Epidemiologic Studies

Rocky Flats Fire Site

DOE REPOSITORIES

In response to legal and other civic concerns over the years, the EG&G Records Management organization has developed several databases to provide and track Rocky Flats information. EG&G maintains the following databases: the Environmental Protection Agency database; the EG&G database; the Marcus Church v. Rockwell database; the Environmental Master File database; and the United States v. Rockwell Litigation Support System database. The databases are maintained in a variety of software packages and may be searched using key words by EG&G Records Management personnel. Most of the databases point researchers to hard copy documents housed onsite. The database supporting the Historical Release Report and Dose Reconstruction Report have documents on optical disk, as does the database owned by Rockwell for the United States v. Rockwell criminal investigation. Researchers should note that these systems cannot be considered complete sources of historical information.

In 1953, EML, formerly the Health and Safety Laboratory, began a program to measure strontium-90 in soil through a joint effort with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service located in Beltsville, Maryland. Known as the EML Soil Inventory and Archives, the program maintains several thousand samples, including lake sediments, atmospheric dust, seawater, bone ash, and diet ash, within the Laboratory's Samples Archives. Several projects conducted between 1970 and 1975 involve soil sampling of the environment surrounding the Rocky Flats site. A guide to the collection is available through the National Technical Information Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, Virginia, 22161.

The Technical Library is located in a security-controlled area. In addition, some materials require that researchers obtain DOE sigma access. The Technical Library contains reports and notebooks of potential interest to 1957 fire research. Classified report #CD59-217 describes types of work performed in Building 71 during December 1957. The notebook #CD57-427 of the Supervisor of Glass Shops includes material on Room 180, Building 71. Information on Chemline and Building 74 waste drum processing for 1957 may be found in CO201SDBK.

OTHER REPOSITORIES

The Post Street Archives houses holdings of the Rocky Flats Division of the Dow Chemical Company, including Company publications, newspaper articles, and organizational charts dating primarily from 1951 to 1983. This collection may contain some general operating contracts or other materials which relate to the September 1957 fire at Rocky Flats.

UNIVERSITIES

United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR)
Washington State University
Health Research & Education Center
100 Sprout Road
Richland, WA 99352
Phone: (509) 376-6010 (collect, 24 hours a day)

Operated under a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository of the USTUR is a centralized facility for the storage of tissues, histopathology slides, tissue blocks, and related materials from individuals (primarily DOE workers) with documented intakes of radium, plutonium, uranium, americium, or other radioactive elements. The primary mission of the USTUR is to assure the adequacy of radiation protection standards for actinide elements such as plutonium and uranium. Data is released from the registries without personal identifiers. Interested scientific researchers may obtain tissue samples from the registries through written requests. The registry contains some samples from Rocky Flats workers.