Now Oakridge and Hanford had a lot of interchange in the way of professionals who went back and forth between the two sites, teachers who were imported from Oakridge to teach in the schools in Richland, and the Plutonium at Hanford was sent to Oakridge. And as a result, you have some similar radioactive chemicals and substances that were released at both sites, and therefore you have very similar health concerns between the exposed population at Hanford and the exposed population at Oakridge.

CALLISON: What is the national impact of Hanford and Oakridge?

PRITIKIN: Now, children and infants are particularly susceptible to radio-Iodine. It's taken in by the thyroid, which is located right here by the Adam's Apple. And when humans are tiny their thyroid's are still developing, their cells are multiplying and the thyroid is very vulnerable to radio-Iodine. The problem that results is an ablated ________ thyroid that is reduced in size, a very high out take of radio-Iodine, children take in about ten times as much radio-Iodine as adults, so you get a high dose. And your metabolism is messed up, your growth is messed up and the hormones that regulate your sense of well-being and your heart rate are all screwed up. It takes about ten years or more in the case of a low dose exposure for these symptoms to develop.

So, people can slowly and incredulously develop the first symptoms of Thyroid disease: fatigue, indigestion, headaches, heart irregularities. In women, infertility, inability to carry pregnancy to term and if you are untreated as a hypo-Thyroid, you can get to the state of going into a coma, which I almost did, which can be fatal, or having a cardiac incident, which we thought I did, or developing Thyroid Cancer, which can kill.

Now radio-Iodine is only one of the forms of radioactive iodine that was released from several sites around the DoE Nuclear weapons and production facility. There is iodine-129 and some other much longer lived forms of Iodine, but the primary substance that is concentrated on is Iodine-131. And to put this whole picture together of exposed populations from the nuclear weapons production and testing facility. Radio-Iodine was released at Hanford. About 900 curries were released there. It was released from the Nevada test site fallout, from the tests, which occurred in 1951 and going beyond 1960. At first they were above ground tests and then they became underground invented tests, but alot of radio-Iodine was released from the Nevada test site. It went across the country and there were actually some hot spots or concentration spots on the East Coast, such as Washington, DC and Albany, NY, where people have gotten doses that were as high as the doses that were right next to the Nevada test site. So there was some uneven dispersion of Iodine across the country.

Oakridge also had significant releases of radio-Iodine. I'm not sure that the populations around Oakridge are as aware of the radio-Iodine as we are at Hanford. I'm not sure why that is. But it can have devastating health impacts, including fatal cancers. So, for example, a person at Oakridge needs to understand that they may have been exposed to a combination of Oakridge's I-131 releases and the Neveda test site iodine releases. And it's possible that the contribution by the Nevada test site iodine releases was higher than that of Oakridge. To really get a feeling of the health impact, one must add those two doses together using an appropriate formula. You can't just go, "A+B=C", you have to use an appropriate formula to convert the two doses. Once you add those two doses, you have an idea of your total risk from those exposures.

But realize too, at the same time, in 1954, there was a test in the Marshal Island's called Test Bravo, which emitted a lot of radio-Iodine which traveled West to East. And so people at Hanford, people at Oakridge have to add in that dose as well. And it is a definable dose, there will be an uncertainty range on that dose, but we...By adding those doses together, we will get a much better understanding of what the total dose was for people across the total weapons complex and what the risk is.

CALLISON: What about someone who was a child at the time of those releases on the East Coast? Are they developing the same symptoms and are they aware that they are at risk?

PRITIKIN: As you know, in 1983, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah passed a rider to the Orphan Drug Act and this was an amendment to the Orphan Drug Act, public law 97414, which dealt with the impact of Nevada Test Site fallout. Now, under that amendment the dose reconstruction began for radio-Iodine and some of the other biologically significant radio-nucleides from the Nevada test site. That report was not made public until it was actually leaked to the press in 1997. That's when we were made aware, all of a sudden, that there were significant highly exposed populations in areas on the East Coast where weather patterns had caused a lot of this fallout to deposit on the ground. The thunderstorms in Albany, NY and some of the areas on the East Coast caused a lot of the radio-Iodine to come out of the fallout cloud, even though it was so geographically distant. Iowa had some real high exposures and there are some other hot spots.

