Letters to the Editor: 01.30.97
Need For Study
East Hampton
January 25, 1997
Dear Helen Rattray,
Both Senator Al D'Amato and Representative Michael Forbes should be commended for asking that Brookhaven National Laboratory close down its high flux beam reactor, suspected of releasing incredibly high and dangerous levels of tritium. But Assemblyman Fred Thiele and County Legislator George Guldi also should be commended for opposing continued operation of another small Brookhaven reactor that can be shown to be equally dangerous.
I have learned that letters carried in The Star, including the very revealing, recent defensive letters by B.N.L. employees, play an important role in moving our elected officials to action.
Here is one example. Mr. Guldi, representing the Second District of the Suffolk County Legislature, responded to my announcement that the New York State Department of Health has just completed tabulating the breast cancer incidence data for Suffolk County for the years 1988-92 and was thus in a position to update a tabulation released in 1990 of age-adjusted breast cancer rates for the years 1978-87 for each of 62 community groupings that make up the county.
That tabulation offered the first official indication that the highest breast cancer rates were those near the lab. For example, the age-adjusted rate for the grouping Brook haven/Bellport, defined as three specified Census tracts located at the southwest perimeter of the lab, was the highest on Long Island, about 40 percent above the Suffolk County average. The updated data would add to the statistical significance to any similar finding, which would of course be of great importance to residents of that area who have recently filed a $1 billion lawsuit against the lab.
To our astonishment, Dr. Mark S. Babtiste replied that he had no budget that would permit the State Bureau of Cancer Epidemiology to provide such an update, because the 1980 Census tract definitions have been changed!
A similar instance of bureaucratic foot-dragging that requires public discussion comes from a letter from Dr. Marilee Gammon of the Columbia School of Public Health, who has just received $8 million from the National Cancer Institute to conduct a study of the environmental causes of the Long Island breast cancer epidemic, which, however, does not include possible radioactivity in drinking water.
In a Nov. 4 letter to Miriam Goodman and a group of concerned members of the Long Island Breast Cancer Network who queried her about this curious omission, she stated: "At present our protocol and our budget do not include examination of radionuclides in the water samples. If there is scientific justification for adding additional laboratory analyses, additional funding would need to be obtained."
This clearly underlies the need for our independent study of the varying amounts of radioactivity in baby teeth near B.N.L., information for which is available from Bill Smith of Fish Unlimited on Shelter Island. The good news is that our study, started with a grant from the Methodist Church and some East End family foundations, has been now endorsed by the New York Physicians for Social Responsibility and will be extended to include families living close to the Indian Point and Millstone reactors, using techniques developed by the German branch of P.S.R.
We shall soon have on hand a 32-page translation of a publication by the Berlin International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, describing their success in analyzing the strontium-90 content of thousands of German milk teeth. These tests are so sensitive that they found a tenfold increase in children born in 1987 over those born in 1985 because of the Chernobyl radiation cloud arriving in 1986. This finding has yet to be revealed by the mainstream press despite the fact that I.P.P.N.W. received the Nobel Peace Prize for peace in 1985. Readers wanting more information on this exciting new development can call me.
Cordially,
JAY M. GOULD
First To Report
East Hampton
January 25, 1997
Dear Helen,
I took special delight reading in The Star about the shutdown of Suffolk's only nuclear facility: Brookhaven National Laboratory Incorporated.
My interest in radioactive contamination of Suffolk's drinking water dates back to 1975, when I served as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County. I would constantly read Karl Grossman's investigative reporting on this issue in The Star. As you know, Mr. Grossman was the first to report on the radioactive contamination found in the drinking wells of four hapless residents whose homes adjoined the property of B.N.L. This story was reported by Mr. Grossman in The Star before The New York Times ran it.
What makes the shutdown genuinely joyous is that The Star's Mr. Grossman was almost alone in those days in reporting on the mischief of B.N.L. And B.N.L., for its part, rather than address the problem divulged by Mr. Grossman, continued to stonewall the public: reciting the usual, inane liturgy, "There is no hazard to the public health." Now that the problem is out of hand, they shut down.
But who is to pay for their nonsense?
B.N.L., although it somehow appropriated the word National in its corporate name, is a private corporation owned and operated by seven universities. It is no more a governmental entity than National Car Leasing Corporation.
But we have the right to expect decency from these academic institutions. Instead, what we get is a bad neighbor. B.N.L. has contaminated Suffolk County's drinking water supply in addition to its radioactive contamination of the Peconic River. Had B.N.L. adopted an open view (consistent with men and women of science) it would not have continued its relentless contamination once the issue was raised over 20 years ago by The Star and Mr. Grossman.
Credit for making this lonely effort should be given to both The Star and Mr. Grossman. But the next step is for the lawyers: a class action suit against the individual trustees of the defiant and reckless universities. To them, Suffolk County was worthless. What was it worth to us?
