Home > Public Health Research >

In 1998, the Senate Appropriations Committee asked the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an initial assessment of the feasibility and public health implications of a study concerning the health consequences to the American population of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing. This request resulted in a collaborative effort by staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute to make crude estimates of doses and health risks from exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests conducted from 1951 through 1962 at the Nevada Test Site and other sites throughout the world.

In 2002, HHS transmitted to the Senate Appropriations Committee a progress report and an extensive two-volume Feasibility Study providing details on the scientific methods and conclusions of this feasibility study. The draft Feasibility Study was also sent to the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Assessment of CDC Radiation Studies.  A report from that committee issued in February 2003 was peer reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC) Committee to Review the CDC-NCI Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences from Nuclear Weapons Tests (NAS/NRC 2003). The recommendations and comments of the NAS/NRC committee were carefully considered. This final report, issued in April 2005, was prepared in consideration of those recommendations.   CDC reviewed and addressed the comments received on the draft report, and on January 25, 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services transmitted to Congress the final "Report on the Feasibility of a Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations."

Final Report

Public summary of the final report on radioactive fallout from global weapons testing.

You may download the full Technical Report and Appendices as a zip compressed PDF or in Word format or you may download individual sections of the full report uncompressed as noted below.

Volume 1: Technical Report (pdf zip 3,866 Kb | word zip 5,351 Kb)

Front Matter (pdf 91 Kb | word 266 Kb)

Executive Summary (pdf 102 Kb | word 128 Kb)

Chapter 1:  Introduction (pdf 43 Kb | word 70 Kb)

Chapter 2:  Fallout from Nuclear Weapons (pdf 142 Kb | word 155 Kb)

Chapter 3:  Estimation of Doses from Fallout (pdf 2,404 Kb | word 5,839 Kb)

Chapter 4:  Potential Health Consequences from Exposure of the United States Population to Radioactive Fallout (pdf 152 Kb | word 183 Kb)

Chapter 5:  Communications Approach (pdf 204 Kb | word 194 Kb)

Chapter 6:  Conclusions and Options for Future Work (pdf 59 Kb | word 79 Kb)

Glossary (pdf 100 Kb | word 212 Kb)

Volume 2: Appendices (pdf zip 16,684 Kb | word zip 16,282 Kb)

Acknowledgement

List of Contributors

Appendix A:  CDC and NCI Responses to Key NAS Recommendations (pdf 54 Kb | word 80 Kb)

Appendix B:  Summary of the National Cancer Institute Report (pdf 74 Kb | word 118 Kb)

Appendix C:  ACERER Issues (pdf 40 Kb | word 72 Kb)

Appendix D:  Document Preservation and Retrieval: Current and Potential Future Activities (pdf 59 Kb | word 91 Kb)

Appendix E:  External Dose Estimates from NTS Fallout (pdf 844 Kb | word 1,340 Kb)

Appendix F:  Internal Dose Estimates from NTS Fallout (pdf 4,775 Kb | word 5,475 Kb)

Appendix G:  External Dose Estimates from Global Fallout (pdf 776 Kb | word 1,894 Kb)

Appendix H:  Internal Dose Estimates from Global Fallout (pdf 9,355 Kb | word 10,363 Kb)

Appendix I:  Communications Materials (pdf 685 Kb | word 848 Kb)

National Academy of Sciences Review of the CDC-NCI Draft Report on a Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations

The August, 2001 draft of the report may be viewed at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/study_draft.htm.

NOTE: The documents above may be downloaded as PDF files or Microsoft Word files. To view the PDF documents, Adobe Acrobat Reader™ software is required. Download a free copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader™. The Feasibility study is quite lengthy; for easier navigation through the report, it is recommended that the reader use Bookmarks by clicking on the bookmarks tab on the left side of the Adobe Acrobat Reader screen.  The files in Word format are provided for the convenience of sight-impaired individuals using a screen reader.  If you do not have Microsoft Word you may download a free copy of the Microsoft Word Viewer.