Committee: Health Effects Study of Manhattan Project Veterans Is Infeasible
A committee assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) has determined that an epidemiological study of veterans of the Manhattan Project is not feasible due to the lack of complete records on military personnel and incomplete information related to exposures and demographics.
NAS assembled the committee to comply with the 2022 Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, which calls for studies of relationships between exposures and health outcomes among military members and veterans. The act requires NAS to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to study radiological and chemical hazards related to the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. program to develop a nuclear weapon during World War II. The Manhattan Project spanned more than five years, from 1942 to 1947, and resulted in the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities that caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, including latent adverse health effects for survivors. The VA determined that a feasibility assessment was necessary to determine whether the study proposed in the PACT Act could be conducted.
An estimated 600,000 civilians and 10,000 military personnel participated in the Manhattan Project at approximately 200 sites around the country. The committee’s work focused on six sites and involved consultations with several historians. It excluded participants in weapons testing, and it did not address environmental contamination, activities that occurred outside the continental U.S., or non-military personnel.
Production of the weapons involved possible exposures to chemical and radiological hazards, and waste from the project remained at the sites, presenting potential long-term effects to both workers and communities. The committee found that existing documentation of the work lacks information about identity, demographics, tasks, and years of service. In some cases, records had been either accidentally or purposefully destroyed, according to the committee’s report.
The report concludes that “a study on the relationships between radiological and chemical exposures from Manhattan Project activities and health outcomes in veterans who worked on the project is not feasible” but notes that “a risk assessment approach may offer a way to calculate the estimated risk of adverse health outcomes associated with exposures to radiological materials and chemicals.”
A PDF of the report is available at no cost from the NAS website.