Plea for independent

check on radiation

Gifford Johnson, in an updater, filed from Majuro, reports on a document which, it seems, the US Government would have preferred to have kept under wraps.

The US Government at first suppressed a Government Accounting Office (GAO) re port of May 8 which said it was not ‘in the best interests of the US Government to inform

people living on Enewetak

Atoll in the Marshall Islands that they may be exposed to ex cessive doses of radiation.’

Enewetak, site of 43 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests from 1948 to 1958, is now undergo ing a $ 100-million nuclear clean-up by the Department of Energy (DOE) to make the islands safe for rehabitation by the Enewetak people who have lived in exile since 1947.

But, the GAO says, there is no guarantee that the islands will be safe for habitation at the completion of the radiation clean-up late this year. The GAO report indicates the

jncertainty surrounding the

unprecedented project among

the government agencies in volved. In spite of this uncer ainty, ‘the government has consistently told us that the islands are safe,’ said Ismael John, a member of the Marshalls’ legislature from Enewetak.

The GAO attempted to pre vent public release of the ‘sen

sitive’ report because negotiations are in progress between the US and the Marshall Islands Political Sta tus Commission to end the United Nations trusteeship agreement which governs the islands. ‘The issue of post-trusteeship liability and claims are a part of the status negotiations,’ said the report, adding that for this reason ‘release of this report. .. would not be in the best interest of the government’.

The government eventually released the GAO report under pressure in late May, following an anonymous phone call to representatives of the Marshalls Status Commission informing them of the study.

When the clean-up started in early 1977, the DOE said ‘it could not assure that the radi ation doses would not sig nificantly exceed the proposed Environmental Protection Agency guidelines’ for popu lation safety. From the outset, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) in charge of the clean-up operations said it was impossible to reduce the contamination to pre-test levels, but Ridded that the southern islands are ‘relatively free’ of contamination and are

safe for habitation. Enewetak’s northern islands are still dangerously radioactive but,

following the clean-up, only

one island, Runit - where

plutonium-contaminated earth

* from other islands is to be dumped in an atomic bomb crater and capped with cement will be off limits. In addition, living and food gathering re strictions will be placed on many islands.

But even if the Enewetak people ‘adhere to living pattern restrictions’, states the GAO re port, ‘they could receive radi ation doses in excess of current standards’,

Tony Debrum, spokesman

for the Marshalls Status Com mission, said even the living re strictions placed on the islands were unrealistic. ‘lslands on either side and within five kilo metres of Runit which must be quarantined for at least 24 000 years are designated for “picnics and food gather ing’’,’ Mr Debrum said.

The GAO questioned the

safety of entombing the

plutonium-saturated debris in cement in a bomb crater.

The high levels of radioac tivity on the northern islands and the problems that devel oped at Bikini Atoll during a

similar clean-up, have delayed,

since 1974, the planting of coconut trees at Enewetak.

In 1969 the Atomic Energy Commission declared that there was ‘virtually no radi ation left’ on Bikini. Then in

1978, after 130 people re turned, medical tests showed the Bikinians’ body levels of radiation were, in some cases, more than twice the maximum considered a safe level in the US. So they were re-evacuated.

The GAO is concerned that the same problems could occur at Enewetak and strongly cri ticised the DNA and the Interior Department for their

opposition to any independent

scientific assessment of radi ation levels at Enewetak. ‘This situation could raise questions on the objectivity of the pro

ject,’ the report suggested.

The GAO report found that the ‘radiological assessments

are being made by employees

of DOE and the Department of Defense or contractors working for these agencies’. The GAO’s concern centred on recent exposure of an Atomic Energy Commission/DOE cover-up of the dangers of radiation from nuclear tests in the 1950 s and the unsatisfactory AEG hand ling of the Bikini nuclear clean-up, informed sources said.

The report concluded that independent scientists should perform an assessment of the

‘post-clean-up hazards’ before

resettlement of the Enewetak

people begins. The report

failed to mention that 55 Enewetak people are now liv ing on one of the islands and that many others have lived there since part of the popu lation was allowed to return in early 1977.