Science and Technology for Canadians

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Summary

After US atom bomb tests, Health Canada's Radiation Protection Bureau did studies in 1960 on the effects of fallout radiation on communities in the North. They had to travel to Baker lake, Rae Edso, Old Crow and other communities in the Yukon and the NWT. In order to do the tests in remote communities they had to invent a portable "Whole Body" X-ray machine that could fly into the communities. The machine gave results of each person who was checked in one minute.

Transcript of Video

Female Voice Over
From the Second World War on, thousands of nuclear bomb tests have been conducted around the world. Up until 1963, hundreds were detonated in the atmosphere. Studies of nuclear fallout done in the early 1960's by Norway, Sweden and Alaska prompted Health Canada to launch its first investigation in the north.

Caribou, then a staple of the northern diet, were checked first. When the caribou tested radioactive in 1967, a two-year study of 3000 people spread out in 41 arctic communities began.

Gary Kramer
The study went up to 1969 because the radioactive fallout was decreasing up there after the Test Ban Treaty in '63. They found that the people eating caribou had radioactivity in their body. They found that it wasn't dangerous in terms of health effect. And the study, as I said, was discontinued in 1969 because they thought it was all going away.

Female VO
They thought it was all going away... but was it? When Health Canada scientists went up north in the late 80's to study the effects of fallout from Chernobyl, they found the unexpected.

Gary Kramer
The first thing Health Canada did was look at the amount of radioactivity in the Caribou again. And when they did that, we were surprised to find out that only 25 percent of the caribou burden was due to Chernobyl. The rest of it was still from fallout. Because in the NWT the fallout has remained in the environment much longer than here in the south where it gets taken into the soil and gets bound up there. In the north it stays on the lichen for a very long period of time and that's what the caribou eat, and the radioactivity goes into the caribou. The people up in the NWT hunt, eat a lot of caribou, and they get it. So it's a very direct food chain: lichen - caribou - humans.

Female VO
To understand how the human population was being affected by both new and lingering radiation, Health Canada launched its second study of fallout in the north in 1989.

Scientists used a portable whole body counter to test for radioactivity. People who've been exposed to radiation give off gamma rays. Like a Geiger counter, the system's detectors read the radiation. They're linked to a series of components that process the data and display the results. It takes just five minutes to get a reading that can tell scientists how much and which kind of radioactivity is in any body.

Gary Kramer
Two major things came out of that study. The first, and I think the most important, was that we were able to establish that the radioactivity in the people was not a cause for concern and wouldn't give rise to a measurable health effect. The second major impact from that study was we were able to reassure the people up there that continuing to eat caribou was alright and in fact, that's a very healthy diet... the amount that was in the caribou wasn't what would lead to a noticeable health effect.

Female VO
During the winter of 1989 and 90, over 1100 people from five communities were tested using the portable whole body counter. The system's modular design makes for easy transport and quick set-up. Not only is the portable whole body counter an essential study tool, it's also part of Health Canada's Nuclear Emergency Plan. In the event of a nuclear emergency, the portable whole body counter is on standby, ready to be deployed, anytime, any place it's needed in Canada.

Earth Tones is produced in co-operation with Health Canada.