Right now the National Cancer Institute and the CDC are developing a communications campaign and I'm part of the group of people working on that as a citizen representative to try to let people know about these exposures.

As part of the work we're doing on communicating with the American population about the fallout exposures we've suggested that those at highest risk from those exposures, that would be those exposed as children who drank particularly goat's milk because it has a higher iodine content than cow's milk, but children who drank either type of milk, who lived in a higher exposure area, one of the hot spots near the Nevada test sites or at one of the former atomic energy commission facilities, now DoE sites, like Oakridge or Hanford. Those at highest risk should be offered screening for thyroid cancer, nodules, which are lumps on the thyroid, which may become cancerous and there will be a meeting soon of experts from around the world to talk about the feasibility of offering screening. To me, as a person exposed to radio-Iodine and who has lost my entire family to cancers and to Thyroid disease-related problems, this is the least our government owes those of us who are exp-osed as infants involuntarily to a Nevada test site and individual facility exposures.

Now currently there are several proposals in the form of draft bills, which will go to committee to be integrated into one bill which will pertain to compensation for workers within the nuclear weapons testing and production facility. What's fascinating to me and also very sad is that people exposed off-site or members of workers families who were exposed to some of the chemicals tracked home and the radiation and the contaminants tracked home in addition to off-site exposures are not included in this compensation package. The reason that it bothers me primarily is that logically and ethically, what the administration is proposing is to compensate or offer healthcare to workers, but not to populations who were involuntarily exposed at their highest risk period of time. That is, those who were exposed as children to higher doses of radio-Iodine and the other radio-nucleides. That's not logical to me and it's unjust.

And it may be because people find it impossible to define which of the off-site communities are at the most risk. And that it would be an uncontrollable number of people, if you opened the gates to that. That's not true, if you use the individual risk factors, look at the combined dose the people received from fallout, from the individual sites, and from global fallout, that is Nevada test site fallout plus global fallout. And then see what age they were when they were exposed and then look at their milk intake if it's radio-Iodine. You can then isolate and identify the highest risk off-site exposed. They should be included within this compensation or healthcare package. And I'm working as hard as I can to educate the administration on that. It's been a little frustrating because people have only been focusing on workers.

My parents were both Hanford workers. I'm very thankful that this program is finally recognizing the sacrifices that they and my family made. But, were they still alive, which they aren't because they both died from aggressive cancers, they would be quite disturbed to realize that this compensation bill is going to divide families. Because, if you look at my family as an example, there were four of us, two children and two parents. All of us are ill, three out of the four of us are dead and this compensation package would help only the two parents. It's too late, because they're dead, but it would have addressed only their needs and it would have divided our family, and said, "You're all exposed, you're all ill, but we don't care about you two, you weren't workers". We're just gonna help the workers. That's wrong.

CALLISON: What should the government be doing with the workers?

PRITIKIN: So, I've been asked by several senators and several citizen organizations to create a recommendation at this point, for what I felt would be the fairest way to address all these health injuries within the nuclear weapons testing and production complex. First of all, to test and compensate the workers is excellent, and I'm really thankful to Secretary Richardson and David Michaels for demonstrating, finally, compassion and shifting the burden of proof off of workers to have to show the link between the substances and their diseases, which is often very difficult, very difficult to do. Particularly due to the dearth of studies and the connection. And due to lost records, due to really the difficulties of constructing doses. So they have shifted the burden away from workers, they don't have to prove they were exposed to "X" dose to get compensated or helped.

And if the highest risk off site individuals can be included within this package, that would be very, very helpful. Personally, I feel that healthcare for the rest of people's lives for those diseases, which are logically linked to the exposures we received would be very helpful.

Now logically linked should be construed in favor of the exposed population. People who were exposed as children, should not have to prove what dose they received or that they received a certain substance. Their mere existence in an exposure zone for a certain period of time should be sufficient. As you know, we've had huge burdens, huge hurdles in court, to try to attain any kind of help as downwinder populations. In fact, we have not succeeded in any way, in any court in this country, to receive any kind of help from the judicial system. So we must rely upon legislation, and this is an appropriate opportunity for this government to do something to help those of us involuntarily exposed.

