From:

Subject:

on be~~ OC8$W$bupd8t66

FW: Oper'l Letter

January 2S, 200'

From;

To:

Advisory Board on Radiation and WOrker Health For NIOSH I DHHS I CDC (please place thlS

Open Letter on the Board's Distribution} Department of Health and Hunan Services Centers

for Disease COntrol and Prevention

Dear CDC I DKHS I NIOSH Advisory Board,

This open letter to the -AdViSOry Board on R3diation and Worker HealthIs to

express concern and doubt that this Board is using the -best available science- to arrive

at sensible decisions for vorkers in Oak Ridge. My father vorked at the Y-12 plant and had

to take e,arly medical retirement bec.ause the multiple exposures made him too sick to

continue vorking.

I le.arned first 114M frocn my father that workers w~re exposed to uranium

aerosols and chemicals. My father told me many stories of wearing yellow shoe covers in

the uranium production areas and walking over uranium chips with sparks flying from under

e-ach footstep. I also learned these uranium production areas used PCB as coolant for th~

mach1ne cutting operactlons to acttempt to acvo1d setting pacrts acnd machines on tire. PCB has

been identified as being damaging to a critical enzyme in the bcxly called glutathione.

i.arly on I learned tMt Y-12 also had more serious problems vith hydrogen fluoride

rele.a$es ~round vhat the workers called the -salt Shop- or -Green Saltoperation. Here workers were exposed to dangerous and CUnnllative fluoride gas valX>rs that

have long term health effects. One worker named &at on a wet keg of this green

salt And died A fev days later of sudden heart attack.

This ~$ ~ ~ well-established risk from HF e%po$UU$ and involved in problems like

the Donora, Pa. air inversion problems killing many due to heart attacks. The low levels

of fluoride in the heart. s system upset the calcium channels needed for proper heart

function.

There were many laxities. in the protection of workers. at the Y-12 plant and at the K-25

gas diffusion plant. In nany C.aHS the chemical effects added directly to the harm due to

both internalized and external radiation.

I also came to work for the Oak Ridge system as Developnent Staff peraan at the Oak Ridge

NatloM.1 Laboratory and discovered the same problems that my father had told to me in

ye.ars past. In working at ORNL in the mid-BOa I carne to help work on remediation problems

in Oak Ridge and found many serious problemsIn working on this proje<:t to rind the probl~8 in oak Ridge we round what has been the

best available acience some 20 years ago that expoaed a greater extent of he,alth bann than

just looking at radiation damage effects singularlyWe looked at the ce11 mechanisms and found that toxic metals and certain

chemicals resulted in free oxygen radiation damage to cells that cauaes the same problems

as excess radiation exposures.

1
We modeled the radiation effects as just simple inducement of free oxygen radicals in a

body composed principally of water. The stress on the cells came in the form of the need

for more production of a cellular repair enzyme called "superoxide dimutase, [SOD)." As

the free radical damage from ROS increased this increased the cell's mitochondria

production of the SOD enzyme and caused problems with the availability of trace metal

minerals [manganese) needed to produce other cellular enzymes.

The radiation free radical repair processes for the cells employed all the available,

manganese within cells and upset the production o£ another cell enzyme process called

"2-SA RNase L," which is the critical enzyme that controls pathogen infections interna.l to

cells. 2-SA RNase L and the "Interferon"

cytokine

process work hand in hand to control cancer-associated virus and other pathogen linked

illnesses. The mutation of this enzyme from its normal

83 kDa weight

to a 37 kDa weight causes this principle protection enzyme within cells to become

ineffective at cell apoptosis as well as killing virus and mycoplasma inf~ctions.

This was the principle cell mechanism that lead to cancer causation via allowing various

cell pathogens to take control over cellular cytokine signaling and set the stage for the

immune system to loose control over cancer cell regulation. This was £ound some 20 years

ago and was well known to the national security system of ORNL, and was declared a highly

sensitive issue because it explained a principal illness mechanism in Oak Ridge with large

liability toward continuance of nuclear weapons production.

Our investigations were also able to link the chemical vector damage process to this same

stress on the cellular protective enzyme system. One chemical stood out strongly in Oak

Ridge as being linked to long term health problems and this was HF from the Y-12 Green

Salt operation and the hydrolysis of

UF-6 from

K-25 process releases leading to HF releases.

What we found was that HF and aluminum in the body would spontaneously form the AlF3

compound that would mimic the TSH thyroid hormone control and this effect would alter the

nQrmal night and day variation of the thyroid hormone control over cells. Normally the

Pineal Gland's night and day sensing regulates the HPA axis hormones to power down the

cells of the body as one sleeps to build up an enzyme called glutathione, [GSH}.

Glutathione is the principle protective enzyme within cells that removes

toxic metals, like mercury, and toxic chemicals from the body via the liver and bile

excretion route. As certain chemicals impact the thyroid regulation of cells the

mitochondria become affected and the production of GSH is impaired resulting in the build

up of toxic metals within the cells of the body.

