborious. To ensure secrecy of the plutonium production facility , the Army deliberate ly hid personnel records of those stationed there. "They spread the personne l records to bases th rougho ut the country," says Cummins. "We have no hard-and-fast record of the number of people stationed there from 1943 to 195 1. We ' re estimating 5,000. But we ' ll never know where those records are for sure." Cummins has enli sted the aid of the American Legion and other veterans groups in the quest fo r personnel data. and he's written an artic le about the study, to be published in the American Legion's membership magazine earl y thi s year. Obtaining data on the earliest Camp Hanford soldiers is essenti al because more death certificates should be ava ilable on those peopl e than for those who served in the 1950s. The study might get a boost from the Department of Veterans Affairs Environmental Epidemiology Service, which " has expressed great interest in cooperating on the project," says Nussbaum. The epidemiology service has easier access to federal medical records of the early Camp Hanford soldiers and could help the researchers obtain the all-important death certificates. Cummins, Nussbaum and Stewart are negoti ating with the VA Epidemiology Service about the terms of closer cooperat ion. F ortunate ly for Cummins, finding data on the approximately 18,000 vets who served at Camp Hanford from 1952 to 1962 has been an easier task. Rosters of those soldiers are kept at the St. Loui s, Mo., Personnel Records Center. The Department of Veterans Affairs has cross-checked the names and is supplying mortality data. From the death certificates, researchers will detennine the number of deaths caused either primarily or secondarily by cancer. Already, the research team has collected the names of I00,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Lew is from 1943 to 1962. Cummins also is trying to determine the Camp Hanford so ldiers ' length o f stay, so that those individuals can be compared directly with Fort Lewis soldiers. " It' s a relati vely simple methodology." Nussbaum says. " You have two groups compri sed of men who were bae, icall y healthy when they began the ir duty. The onl y distinct difference is locale.'· The data will be shipped th is spring to Dr. Stewart , who wi ll ana lyze the stati stics with stati st ician-colleague George Kneale, with plans to publish the analys is of the data in late in the summer of 199 1. Stewart gained notoriety 14 years ago when she published the first study showing that workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington were be ing killed by long-term effects of rad iation. Some sc ientists have disputed Stewart's work , but she has pressed on, detennined updated Hanford worker data to Dr. Stewart for re-analys is. A senior research fe ll ow at the Un ited Kingdom ' s Birmingham Un iversi ty. Stewart hel ped launch the Camp Hanfo rd study in 1987 through the Boston-based Childhood Cancer Researc h Institute, of which she is scientific d irec tor. All fundin g for the study has come via private organi zations. including the Childhood Cancer Researc h Institute, the Ruth Mott Fund of Flint, Mich .. and the Penn sy lvania-based Three Mile Island Public Health Fund. Cummin s says the study's total fundin g will be under $250,000. Cummin s' interest in the effects of low- leve l rad iati on was kindled about five years ago while he served as an admini strati ve ass istant for Congressman Camp Hanfo rd was its own city in 1944. with movie theater in the foregro und and trailer park behind. PSU researchers are looking at the effects !ow-level radiation had 0 11 the many military personnel stationed there between 1943 to 1962. (Phoro courtesy of Westinghouse Hanford.) that more stud ies are needed to understand the link between low- level rad iati on and death. After a decade long battl e over access to Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear worker data by independent scientists , liti gation and negotiations with DOE Secretary Watkins led to the release of Jim Weaver in Washington, D.C. Fonner Camp Hanford soldier Richard Mecklenburg, of Eugene, to ld Cummins and others that he had recently deve loped cancer. Meck lenburg believed the cancer was linked to hi s Hanford days and , through Weaver's office, sought answers from the federal government. PSU15