While the federal Energy Department has a moratorium on destroying atomic testing records, the Pentagon does not. Two years ago, a National Academies of Science panel noted "the Navy and the Air Force, for example, have extensive documents of potential importance if additional analyses are undertaken."
The Board on Radiation Effects Research urged Congress to enact legislation to preserve the Defense Department documents. The House of Representatives passed Matheson's Department of Defense Historical Radiation Records Preservation Act last May and folded it into the larger, must-pass bill for military programs.
The House passed the defense bill early Monday, and the Senate is expected to take it up later this week. The bill also includes a provision that establishes the Cedar Mountain Wilderness in the Skull Valley of Tooele County in a move intended to block a high-level nuclear waste storage site.
"Atmospheric testing was a dark period in our history for many Americans and questions about long-term cancer risks are unanswered," said Matheson. "This requirement to preserve the limited records from that time ensures they'll be available for scientific study."
Matheson's legislation directs the Defense Department to "identify, preserve and publish" information contained in these records.
The National Academies of Science was reviewing a Centers for Disease Control study on how nuclear weapons tests have affected the health of Americans. The report noted that the federal government did not collect very much health data during three decades of atomic testing and all information available should be kept for historical purposes.
Peter Rickards, an advocate for downwinders in Idaho Falls, called the legislation "a great achievement" and added that the federal government has doggedly excluded the Defense Department information from fallout studies.
"Hopefully this archived data will eventually reveal the extent of the damage done by the weapons of mass destruction used against our own citizens," said Rickards. "Most important is that this unused fallout data shows our government has not come clean on atomic fallout yet, in their ongoing efforts to avoid liability for their actions."
