Community-Based Participatory Health Survey of Hanford, WA, Downwinders: A Model for Citizen Empowerment

Abstract

Residents around the Hanford, WA, plutonium production facility have long suspected damage to their health due to radioactive releases from the plant. From 1944 to 1986 the government denied environmental contamination, let alone any health impact. An alliance of residents (Downwinders), physicians, scientists, and social justice activists designed, distributed, collected, and analyzed a health survey concerning persons who had been at risk for exposure to internally lodged radioisotopes. This community-participatory health study suggests an excess of illnesses among Hanford Downwinders. These findings cast doubts on conclusions drawn from a widely publicized government study: that radioactive emissions from Hanford did not lead to increases in thyroid disease. The described collaborative grass-roots project may serve as a model for identifying health effects among other populations exposed to radioactive fallout or other environmental contaminants. Concomitantly, a community-participatory survey can provide a sense of validation and empowerment by affording affected populations valuable data in support of their demands for large-scale epidemiological studies of environmental links to their health problems, followed by remedial actions.

Keywords:

• citizen–scientist cooperation
• community-participatory health survey
• Downwinders
• environmental radioactivity
• Hanford
• popular epidemiology
• radiation health effects
• radioactive fallout

The authors owe a debt of gratitude to numerous professionals who supported NWRHA's Hanford Downwinder health project, including R. Belsey, MD (deceased), J. R. Goldsmith, MD (deceased), J. Green, MD, W. Morton, MD, L. Nussbaum, PhD, J. Smith, PhD, and S. Wing, PhD, as well as for the editorial assistance of J. Spalding, PhD. Of the many Downwinders and social activists whose exemplary dedication was essential to the completion of the project, we want to single out K. Brodesser, L. Camp, G. DeBruler, S. Eaton, J. Jurji, L. Kautz, L. Keir, S. Lee, B. Marsh, I. Sisson, and especially K. Sutherland (deceased), to whose memory this article is dedicated.