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OCR for page 26
i
The Participant Cohort
The core of this report is a comparison of the mortality experience of nu-
clear test participants and a comparable referent group of nonparticipants. This
section contains a description of the participant cohort selection process.
The participant cohort includes all military personnel identified by February
28, 1997, by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as participants in at
least one of the selected five series of U.S. atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.
This study includes active duty personnel but does not include Reserve, National
Guard, and Coast Guard personnel. The five test series Operations
GREENHOUSE, UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE, CASTLE, REDWING, and PLUMB-
BOB are the same series that were examined in the 1985 Medical Follow-up
Agency (MFUA) study.~ As described earlier, these five series (consisting of 62
tests) were originally chosen for study from the 19 U.S. atmospheric nuclear
weapons test series. Their selection was based on the availability and quality of
records for personnel identification and radiation dosimetry and a design based
on comparable numbers of participants at tests conducted in the Pacific and the
continental United States.
DTRA used the congressionally mandated and Department of Veterans Af-
fairs-issued regulatory definition of participant: (~1) any U.S. military personnel
who were present at the test site or who performed official military duties in
connection with ships, aircraft, or other equipment in direct support of an at-
mospheric nuclear test during its official operational period; (2) any U.S. mili-
tary personnel who were present at the test site or other test staging area to per-
form official military duties in connection with completion of projects related to
the nuclear test, including decontamination of equipment used for the test, dur
study.
iSee Chapter 1 for a discussion of the 1985 publication and the rationale for the new
26
OCR for page 27
THE PARTICIPANT COHORT
27
ing the 6 months following the official period of an atmospheric nuclear test; or
(3) any U.S. military personnel who served as members of the garrison or
maintenance forces on Enewetak at any time from June 21, 1951, through July
1, 1952, after Operation GREENHOUSE; or from August 7, 1956, through
August 7, 1957, after Operation REDWING (CFR, 1998a). Personnel in the last
group, although not fitting the standard definition of test participation, were in-
cluded by Congress and VA regulation as if they were participants because
GREENHOUSE Shot ITEM and REDWING Shot TEWA, fired at Bikini Atoll,
resulted in fallout on the Enewetak base camp, causing radiation exposure
among DoD personnel who remained in the camp (Gladeck and Johnson, 1996;
JAYCOR, 1995).
Table 5-1 displays the operational period and the 6-month post-operational
period for each of the five series.
Identifying test participants was a difficult task, however, because a com-
plete roster of test participants did not exist and the permanent DoD records of
atmospheric tests did not contain the necessary identification information.
Therefore, NTPR conducted large-scale searches of historical records, ranging
from federal archives and records centers to private collections (Gladeck and
Johnson, 1996~. For example, the Navy NTPR procedure for identifying partici-
pants was first to identify the participating ships and squadrons through avail-
able historical records. Deck logs, along with muster rolls and daily diaries,
were then located to identify individual participants. For Army and Air Force
NTPR teams, morning reports and personnel rosters of the units were located.
Another source of information for the NTPR program has been a nation-
wide toll-free call-in program set up by DNA for veterans of the atmospheric
nuclear tests to report details of their participation in any test. When a call is
received from a veteran or veteran's representative, an NTPR interviewer asks a
standard set of questions and files the information. If a review of available rec-
ords confirms the veteran's participation in the nuclear test series, the verified
information is added to a computerized file that contains the participant data
obtained primarily through record reviews. It is the latter, record-based file,
rather than the initial direct contact, that is the source of data on participant
identification for the current study.
When the 1985 study began, individual NTPR teams were still rapidly
identifying test participants. Since 1987, when DNA consolidated the service
NTPR teams into a single operation, identification of new participants has
slowed, but continues; participating units continue to be identified using newly
discovered historical records, and the inclusion criteria for classifying partici-
pants have been broadened.
OCR for page 28
28
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OCR for page 29
THE PARTICIPANT COHORT
TABLE 5-2. Estimates and Determined Extent of Participant
Misclassification in the 1985 Dataset
Assessed Misclassification GAOa oTAb1999 ReportC
1985 Report Total 46,186 46,18649,148
Wrongly included 14,854 4,5008,877
Wrongly omitted 28,215 15,00024,161
"Correct" total 59,547 56,68664,432
Additions due to decision 3,736
change, not error
Total 68,168
aGeneral Accounting Office (1992~.
bIJ.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment (Gelband, 19924.
Medical Follow-up Agency use of rosters supplied by the Nuclear Test Personnel
Review Program as of 1997.
The data file for 1985 included 49,148 records, 2,962 of which were excluded due
to problem data.
29
From December 1993 through March 1997, DTRA transmitted to MFUA
progressively updated data tapes that identified participants in the five series.
Because MFUA was revisiting the questions first considered in the 1985 study,
primarily because of inaccuracies in the DTRA-provided participant roster used
in the 1985 analysis, both MFUA and DTRA provided intense and ongoing
scrutiny of roster identification for the current study.2
RELATIONSHIP OF PARTICIPANT ROSTERS USED IN
THE 1985 PUBLICATION AND THIS REPORT
In the early 1 990s, DTRA (then the Defense Nuclear Agency) announced that
the personnel dataset it had provided MFUA contained substantial errors of inclu-
sion and exclusion. Because this dataset was the basis of MFUA's Five Series
Study published in 1985, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the congressional
Office of Technology Assessment, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Rep-
resentatives, and MFUA itself recommended redoing the mortality analyses using
a corrected dataset. MFUA further enhanced the study design (partially in re-
sponse to criticism ofthe 1985 report) to include a military comparison cohort.
Table 5-2 displays the extent of overlap between the participant cohort used
for the 1985 publication and the cohort on which this current study is based.
Eighty-four percent of the 1985 cohort is included in the current list. However,
these people comprise only 57 percent of the current list. If we were to exclude
2Appendix D reviews the work done to validate participant cohort membership.
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30
THE FIVE SERIES STUDY
from this calculation the 3,736 personnel included in the current list solely be-
cause of their presence in post-series rosters reflecting a post-1985 change in
inclusion criteria rather than identification errors we still see that 60 percent of
the current cohort was in the 1985 cohort.
PARTICIPATION IN SERIES OTHER THAN
THE SELECTION SERIES
Participants were chosen for this study if they were assigned to military
units that participated in at least one of the five selected series. The selection
series is the first, chronologically, of the five series to which a member of the
participant cohort could have been assigned. Three percent of this cohort par-
ticipated in more than one of the five series and some participated in series other
than the five. Table 5-3 illustrates, for the participant cohort, by selection series,
the distribution of other test participation, according to the NTPR database. The
count includes the five series studied in this report, any of the other 14 test se-
ries, and assignment to Hiroshima or Nagasaki.3
3Although Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not test series, individuals who were as-
signed to units in these areas in time proximate to the atomic bomb detonations are in-
cluded in the NTPR database.
OCR for page 31
31
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
nuclear test
