Documents Silver, Ken 3 results

"Harriet Hardy, protégé of Alice Hamilton, spent 1948 in the Health Division of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The contemporary campaign for federal legislation to compensate nuclear workers brought to the fore living retirees in whose cases of occupational illness Hardy had a role in diagnosis or case management. A third case is documented in archival records. Methods of participatory action research were used to better document the cases and strategize in light of the evidence, thereby assisting the workers with compensation claims. Medical and neuropsychological exams of the mercury case were conducted. Hardy's diary entries and memoirs were interpreted in light of medicolegal documentation and workers' recollections. Through these participatory research activities, Harriet Hardy's role and influence both inside and outside the atomic weapons complex have been elucidated. An important lesson learned is the ongoing need for a system of protective medical evaluations for nuclear workers with complex chemical exposures."

"Since 1971, a series of annual Environmental Surveillance ... reports have served as the official public record of Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) environmental performance. In northern New Mexico, where past LANL emissions are a public health concern, there is public skepticism over the accuracy of information contained in these reports. To test the hypothesis that LANL Environmental Surveillance ... reports systematically understate past emissions, we compared the data on releases in LANL's own internal Occurrence Reports Collection (ORC) to the data reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance ... reports. A data set of 89 environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC in the time period from 1971 through 1980 was assembled. We did not find a systematic pattern of quantitative underreporting of source terms. However, 17 of the 89 (19%) environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC were not reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance ... reports. The observed discrepancies are discussed in terms of their relevance to public health concerns. Methodological caveats dictate restraint in applying these findings beyond the scope of the relative comparison performed here. Possible social origins for the rejected hypothesis are discussed. Areas for further consideration by the Centers for Disease Control's dose reconstruction study of LANL are identified.

"BackgroundAs several studies have identified asbestos exposure as an independent occupational risk factor for laryngeal cancer, the aim of our study was to confirm this association.MethodsIn a population-based case-control study on laryngeal cancer in South-West Germany occupational exposures and other risk factors were obtained by face-to-face interviews using a detailed standardized questionnaire covering the complete individual working history, supplemented by job-specific questionnaires (JSQ) especially for selected jobs known to entail exposure to asbestos. Detailed exposure information was collected over a wide range of asbestos related jobs and branches and analyzed using different modeling strategies.ResultsSeventy-three (28.4%) cases and 158 (20.5%) controls reported any exposure to asbestos. Elevated risk estimates for asbestos exposure were found. However, those became substantially reduced after adjustment for smoking and alcohol.ConclusionModerately elevated risks for laryngeal cancer after exposure to asbestos were confirmed. Difficulties in the collection of adequate exposure data were demonstrated."