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Appendix: Scientists Find No Health Effects

State Public Health Department Studies TMI
Several studies were conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The conclusions are summarized below:

• A 1981 study reported that if the accident had any effect on infant death rates, there would have been a significant increase in the six months after the accident. Instead, the infant death rate was lower than normal.
• A 1982 study found that the incidence of congenital hypothyroidism within a 10-mile radius of the plant was well within a normal range in the year after the accident.
• A 1982 study found no measurable impact on infant mortality within a 10-mile radius of the plant, compared with infant mortality rates for Pennsylvania for 1977-79.
• A 1985 study found no significant difference in cancer mortality within a 20-mile radius of the plant during the five years preceding the accident and the five years following it. In a more detailed analysis of four communities downwind of the plant, the study found no significant abnormalities in either cancer mortality or cancer incidence among residents considered to be at potentially higher risk.
• A 1988 study found no connection between radiation or psychological stress and failed and complicated pregnancies, such as fetal and neonatal mortalities and other problems.
• A 1989 study found no significant abnormalities in cancer mortality or incidence among residents of selected communities near the plant.
• Two 1991 studies showed no increased cancer incidence among people who lived near the plant in 1979. One study involved the general population living within a 5-mile radius of the plant; the other involved women of child-bearing age who lived within a 10-mile radius.
  

Although the studies have found no increased incidence of cancer as a result of the accident, they did find evidence of psychological stress, lasting in some cases for five to six years. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Three Mile Island Health Research Program, people suffering from stress believed their health was poorer than it actually was when the health department checked their medical records.

Other Studies
In addition to the Pennsylvania Health Department studies, several other studies have examined the health impact of the TMI accident on the population:

• A study presented by K. Ramaswamy at the 1988 annual meeting of the American Public Health Association compared post-accident cancer deaths over a six-year period for residents within a 5-mile radius of the plant with cancer deaths of a large control population. The study concluded that the normal death rate and life expectancy for people around TMI were not affected by the accident.
• A study presented by E. Digon at the 1988 annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, concluded that—based on a comprehensive analysis of statistical data by health researchers—fetal and infant mortality in the vicinity of the plant were neither significantly higher than expected nor significantly different from those in the years before the accident.
• Several prominent scientists from Columbia University and the National Audubon Society studied cancers among the nearly 160,000 residents within a 10-mile radius of the TMI plant. The principal cancers considered were leukemia and childhood malignancies. The study, issued in September 1990, concluded: “Overall, the pattern of results does not provide convincing evidence that radiation releases from the Three Mile Island nuclear facility influenced cancer risk during the limited period of follow-up.”
• In 1990, the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health released the results of a two-year study of cancer data in 107 U.S. counties that contained, or were adjacent to, major nuclear facilities that had begun operations before 1982. Among the counties were York, Lancaster and Dauphin near the TMI plant in Pennsylvania.
• The study, which compared cancer mortality rates in the 107 counties with rates in counties with no nuclear facilities, found no increased cancer mortality for people living near the nuclear installations. The study also found no evidence that leukemia for any age was linked to routine operations at the TMI reactors or to the accident at TMI 2.
• In 2002, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) conducted a 20-year follow-up study of mortality data on residents living within a 5-mile radius of the plant. The study found no significant increase in overall deaths from cancer. “This survey, which covers the normal latency period for most cancers, confirms our earlier analysis that radioactivity released during the nuclear accident at TMI does not appear to have caused an overall increase in cancer deaths among residents of that area over the follow-up period, 1979 to 1998,” said Evelyn Talbott, professor of epidemiology at GSPH and principal investigator on the study.