So, if they could provide for us lifetime medical care, at the healthcare provider of our choice, not shipped off to a hospital where we have no choice, but with the physician we choose, for the diseases that are logically linked to our exposures, without us having to prove we were exposed or to how much substance. I think that would be a very good start.

An official apology by president Clinton as was given with the Tuskegee experimentees in the Syphilis experiments, we haven't received that. I think that would be appropriate. The victims of human radiation experiments, the individual experiments, have received such an apology. But environmentally exposed people have not. I think giving out a chunk of money to people is an interesting and positive gesture, but under the current plan $100,000 is to be given to workers who file claims and have developed diseases, that's not even enough to cover radiation therapy. My father, when he developed Thyroid cancer, had to go through radiation and chemotherapy. He died anyway and the bills were over $200,000 just to try to keep him alive. So this doesn't cover even the medical costs, let alone the pain and suffering and all the lost wages. So I feel that healthcare is a more practical, reasonable and helpful alternative. I know there are others who would disagree, but this is my own opinion on that.

CALLISON: What were you exposed to and how were you exposed?

PRITIKIN: I was born in the end of 1950 in Richland, at the Atomic Energy Commissions hospital, called Cadillac Hospital, and my father was a nuclear engineer here and my mother worked also at Hanford until I was born. My brother had died in 1947 as part of a spike or increase in neo-natal deaths within the Hanford downwind area. We're not quite sure why he died. He died shortly after birth. But here were quite a few babies that died during that period and it was coincidentally during a time of very high releases from the Hanford facility at about 1947. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is looking into that unexplained peak of neo-natal deaths. So I lost him too.

In utero, and growing up, I was then exposed to radio-Iodine that crossed the placental barrier, in utero. There are studies that show that happens. And as an infant and child, I drank goat's milk, primarily because at that time most women did not breast feed. So most infants got milk, plus formula. And the milk was produced in the Kennewick dairy, so it was local milk.

I was also taken a lot to the Columbia River and I swam in the areas that were a little bit warmer sometimes, because I was unable to keep my body temperature up. This may have been a result of some of the radio-Ioldine exposure. I had cold intolerance, so I sought the warm parts of the river. And it looks, from what I've learned, that the warmer parts of the river were where the effluent, or waste products, from the nine reactors that were operating at Hanford went into the river. So I was probably swimming in the effluence, which is not a good thing.

And we would go out to the beach and the islands in the middle of the Columbia and I would play like any little kid would, in the the nice fine sand. And I would make mud pies and I would do all of the things that little kids like to do, and it was just beautiful out there with the winds and the birds. And I would eat a certain amount of this stuff, because kids do the hand to mouth behavior. Much to my dismay, several years ago I learned that the islands where I was having all this fun, were covered with a fairly thick layer of Cobalt-60. One of the target areas of Cobalt-60 is the intestinal tract. It's really hard every year to discover something new about my exposure and look it up in my target organs chart and say, "Oh my, how many cancers am I at risk for now?"

So I was exposed to a range of radio-nucleides also because my parents would come home from work with stuff on their clothes, stuff you couldn't see. Stuff on their lunch boxes, stuff on the tires of their car. There were all sorts of particle releases, Ruthinium, Sezium 137. There were almost 300 radio-nucleides released. Who knows which of those were stuck to my parents clothing, got tracked home to the rug of my F-house. We had lettered houses A,B,C,D,E,F in this government town. They tracked the contaminants home and I crawled through this stuff 'cause I was a baby, put my hand on the rug, put my hand in my mouth. Heaven only knows how much stuff I got that way. Plus I had the notepass (?) for the radio-Iodine. I was being dunked in the Columbia River, in the effluence, playing in the Cobalt-60 on the islands. So lots of exposure pathways that are really not good for babies and infants to be exposed to. This is just horrible when you think about the fact that you are putting little innocent babies in harms way, this way.

