In 1998, the Senate Appropriations Committee asked the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an initial assessment of the feasibility and public health implications of a study concerning the health consequences to the American population of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing. This request resulted in a collaborative effort by staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute to make crude estimates of doses and health risks from exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests conducted from 1951 through 1962 at the Nevada Test Site and other sites throughout the world.
Related information can be found on IEER’s factsheet about nuclear testing fallout
Official Documents and Reports
- Review of the CDC-NCI Draft Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests (2003. Link to National Academy of Sciences Committee site)
- A Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population From Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations (Final version, May 2005. Link to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site)
- IEER Letter to National Academy of Sciences Committee Reviewing the Global Fallout Feasibility Study (September 12, 2002) (PDF)
- IEER Press Release on release of draft report (February 28, 2002) (PDF)
- Progress Report to Congress: A Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population of Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations (Prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) August 2001)
- Fallout Maps (provided to IEER by CDC in February 2002):
- Locations of sites having greater than one megaton total tests conducted prior to 1963 (PDF)
- Preliminary estimates of total radiation dose to red bone marrow of children born 1 January 1951 from Nevada Test Site and global fallout for all radionuclides (page 4 of Progress Report, color version) (PDF)
- Total (external + internal) dose to red bone marrow of an adult from global fallout (PDF)
- Total (external + internal) dose to red bone marrow of an adult from Nevada Test Site tests (PDF)
- Cesium-137 deposition density due to global fallout (PDF)
- Cesium-137 deposition density due to Nevada Test Site tests (PDF)
- Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 from Nevada Nuclear-Bomb Tests [This link will take you outside the IEER site]
National Cancer Institute, October 1997