As these

metals became involved with the mitochondria mtDNA this causes the increased production of

free radicals generated by the mitochondria's ATP production process. These excess free

radicals placed the same stress on the cell repair processes and protection processes as

radiation induced free oxygen radicals.

Thus, the bottom line is that this mechanism that we identified in the mid-80s at ORNL

showed how chemicals and radiation combined to act on the very same cellular enzyme

pathway that involves radiation inducement of cancer.

Today,

the current research points to the same causality with the research being done on the

Fallon, NV excess child cancer problems [Leukemia] from air fuel dumping. The rallon Naval

Air training station's dumping of jet fuel has affected the glutathione levels in children

in this area, as ide~tified by researcher Dr.

Jill James of University of Arkansas.

Oak Ridge has lots of past HF release problems that have been compounded by more releases

of toxic metals and HF from the TVA coal plants on each end of town. Just the coal

emissions air quality placed this region at health risk long before the scrubbers were put

in the TVA's plants in years past. When a USAEC worker came to work for Oak Ridge, his

occupation exposures to HF and toxic metals made the lonq-term health risks much areater. .
The HF problems w1Ch the HPA axis also manifests itself with the accumulation of fluoride

in the Pineal Gland and the slow degradation of the light Bensing mechanism needed to keep

the cellular protective enzymes in good abundance via restful sleep patterns. The very

same upsets as HF uuses in the heart attack cases also Up8~ts the function of this

calcIum rich gland. ThIS disturbed sleep pattern problem is ~n to many with CFIDS and

GwS. and the same basic symptans show up in many Oak Ridge workers. Also CaIm:m in this

group of itllnUne caTlprOOlised persons is probleITIs with EBY, CMV, HHV-6, SY-40, and

mycoplasma infections due to mutation or chimera form of the 2-5A RNase L protective

cellular enzyme.

MycoplaBnB are COfTITDn problems vith high dose radiation and this vas the

initial clue at ORNL to link the protective enzymes of cells with the principle causal

mechanism leading to cancer cell proliferation. It was long established that nany cancers

Md 4 vir41 ~nent that took control of cellular cytokine patterns. such as TNPa.

leading to run away cancer cell growth.

It would appear that if we could find these basic mechanisms for illness at ORNL in the

mid-1980s tMt these mecMnism should be a part of the proc.e&& to addre&8 vorkecr hecalth

h.a:rm in 2006. Inclusion of this me-ch.an1s:m would be closer to using -Best Av~il~le

Science. - It is clear to me and to nany others that this Mvisory Board Process to the

N1OSH, CDCr and DHHS is lacking of this easily identifiable mechani&m that highly defines

the oak Ridge worker health risks.

In Oak Ridge. the worker health risks cannot be addressed by looking only at the radiation

induced stress. In Oak Ridge one has to include the toxic met~ls and chemic~l stress (U,

Mg, MF, PCB} to even begin to make a claim of -&est Av~il~ble SCience.. The best available

acience at ORNL in the 19BOs included that PCBs damaged the GSH levels in vorkera and lead

to an inCTease in free oxygen radical associated illnesses - At Y -12. workers were exposed

to Hg from the

Li-6 s-eparation process and this incre.akd their free oxygen radical problems frocn mtDNA

involvement. They were expoaed to HF from the Y-12 Green Salt

~ration and iran larger releases iran K-25 and TVA emissions, and this altered the

g'lutathione levels of large worker populations.

This vas the key effect that a flagged in many of his patients and vhy he

v~s att..acked for t.aking note that the workers in the oak Ridge region had greater toxic

stress markers than patients at his previous location in . oak Ridge considered the open

identification of these enzyme mechanisms to be a threat to the national security involved

in the production of nuclear weapons. had spotted higher levels of oxidative

stress rna.kers in oa-k Ridge patients and problems like higher levels of retained toxic

rnet.als.

The n'leCMnism is c1ear for the best available science ne-eded to address the 041r. Ridge

worker he.alth ettecta properly. This Board and ita aaaociated agenc1ea ahould involve

microbiologists to explain the mechanisms to the degree needed to be inclusive of this

mechanism in all future worker health evaluations for Oak Ridge. It is clear in Oak Ridge

that these Chemical And toxic meU1s induced oxidative stress factors add directly to the

r$d1ation induced ox1dative stress t$ctors, and thus can't be ~tted. TO $ttempt to do

otherwise is fraud and leads to unapprised hann and loss of compensation for those

injured.

The Board should be open with the public and the workers about the need to include the

additional factors addresB-ed in this Open Letter. If anyone needs additional inform5tion

or clari f icat ion about thi s 8hort~in9 or the Bo&rd' s process r reel r ree to conUct me

via the intO:mlation provided below.

Sincerely,

3