What's fascinating to me about these "chronic low-dose exposures" - which means low dose is a relative term - I mean 900,000 curries of radio-Iodine plus 299 other radio-nucleides to me is not a low dose. Particularly, when you look at three-mile island, which emitted 15 to 21 curries of radio-Iodine. I'm not criticizing the health problems that have been reported at three mile island. I take them very seriously. But I want to put into context the amount that was released from Hanford. For the "chronic low-dose exposures", they result in the insidious and slow development of symptoms. So you kind of have one symptom and then another and they creep up on you. It doesn't just start like BAM!, you just get sicker and sicker. So I followed that pattern. I got sicker and sicker. The first symptoms that I had were real irregular periods, even when I was young.

They symptoms are very subtle in the way that they sneak up on you when it's a chronic low-dose exposure. And I first experienced some fatigue, which I didn't think was all that abnormal, then my menstrual cycle got disrupted, which really upset the Spaniards. I was living in Spain at the time, because my father was working on a reactor in the Basque area of Spain. And I was taken to Spanish physicians who really didn't like that a female in her late teen years was having irregular menstrual cycles. It upset them greatly. So they sent me back to the United States to find out what was wrong with me and they couldn't find anything wrong.

But I stayed here in the U.S. and kept going to school, started at the University of Washington. And then I started feeling a lot of indigestion, for some reason. I couldn't keep food down, I couldn't figure out what it was. I started feeling sick every day, but because I'm fairly tough I adapted to that and kept going. Then I experienced weight gain with no real reason. That is, I wouldn't eat much, but I would gain weight. Then this weight gain was very difficult to explain, because I would not eat much at all and I would still gain weight. Then I would get a strange inability to deal with stimulus. If there was more than one noise happening or two or three things in my environment it would confuse me. It was really hard to deal with. I can't quite explain it. I know now that that is one of the symptoms of untreated hypo-thyroidism.

And I kept going, because I'm pretty tough and I went to the medical clinic at the University of Washington and they still didn't come up with anything conclusive as a diagnosis. Then I developed a tumor on my neck and that was a little bit of a shock. There's still a little bit of it here. It was about as large as my fist. And I became hoarse, I couldn't speak for months. And the tumor, it was very obvious, it was sitting here and I got very sick. I couldn't breathe. And so I was diagnosed with Cat Scratch Fever, which is very unusual. I had not been scratched by a cat. It's a typical problem of someone with a crashing immune system. All this I learned after the fact.

I was out of work for months. The tumor they thought was malignant. It turned out it was benign but, it really scared the physicians even more than myself. And I was taken to grand rounds at University of Washington, because you don't see people with Cat Scratch Fever and they thought this was fascinating . So now I had irregular menstrual cycles, I was exhausted, over weight and I had a tumor on my neck, something was going on. And I was hoarse. So I have a lot of throat problems because of what I've been through.

So I eventually got a little better, but it turned out I was having walking problems. I was having strange muscle contractions happen in my body and they would just hurt like a Charlie horse. So I had to rest a lot, I had to cut back on my work. But I'm still tough so I decided I would go to law school, instead of working. So I got accepted at a few law schools and I went to law school at University of California at San Francisco in Hastings. And I was doing okay. I was tired and I was having trouble concentrating, but I made it, I kept going and then one day I was clerking for NASA as a law clerk and I was talking to the general council of NASA, he came by my office for a briefing, and I suddenly collapsed on the floor with extreme chest pains and they were certain I was having a heart attack so they called the paramedics. I couldn't move and they did an EKG and it came up negative, but I was in extreme pain and so they took me to the hospital and kept me and determined that my esophagus had just contracted. Which is real unusual. The esophagus is right next to the thyroid and apparently I had auto-immune thyroiditis and the antibodies had set off some sort of a reaction with the esophagus.

From then on I had extreme pain in every muscle in my body and I had to keep ice on my muscles. I went to the health center there at school and another health center. They still hadn't come up with an appropriate diagnosis. The reason is, in part, no one knew about Hanford's radio-Iodine releases because the DoE did not release that information, until Tim Connor at the Hanford informational Education League filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests. We didn't learn about that until 1986. This was 1983. I had gone as an undiagnosed severely hypo-thyroid person now for 15 years. This is very, very bad for you as you can see. I was getting dizzy, I was getting very heavy grainy pressure in my head. Yet I wanted to finish law school, I never gave up on anything.

