Volume 5, Number 3
September 20, 2005
Published by RPHP
PO Box 60 Unionville, NY 10988
Editor: Joseph Mangano
http://www.radiation.org
A note from the Editor: The following
covers activities of RPHP from May through August of 2005.
RPHP Co-Founder Gould Dies
Jay Gould, PhD, co-founder and Board member of RPHP, died of heart disease
in New York City on September 16 at the age of 90.
Dr. Gould, a successful economist and
founder of the Economic Information System, was appointed to the EPA
Science Advisory Board by President Carter in 1980. In 1985 he met Dr.
Sternglass, and soon became interested in applying his statistical skills
to questions involving the health effects of nuclear weapons and reactors.
He and Sternglass founded RPHP in 1994.
Dr. Gould wrote or co-wrote many articles
in medical journals and the popular media, was frequently interviewed
on radio and television, and was the author of several books, including
two specifically on the health effects of low doses of radiation: Deadly
Deceit (1990) and The Enemy Within (1996).
He will perhaps be best remembered as
the driving force behind RPHP, and behind its decision to begin the
Tooth Fairy Project, the only study of in-body radiation levels in Americans
living near nuclear reactors. His direction, inspiration, insight, enthusiasm,
as well as his epidemiological and statistical skills, will be greatly
missed.
Click
here to read his obituary in the the Miami Herald.
Click
here to read his obituary in the New York Times.
Long Island "Meet and Greet"
Successful
About 60 persons attended RPHP's Meet and Greet event, held on August
16 at the East Hampton home of Jean Hoffmann. The main speakers were
actor Alec Baldwin and Victor Navasky, publisher of The
Nation, who both stressed the importance RPHP plays by adding
scientific information to the debate on nuclear reactors. Special awards
were presented to Mr. Baldwin and RPHP co-founders Jay Gould and Ernest
Sternglass.
High Sr-90 in Families With Cancer
An RPHP health survey has found that Long Island children who have cancer
or whose mothers have cancer have a 46% higher average Strontium-90
level in their baby teeth. Over 200 Long Island tooth donors responded
to the written survey. RPHP included this finding in a report to the
Citizens Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund, which is supported
by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Tooth Study Reaches Vermont
On July 26, RPHP kicked off an organized effort to collect baby teeth
near the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. At two press conferences near
the reactor, RPHP research associate Agnes Reynolds presented the study
jointly with local advocates and Dr. Ira Helfand, president of Physicians
for Social Responsibility. RPHP hopes to collect 100 teeth by early
2006 from the area (over 40 have been submitted by mid-September). The
Entergy Corporation has proposed a major expansion of Vermont Yankee,
a move opposed by many local citizens.
New Article on New Reactors in
Mississippi
The August 3 online edition of The Nation
included an article entitled "Reactors and Racism" by RPHP's
Joseph Mangano. The piece focused on the environmental injustice of
the Entergy Corporation's proposal to build a new nuclear reactor at
the Grand Gulf plant, in an impoverished and largely African-American
area of Mississippi. Mangano's article notes that after the first Grand
Gulf reactor was activated in the early 1980s, local rates of infant
deaths and miscarriages jumped 35 and 58 percent.
Click
here to read the article on-line.
RPHP Educates Georgia Public
About New Reactors
The July 30 Augusta (GA) Chronicle
featured a story about the 70 percent rise in Burke County's infant
mortality rate in the three years after the Vogtle nuclear reactor began
operations in the late 1980s. RPHP's Joseph Mangano read about Southern
Nuclear's potential initiative to build a second reactor at Vogtle,
then contacted the Chronicle, which
became interested in the issue of local health risks.
Online Radiation Health Data
Now Easily Available
The RPHP web site now contains a simple guide to obtaining radiation
health information available on the internet. The guide, which is made
simple enough for non-scientists to use, is posted on the home page
of the RPHP web site, and includes numerous links to sites that contain
information.
Click
here to go directly to the guide.
22nd Journal Article Accepted
The International Journal of Health Services
will publish an article on the link between radiation exposure and childhood
cancer. The article, which will probably be published in January, marks
the 22nd medical journal article/letter or conference proceeding article
by RPHP since 1994.
