Living Happily Near A Nuclear Trash Heap

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DR. WILLIAM REID WAS NEW TO Oak Ridge, Tenn., and disturbed by what he was seeing. Soon after he joined the staff of Methodist Medical Center in early 1991, he was treating four patients with kidney cancers, an unusually large number for one small area, and a cluster of other people who appeared to have weakened ability to ward off infections. Reid suspected that something in the local environment was attacking the residents' immune systems.

It didn't take much imagination for Reid to figure out possible sources of contamination. For 49 years, federal installations at Oak Ridge have manufactured the innards of nuclear bombs. In the process, the plants have produced -- and carelessly disposed of -- mountains of radioactive material and hazardous wastes. Even the U.S. government admits the Oak Ridge labs have littered the surrounding countryside with everything from asbestos and mercury to enriched uranium. The story is much the same at all the country's now notorious nuclear weapons plants, scattered from Hanford, Wash., to Los Alamos, N. Mex., to the Savannah River plant. The Department of Energy has launched a major clean-up effort, but it might be too late to prevent a host of medical problems in people who have lived in the shadow of the toxic plants for decades.

Could a health disaster be hitting Oak Ridge? Reid was determined to find out. Last August he called Martin Marietta Corp., which took over management of the government's nuclear complex from Union Carbide in 1984. The doctor wanted to report his concerns and ask what chemicals he should test for in his patients. If Reid thought that Martin Marietta and his employers at Methodist Medical Center would appreciate his initiative, he was wrong. Three weeks later, the hospital began a disciplinary process aimed at forcing him off the staff. The doctor suspects that the hospital and Martin Marietta were trying to thwart his investigation. Says Reid: "They are worried they're going to have a Bhopal on their hands." The hospital denies there is any connection between the disciplinary action and Reid's allegations about health problems.

When Reid's dispute with the hospital hit the Oak Ridge newspapers this year, the public response was strangely muted. Residents long ago learned to live with radioactivity and risk. This, after all, is one of the birthplaces of the Bomb, a town whose very existence was a by-product of nuclear reactions. The federal complex is still the largest employer of the population of 30,000. Even the mayor is a physicist, and newspapers report levels of background radiation each week. But decades of studies have failed to find any gross health problems. Says Oak Ridge physicist Chester Richmond: "People here just don't accept the arguments that this material is going to give you cancer."