So, in spite of being really ill , I pushed and pushed, made it through law school somehow. I made it through the bar exam, threw up in the middle a few times, really having trouble focusing and stuff. And then for the next ten years I still received incorrect diagnoses, nobody knew about Hanford, and then I started losing weight, down to 110 pounds, that's quite thin for me, I'm 5'6" and my hair started sticking out really thick, as it would if you were hyper-thyroid, not hypo, hyper. So I was transiently hyper thyroid and I would break out in cold sweats and my body would... I would just get these panic attacks and my body would just get soaked in sweat. And I couldn't sit between people, I couldn't lean over. If I leaned over I would start feeling really dizzy.

This went on and on until finally I was visiting my grandmother in Spokane, Washington in 1987, she lived there her whole life. And there was an article by a reporter named Karen Dorn-Steele and it talked about the radio-Iodine releases from Hanford. This was one of the first articles I had ever seen. But these releases at that time were thought to be in the 40's and I was born in late 1950. So first when I read it I went, "Oh my God, could that have been something that happened to me? Is that what this is?" Then I thought, "No, thank goodness, I was born in 1950, I escaped!" Later, we learned that there was a peak of radio-Iodine release in 1950, '51, '52 and '53 and the filters were removed from the stacks and I received quite a dose at that time.

So, to make the story come to some kind of conclusion, I was finally diagnosed correctly in 1988 and, by the time I was diagnosed, my thyroid stimulating hormone levels, that's what's put out by the pituitary to get the thyroid to work, when you're hypo-thyroid, were 33.3 the norm is 2.5-5. The pathology lab called me directly, saying, "You know you're lucky you're not dead!", essentially. I had had an apparent almost cardiac incident , I was almost in a coma and they called me directly. Normally, they call the doctor and the doctor calls you. Well the pathology lab called me because they were so upset about my TSH level.

So Hanford, by not releasing this information to us, nearly killed me. It was very close. Screwed up my life completely, really messed up almost all of my life, has caused me a great deal of suffering, has killed my entire family and I have two choices at this point. One is to be very angry and yell. The second is to try and apply some degree of reason and logic to make things better for those who still survive and that is people throughout the nuclear weapons testing and productions facility, who have been put through the same thing I have.

I'm now at high risk for thyroid cancer and for gastro-intestinal cancer, ovarian cancer and breast cancer. That's four cancers that I know I'm at high risk for. I have severe digestive problems, in spite of the fact that I'm on Cynthroid for the rest of my life. If I stop taking it I go into a coma in about a month and I die. And my choice now is, with regard to my thyroid, if I leave it in I'm at high risk for thyroid cancer and if they take it out I will probably bleed to death because the blood supply has grown around my thyroid. It's very tiny and it's ablated from my exposures. And if they take my thyroid out I'll bleed to death, or they could irradiate it with radio-Iodine, to get rid of the thyroid cancer but if they did that they would increase my risk of the other cancers. Those are three terrible choices that they've given me.

Have they given me any healthcare? No! Have they monitored my thyroid? No! Have they apologized? No! Have they done anything? Yes, they laugh at me, sometimes. They laugh at people like me, when we bring up our health problems. They exclude us from meetings, now they're trying to keep us out of the compensation plan. Something's wrong with this picture.

CALLISON: Why is it difficult to link health problems to previous exposures?

PRITIKIN: The problem with past exposures that occurred decades ago, with regard to nuclear weapons complex is that there aren't accurate records as to what was released and when and where it went, first of all. Whether that's intentional, negligent or grossly negligent, I don't know. We can't get at that. Second, it's difficult to figure out how much of a dose people really got. Each person, as an individual. You can only really look for a representative kind of a dose. So you have those problems to start with, the dose level and the substance. What did people get?

Next, they have, I feel, intentionally not been very many studies of people exposed to chronic low-dose exposures. Now, that's interesting to me that there haven't been these studies, because if there were these studies, we would know what some of these diseases are that can be caused by some of these exposures. I feel this is an intentional commission by the Atomic Energy Commission and the DoE, to not put the two together and make some connections.

