http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nuclear-607540-diablo-health.html

Researchers consider: How risky is that radiation?

By TERI SFORZA / Staff Columnist
Published: March 29, 2014 Updated: 9:16 p.m.

The baby teeth of kids living near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant contained radioactive Strontium-90 – which can cause bone cancer and leukemia – at levels nearly one-third higher than in the baby teeth of other California kids, says a controversial study released last week.

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“Yes, the industry is savaging the study,” he told us by email. “But I hope a good journalist like you remembers to ask them: What proof do they have that the plant is safe? (Or, why haven’t any studies of health near Diablo Canyon been done since the plant opened in 1984)?

Aren’t they actually criticizing the messenger, and ignoring the message (trends in local disease and death rates, which comes from official sources like the NRC and CDC)? Isn’t the savaging the same as was done to Rachel Carson by the pesticide industry, after her seminal book in 1962 (Silent Spring)? Or Dr. Alice Stewart when she found that a low-dose abdominal X-ray to a pregnant woman nearly doubled the chance the child would die of cancer by age 10 (in 1958)? There are more examples, but both were later upheld and accepted, and led to changes in practice.”

Actually, no, there haven’t been official health studies to measure trends in local disease and death rates lately – which brings us back to the NAS, which is trying, finally, to do that.

Anti-nuclear activist Ace Hoffman of Carlsbad attended the NAS’ last meeting about the study in Irvine, and plans to be at this one as well. He and his wife were the only citizens who spoke during the public comment period.

“I had a brief conversation with one of the scientists who had studied radiation damage all his adult life, mostly at a university in Utah,” Hoffman told us by email. “I complained that we are a long way from finding the true nature of low level radiation damage, and he agreed, but said we are inching closer and closer all the time. …

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Donna Gilmore, who runs the critical sanonofresafety.org website, said she understands the limitations of the controversial Diablo study, but that the well-vetted French and German leukemia studies should be all the proof we need.

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