{news} Mothers Milk Project in the Weekly

[David Bedell]

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=8219
Milky Sway
The Mothers Milk Project and the Radiation and Public Health Project look for radiation poisoning from a nearby nuke plant. Pro-nuke feds say it's an exercise in junk science.
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Thursday, June 12, 2008 
By Nick Keppler 
Nick Keppler photo
Many area residents are calling for the end of Westchester's nuclear program


There's no middle ground here. The Mothers Milk Project's mission is to test breast milk from human moms and other mammals near Indian Point Energy Center in Westchester County, New York. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission totally dismisses the premise behind it in a wholehearted rejection of a similar effort. So the whole idea is either vital or foolish. 

And then it becomes a matter of who do you trust: A group of activists and independent researchers with a predisposition against nuclear power, or a government body with a vested interest in it?

First, the details: The Mothers Milk Project aims to sample mothers' milk in a 50-mile radius of Indian Point for traces of strontium-90, a beta particle produced through nuclear fission. The radioactive isotope is linked to cancer, especially leukemia. Once in the body, it acts like calcium, getting into both breast milk and baby teeth. The discovery of it in baby teeth near nuclear test sites was a key to several nuclear-testing bans.

The project aims to create a database correlating strontium-90 levels to proximity to Indian Point. The Westchester plant has faced growing calls for its closure, due to its aging equipment and potential as a terrorist target. Some 20 million people, including every resident of Fairfield County, live within 50 miles of the plant, more than in a 50-mile radium of any other nuclear plant in the U.S.

The project was unveiled last week in organizer Gail Merrill's New Canaan backyard by Merrill and co-founder Nancy Burton. (Burton's the outspoken Green Party candidate for Connecticut Attorney General and president of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone.)

Indian Point itself sampled the milk of nearby dairy cows until the early 1990s, when the farm where they lived closed down, says a spokesman for the plant's owner, the Entergy Corporation. 

The Radiation and Public Health Project released a report in May finding that levels of strontium-90 in Fairfield County baby teeth-which, like breast milk, absorb the particle easily-are the highest in the New York metro area, excluding the N.Y. counties closest to Indian Point. It also uses above-average infant mortality and underweight birth rates in the county as evidence. 

"Even without a major meltdown, every nuclear reaction must release radioactive particles," says RHPH executive director Joseph Mangano. And although the release is much less than in bomb testing or nuclear disasters, Mangano compares the risk to smoking four cigarettes compared a smoker's usual intake: It's still unhealthy and we should know how unhealthy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in a "backgrounder" document, says it "finds there is little or no credibility in the studies published by the Radiation Public Health Project."

"These studies have been widely discredited in peer-reviewed journals," says spokesman Neil Sheehan. "They essentially go backwards, assuming that strontium-90 is coming out of these plants and harming people and then looking for evidence for their foregone conclusions." The commission says the amount of the radioactive isotope produced in fission is minimal. It claims that, annually, all 103 power plants in the U.S. combined produce 1/1,000th of a curie, compared to the 216,000 curies of strontium-90 released in the Chernobyl disaster. 

And the commission says strontium-90 is everywhere because of nuclear testing. It flows in streams, travels on the wind and is attached to migrating populations. There is no way to tell if the strontium-90 in an area can be linked to a nearby nuclear plant, says the NRC.

This is one reason why the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection says it doesn't test for strontium-90. A DEP spokesperson added that the department does not do any testing besides the usual soil and water sampling near Indian Point. 

The NRC cites several studies to justify its trashing of the Radiation Public Health Project, including a 1990 National Cancer Institute report finding no excess cancer deaths in the areas surrounding 62 nuclear facilities and a 2001 Connecticut Academy of Sciences and Engineering report saying that emissions from the Haddam Neck plant were "so low as to be negligible."

But none of them test strontium-90 levels in the bodies of people living near power plants, as Mothers Milk Project will and the Radiation Public Health Project has.

"They weren't expecting the strontium-90 levels in the baby teeth around nuclear testing sites either," says Mangano. "Wouldn't you, in any case, want to know?"
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