RICHLAND, Wash. -- Roughly 4,000 troops helped clean up Enewetak Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between 1977 and 1980 -- the largest nuclear cleanup ever undertaken by the U.S. military. The ring of coral islands was the site of dozens of nuclear tests.
Hundreds of those troops say they are now plagued by health problems, including brittle bones, cancer and birth defects in their children. Many are dead. Others are too sick to work.
The military says there is no connection between the illnesses and the cleanup. Radiation exposure during the work fell well below recommended thresholds, it says, so the government refuses to pay for the veterans' medical care.
Congress long ago recognized that troops were harmed by radiation on Enewetak during the original atomic tests, which occurred in the 1950s, and should be cared and compensated for.
But in a number of cleanups decades later, veterans have been denied care because U.S. monitors said there was no radiation exposure.
For two years, the Enewetak veterans have been trying, without success, to get medical benefits from Congress through a proposed Atomic Veterans Healthcare Parity Act. Some lawmakers hope to introduce a bill this year, but its fate is uncertain. Now, as new cases of cancer emerge nearly every month, many of the men wonder how much longer they can wait.
Tying any disease to radiation exposure years earlier is nearly impossible; there has never been a formal study on the health of the Enewetak cleanup crews. The military collected nasal swabs and urine samples during the cleanup to measure how much plutonium troops were absorbing, but in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the military said it could not find the records.
Hundreds of the troops, almost all now in their late 50s, have found one another on Facebook and discovered many instances of cancer and deteriorating bones.
A tally of 431 of the veterans by a member of the group shows that of those who stayed on the southernmost island, where radiation was low, only 2 percent report having cancer. Of those who worked on the most contaminated islands in the north, 20 percent report cancer. An additional 34 percent from the contaminated islands report other health problems that could be related to radiation, like failing bones, infertility and thyroid problems.
The most contaminated island on the atoll, according to Energy Department reports, was Runit Island, a 75-acre spit of sand blitzed by 11 nuclear tests in 1958. The island was littered with a fine dust of pulverized plutonium.
A millionth of a gram of pulverized plutonium is potentially harmful; to put that size in perspective, a grain of sugar weighs about 625 millionths of a gram.
The military initially quarantined Runit.
Government scientists agreed that other islands might be made habitable, but Runit would most likely forever be too toxic, memos show.
So federal officials decided to collect radioactive debris from the other islands and dump it into the Runit crater, then cap it with a thick concrete dome.
The government intended to use private contractors and estimated the cleanup cost at $40 million, documents show. But Congress balked at the price and approved only half of the money. It ordered that "all reasonable economies should be realized" by using troops to do the work.
Safety planners intended to use protective suits, respirators and sprinklers to keep down dust. But without adequate funding, those precautions were scrapped.
As the cleanup continued, federal officials tried to institute safety measures. A shipment of yellow radiation suits arrived on the islands in 1978, but in interviews, veterans said it was too uncomfortable to wear them in the tropical sun, and the military told them it was safe to go without them.
The military tried to monitor plutonium inhalation using air samplers. But they soon broke. According to an Energy Department memo, in 1978, only a third of the samplers were working.
All troops were issued small film badges to measure radiation exposure, but government memos note that humid conditions destroyed the film. Failure rates often reached 100 percent.
Every evening, Air Force technicians scanned workers for plutonium particles before they left Runit. Men said dozens of workers each day had screened positive for dangerous levels of radiation.
"Sometimes we'd get readings that were all the way to the red," said one technician, David Roach, 57, who lives in Rockland, Maine.
None of the high readings were recorded, said Roach, who has since had several strokes.
A Section on 01/29/2017