Radiation Exposure Is Tracked Idaho Health Survey Seeks Downwinders From Hanford

The 250,000-plus Ada County residents are being asked whether they lived downwind of the Hanford nuclear weapons plant in Washington.

If so, they may have been exposed to an airborne radioactive form of iodine that could cause thyroid disease.

“Where were you between 1944 and 1972?” ask post cards sent from the Central District Health Department to 105,000 homes, intended to alert people to the possible link between residency and disease.

Exposure to emissions of Iodine 131 from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in those years could cause thyroid problems, ranging from benign nodules to cancer, department health educator Jean Woodward said.

But people with thyroid afflictions may have contracted them from other causes, she cautioned.

During the production of plutonium for atomic bombs at the central Washington complex, 740,000 curies of Iodine 131 radiation were released into the air, Woodward said.

That compares with the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979 in which 15 curies of radiation were released.

The Hanford radiation zone generally extends from east of Seattle through Washington, into northern and eastern Oregon, over to North Idaho and down to Washington County at Weiser.

Ada and Canyon counties are outside the exposure zone, although people who live beyond the area could have been exposed to lesser amounts of radiation, Woodward said.

But many Ada County residents have emigrated from the exposure zone.

Woodward estimates between 1 and 2 percent of county residents will respond that they lived in the zone between 1944 and 1972. That is 2,500 to 5,000 current residents.

“Many individuals have called in feeling they suffered for a number of years without knowing that the cause was,” she said. “When they hear about Hanford, there’s almost a sigh of relief that there’s a cause behind it.”

But she said there are no hard answers about whether the radiation caused their ailments. A study on thyroid diseases will not be completed until December 1998.

People who lived near Hanford from 1945 to 1947 when they were less than 2 years old face the highest risk. That is because milk from cows grazing in contaminated fields was the source of the highest Iodine 131 doses.

Cards began going out Aug. 19.

Health districts in North Idaho and the southwestern counties along the Oregon border also are mailing out cards.