Next, it takes so long for diseases to develop, that often times people aren't where they were any more, when they come down with diseases. They may not know of their exposures and they don't put the picture together to alert the appropriate officials that they're sick. For example, with Hanford potentially 2 million people were exposed to the radio-Iodine, there are about 14 to 16 thousand at highest risk, because they were exposed as children, to fairly high doses. They're all over the country now. So, I think it's a combination of the government not wanting to tell us what was released and how much. The combination of the government not wanting to tell us what was released and how much and the people not knowing they were exposed and the entities which should be conducting the studies aren't conducting the studies.

CALLISON: What is you opinion on the field hearings of Dr. Michaels ?

PRITIKIN: I attended the hearings here at Richland, at my own expense because I just couldn't stay away. I mean really. This is where I was born. These are the people I grew up with and this was a historic and amazing event. And I was not disappointed by what had happened here. There were 550 people who came into the federal building. There was an overflow crowd into the hall. These were primarily grey-haired people who looked a lot like my parents would have if they were still alive. They were conservative, patriotic ex-military folks who were told for the first time, by their government, that it was ok to talk about their health problems . And one after another, for hours they would go up on the stage, some of them were nervous, some of them started to cry. They'd tell stories of whole families who'd died from cancers. That's the story I told, my whole families dead. But these are people who had never told this story before and it was just overwhelming. The media that was there. There was a lot of media there, both television, print media. Their eyes were just huge they had never heard anything like this either. Everyone was mind-boggled.

My concern that I have now is that these folks who beared their souls and took a risk in their own community, now need to be helped. Because if DoE came and listened and did nothing, this would not be right. Also, I am concerned that they may be portrayed as a minority here of people. And that most people are fine, there's no problem. I've heard that happen before. Well that's not true, there are some huge problems here and I'm very thankful that DoE is attempting to recognize them. But these people must not be punished for speaking up in public. This is the only time, for a lot of them that they will speak honestly like that.

CALLISON: I need a quick soundbite as to whether the health problems have been addressed.

PRITIKIN: I think when you look at how the government is addressing health problems related to the DoE complex, you have to look at which type of people and which type of exposures we're looking at. As for workers, they're making the beginning of a very good bona fide attempt to at least admit that people have been hurt and injured. I don't feel the amount they are offering is enough to even cover their medical bills but it's a start. I feel that they should be given health care for those diseases that can be plausibly linked to their exposures. The burden of proof on the government, not on the exposed people.

And I feel that people exposed in communities who are not workers, who are children of workers who are ill, or who lived in a community surrounding the sites where emissions took place or a Nevada test sites, need to be included in this compensation bill. That would be the highest risk folks, those exposed as children, who had higher doses, it's a definable group of people. It's not an out of control number. This compensation package should be expanded to include those folks. And it should provide lifetime healthcare for radio-genic disease that's logically linked to their exposures and the burden of proof on the government, not on those exposed.

At Hanford, those at highest risk for more exposures, that would be about 14, 000 people, the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, which is part of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (Federal), came to Hanford and worked with a number of citizens on the Hanford Health Effects Sub-committee for two years. Brought in experts, had workshops and developed a medical monitoring program to offer screening for thyroid cancer and thyroid disease to those at highest risk. It was very logical, well thought out, we had all the experts anywhere in the world there.

We thought about the ethical issues. Davis Sacher, who was the head of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, who is now the Surgeon General, signed off on that medical monitoring protocol and it was supposed to be funded under the DoE under Superfund management, i.e. the polluter would fund it. Yet, to the surprise of many of us and to the disillusionment of many of us that worked so hard, the DoE has not coughed up the amount to fund this program, which is a very tiny amount of money compared to their huge clean up bill at Richland and throughout the DoE complex. It's less than 1% of the clean up bill for Hanford. Yet they can't fund that to save our lives. So I sued them. I was mad. I sued them as a private citizen under Superfund in a social justice lawsuit. This is not a personal injury lawsuit. It does not get anything for me. It is a social justice lawsuit, filed by a citizen who is eligible for the program. And the point of the lawsuit is to for the DoE to provide the funds to ATSDR to get this medical monitoring program going. And it's bothering DoE. They don't like me for doing it, they don't like the lawsuit, they don't like being under this pressure.