Radiological Response: Assessing Environmental and Clinical Laboratory Capabilities

Opening Statement By Chairman Brad Miller

If there’s one punch that terrorists have clearly telegraphed, it’s the detonation of a "dirty bomb" in an American city. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosion that spreads radioactive material, contaminating perhaps several city blocks. We heard years ago that Osama bin Laden had tried to obtain radioactive materials to use in a dirty bomb.

But the federal government was better prepared for Katrina than we are for the detonation of a dirty bomb in an American city.

Yesterday concluded a ten-day national counterterrorism exercise called TOPOFF that included the participation of thousands of local, state and federal officials. The exercise was based on the White House’s National Planning Scenario #11 that envisions the simultaneous detonation of a dirty bomb or Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) in three major urban areas. The simulated attacks in this exercise took place in Guam, Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon.

In a real radiological terrorist attack, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that they would need to collect, process and analyze more than 350,000 environmental samples in the 12 months following the incident. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), charged with monitoring and assessing the public’s health in response to a radiological emergency, estimates that they will need to screen 100,000 individuals for potential radiological exposure in the first few days after a radiological attack.

Yet, depending on the types of radioactive material used in a real world event, the EPA predicts that given the nation’s current radiochemistry laboratory infrastructure it could take them as long as six years to analyze the 350,000 samples necessary to conduct a thorough environmental analysis – in just one city. One of the key assumptions outlined in the national planning documents upon which the most recent TOPOFF exercise was based is that all potentially exposed individuals (an estimated 100,000 people) will be tested for radiological contamination and that a valid method exists for testing these clinical specimens.

For those isotopes for which validated methods do exist screening 100,000 clinical specimens in the wake of a radiological attack could take more than four years to complete due to the current shortfall in radiochemistry laboratories, personnel and equipment. And that’s the good news. The CDC currently has no valid method to test clinical specimens in a radiological emergency for seven of the 13 highest priority radioisotopes most likely to be used in a terrorist scenario.

These drastic shortfalls may have far-reaching implications for government officials responsible for responding to and recovering from a national radiological emergency.

Today, we will hear from representatives at the CDC, EPA, Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), about the massive gap that exists in their ability to respond to a radiological emergency effectively and efficiently by conducing rigorous and rapid analysis of radiological environmental and clinical samples. Radiochemistry laboratories provide a vital role in determining who’s been contaminated and the nature and dangers of their exposures providing a roadmap for appropriate medical treatment.

These labs also provide assessments of environmental contamination that affect evacuation, remediation and restoration decisions and have serious social, public health, political and economic implications for potentially millions of people. The ability to provide policymakers with analytical data regarding the scale, scope and public health implications of potential radiological contamination quickly and accurately is critical to making informed decisions regarding evacuation, re-occupation, medical treatment and environmental clean-up. But given the nation’s current lab capacity gap they can’t possibly get that information when they need it.

Last November, former Russian KGB agent Vladimir Litvinenko was murdered in London with the radioactive isotope Polonium-210. Fearful that others may have been exposed to the radiation, the CDC identified 160 U.S. citizens that were in the same hotels and restaurants as Litvinenko around the same time. In the end, none of them had anything to fear. They did not suffer from any radiological contamination. But in attempting to locate a laboratory to do the clinical analysis for exposure to Polonium-210, the CDC found only one single U.S. private lab that was qualified and capable of doing the analysis, highlighting the massive shortfall in U.S. radiochemistry laboratories.

There have been some efforts to close this gap, but the results have been slow and at times the bureaucratic response in some agencies has been infuriating. In 2005 the Department of Homeland Security helped establish an Integrated Consortium of Laboratory Networks (ICLN) to help establish the capacity and capability to address this radiochemistry gap. Inexplicably at the very same time, the very same agency was terminating a major, world renowned radiochemistry quality assurance program at the Environmental Measurements Laboratory in New York.

That decision has had a significant effect on many state and federal radiochemistry labs undermining their ability to certify that the sample results they provide are accurate and reliable. Today, there are renewed calls from federal agencies to establish a "proficiency testing" program as part of radiological networks proposed by the CDC and EPA to ensure that the data radiological emergency response officials and the public receive is dependable and trustworthy. We’re going to have to spend money to establish an identical program to the one that DHS just ended a couple of years ago if we’re going to have the radiological testing capacity needed to respond to a dirty bomb.

A radiological attack is likely to result in few immediate deaths but large scale low-levels of radioactive exposure to the vast majority of victims. Regardless of the actual public health impact, however, a "worried well" of tens of thousands of individuals are likely to demand clinical tests that can confirm they have not been contaminated with radiation.

Providing that reassurance will help maintain the public’s confidence in the government and will help stem a potential tide of growing fear that large segments of the public may have suffered from radiological contamination, however unfounded. Most important, this analysis will help identify those truly contaminated so that they can receive appropriate medical treatment as soon as possible. Closing this capacity gap as soon as possible would be a small insurance policy against a far larger disaster in the future.

The public expects the Federal government to be able to respond appropriately; the government’s own planning documents identify the estimated scale of that response; yet the government has not moved actually to put into place the mechanisms we need to carry that response forward. Without the ability to conduct both environmental and clinical radiological assessments reliably and quickly it seems we may be headed for a radiological Katrina if terrorists succeed in detonating a dirty bomb in an American city.

Witnesses

Panel

5 - Dr. John Vitko
Director, Chemical & Biological Security Division Department of Homeland Security Department of Homeland Security
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4 - Dr. Robert Jones
Chief, Inorganic Toxicology and Radionuclide Labs Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control
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3 - Dr. Robert Hadley
Chair, Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center Laboratory Analysis Working Group Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Department of Energy Lawre
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1 - Dr. John Griggs
Chief, National Air and Radiation Environmental Laboratory Monitoring and Analytical Services Branch, Office of Radiation and Indoor Air Environmental Protectio
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2 - Ms. Dana Tulis
Deputy Director Office of Emergency Management Environmental Protection Agency Office of Emergency Management Environmental Protection Agency
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