Yours,
SIMON PERCHIK
YesYesBonacs
Sag Harbor
January 27, 1997
Dear Helen,
Picked up on the sub-ether radio...
East Hampton School Board announces course in standard English as a second language for native speakers of YesYesBonacs.
For those unacquainted with recent linguistic trends (analogous in many ways to beer-drinking trends with the tendency of sophisticated imbibers to prefer "micro-brewed" beers), modern linguistic educational thought scoffs at the concept of "dialect" and requires the recognition of variations in English as languages in their own right.
In line with this trend, the East Hampton School Board announced that it will offer courses in remedial standard English for native speakers of YesYesBonacs.
This language is the result of generations of isolation of native speakers on the eastern end of Long Island. Features of the language include the following:
- Frequent repetition of the affirmative emphative ("YesYes");
- Appositive renomenclature of the second person with a standardized form ("Bub," "Bubby" [diminutive]);
- Vowel substitution of unstressed "U" for other short vowels ("Got sum big scullups in 'em drudges, Bub");
- Frequent and colorful use of expletives and scatological phrases (examples deleted);
- Substitution of different pronoun forms and removal of "th" initial sounds (" 'em cod was thicker'n [example deleted], Bub").
Educators, hoping to remove the social stigma attached on such native speakers in the job markets, also hope to bridge the social gap between YesYesBonacs speakers and newer residents, referred to in YesYesBonacs as "[adjective deleted] summa people" by fostering a spirit of mutual respect between the two. They point out that "Bonac twang," as the unique inflections and intonations of YesYesBonacs has been referred to by other commentators, is a linguistic heritage from the forms of English spoken by early settlers to this part of the United States.
As a living linguistic heritage it is, as has been remarked by so many native YesYesBonacs speakers, "finest kind."
Best Wishes,
BILL FRISBIE
Nothing To Fear
Sag Harbor
January 26, 1997
Dear Editor:
Damage control spokespeople at Brookhaven National Laboratory - a facility which consumes huge amounts of our tax money on outdated cold war projects using deteriorating technologies and which operates secretly so no one can really know what is going on there - are "talking down" the recent accident where major amounts of radioactive tritium got into local groundwater. When will the madness stop?
Lab representatives claim that there was no leak from their atomic reactors. Perhaps it came from one of the lab's neighbors - the guy who runs the chop shop and paints cars with radioactive primer, or one of the local kids with a "nuclear" chemistry set. (You know, one of those people who have to have their water brought in from elsewhere despite the fact that lab-contaminated wells "pose no threat to public health.")
In a conversation I had with a nuclear engineer several days ago, he informed me that the tritium could have easily come from a nearby commercial firm that, for example, makes exit signs for airplanes. These signs contain tritium. He suggested that the radioactive sign material could have gotten into the aquifer and then traveled to the lab. Come on, all you folks who live around the lab, stop dumping all that radioactivity into your water. It's getting into Brookhaven Lab wells and has migrated to within 100 feet of one of their reactors.
Personally, I believe all those unsolicited, objective letters written by the extremely well-paid scientists at Brookhaven about how safe the place is, and about all the good work they claim they do. If they were wasting our $415,000,000 a year on projects of little value wouldn't they be the first to admit it?
When they told us Three Mile Island was not a threat to public health I believed them. So did all those people who lived near the atomic plant who are now dying of cancers at rates well above the national average.
When they said the Chernobyl accident was nothing to fear, even though the panic-stricken nuclear scientists and local politicians were flying their families out of the region within hours of the explosion, I felt reassured. So did the several million people near Kiev who continue to eat radioactive food every day of their lives and whose kids are now dying of leukemia at unprecedented rates.
When the recent space probe, filled with nuclear material, ran amok and dropped a major load of plutonium on Chile and Bolivia, I slept well knowing that chances of another accident like this, where enough highly enriched radioactive substance to kill everyone on the planet might wind up landing in my Jacuzzi, was one in 600 trillion.
And when they tell us that daily emissions and leaks from their atomic reactors are not giving Long Island women breast cancer, I rest assured that we have nothing to fear. I like these guys, and I trust them. They speak the truth.
In fact I suspect that the recent release of tritium into Long Island water is "too small to meter," that it "poses no threat" to anyone or anything, and that those who were responsible "were only following orders."
And when they tell us that there will only be a slight increase in cancer deaths as a result of Brookhaven's activities, I feel content. A small increase in cancer is not much. Not much, that is, unless you, or your daughter, or mother, or son, or spouse happens to be the person who gets it.
People like Jay Gould, Karl Grossman, Bill Smith, Helen Caldicott, and me may not buy the argument that the operation of an atomic reactor that releases radioactive toxins into a suburban environment of several million people is no big deal, but come on, these malcontents are upset because they aren't on the payroll at the lab and don't get to cure cancer with atom lasers and flux beams for a living.
I, for one, would like to send out positive affirmations to all the nuclear scientists and co-workers associated with those two very safe reactors that have been operating since the days when many of the commercial airplanes coming into Kennedy Airport still had propellers.
And because I know Brookhaven scientists are never less than forthcoming about what it is that they do (whatever it is that they do do), I would like them to honestly answer a few questions which could end forever this dialogue about whether they are underappreciated cosmic saviors of the next millennium or, as many have ungraciously claimed, mad scientists hell-bent on destroying the human race in the pursuit of what they believe constitutes scientific progress.
First: How much of your extremely large budget goes for medical work that accomplishes anything of value? I know you radiate people in the hopes that their cancer will go away, but does this really work? Is there any scientific evidence to show that you are curing people or extending their lives as opposed to destroying their immune systems, making them bald and nauseous, and separating them and their health maintenance organizations from tens of thousands of dollars? Is there any truth to the claim that radiation as a therapy can in fact increase rather than decrease the growth rate of tumors, causing people to die faster than they would without these treatments, as for example with prostate cancer?
Second: Do you really believe that when you release all that radioactivity into the air we breathe and water we drink, intentionally or otherwise, you are not causing breast cancer and other diseases? Are you aware there are hundreds, if not thousands, of studies showing that radiation causes fatal diseases like leukemia and other cancers and that no level of exposure is safe? Can you really be in the healing business and generate enough toxins to become a Superfund site at the same time? Do you see any contradictions in this? If not, why not?
Third: (This is a hard one.) Is it true that you were involved in experiments in the early 1990s where healthy people were essentially taken off the street, given radioactive substances, and placed in machines that used something called a gamma camera? That these people were told there was an extremely small chance that they could develop cancer from these experiments even though there was no accurate way for anyone to honestly gauge the risk to them and that they were paid $100 a day to participate in this experiment? And now at least one, and probably others, may have developed cancer as a result?
Take your time on this one. An inappropriate answer might shed bad light on your lab and its role in the "care-giving" field.
For extra credit: Can you think of another period in history when experiments like this were carried out on humans in laboratories by people who espoused an ideology based on the view that they were superior in their judgments and that their cause was of such import that other members of the human race were expendable?
Fourth: How much of your budget goes to run those decades-old atomic reactors? You love to claim that Brookhaven creates jobs, but how many more jobs could you create if you shut down those reactors and hired people with that money to do something beneficial for the human race? Surely all that atomic fuel (that you don't spill) must cost a fortune.
Fifth: Are you really generating income for Long Island, or is it true that the lab is really a cold war relic that has been overlooked by the Welfare Reform Act? It seems to me that you are consuming taxpayer dollars, not generating economic value. Could you please provide a definition of the term nuclear pork barrel and distinguish this term from the activities going on at the Brookhaven Lab?
Note: Let's say you changed what you are doing. Perhaps, since you operate under the Department of Energy, you convert over to a center that develops and manufactures wind power and solar technologies to be sold in the United States and overseas. There will be hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of this technology demanded all over the globe in the coming decades and it would be nice if the Japanese and Europeans did not get it all.
Why fight for the dangerous technologies of the past when lots of private dollars could be flowing into the Long Island region because we've become leaders in the development of renewable energy? And you wouldn't need to spend more and more of your time telling us a nuclear Peconic River is okay, that radioactive wells are not a threat to our health, and that local breast cancer rates are not related to the Superfund toxins and atomic leaks you generate. Instead you could spend your time hiring people to fill all the jobs that this work would create. Tomorrow belongs to the wind and the sun, not to atom splitting, n'est-ce pas?
Sixth: What really happened in this recent accident? It appears to me that some sort of cover-up is taking place. Why is there no information coming out about this? Is it true that because you are a Federal laboratory the public will not have access to the site and that secrecy will continue to be the norm? Is this appropriate for an institution that employs people who are as committed to public health as your scientists and well-paid public relations people tell us you are? Is it true that once tritium gets into the groundwater you can never remove it again?
Can we really expect to get truth from the Department Of Energy or Environmental Protection Agency on this matter when you are all sleeping in the same bed together? Wouldn't a Congressionally appointed independent investigator of the goings-on at your lab be far more likely to get to the bottom of all this business of spills and poisons than the good old boys who are checking things out now?
Seventh: Would you let your kids drink the water around Brookhaven Lab? If not, doesn't this mean that you believe your kids are more deserving of not dying of cancer than the children living near your lab? Don't you think it's time to stop doing what you're doing to us?
RALPH J. HERBERT, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
of Environmental Studies
Southampton College