Epidemiologic Studies

Rocky Flats Plant Site

Introduction

DOE REPOSITORIES

EG&G Databases

EG&G Records Management
DOE Contracts and Services Division
Rocky Flats Office
P.O. Box 928
Golden, CO 80402-0928
Telephone Number: (303) 966-6177

In response to legal and civic concerns, EG&G Records Management has developed databases to provide and track information about Rocky Flats. HAI has evaluated the following databases and determined that they are of particular interest to health researchers: the 706 Technical Library database and the United States v. Rockwell Litigation Support System database.

The 706 Technical Library database may be used to search for classified and unclassified site publications maintained by the Library since 1952. These publications include technical, scientific, and process reports either written by Industrial Hygiene personnel or directly relating to Industrial Hygiene issues. The software supporting the database, called ADSEP, is approximately twenty-five years old and is searched on an IBM 3190. Hardcopy printouts from the database are available for review within the Library. Data relating to classified records were last updated in 1992; unclassified record were updated in 1991.

The United States v. Rockwell Litigation Support System Database is located in T334 C. It may be used to search for classified and unclassified records which were seized during the 1989 FBI raid. Researchers should be aware that the database does not contain copies of all of the documents seized by the FBI. The software supporting the system is a copyrighted program designed by the LSI Corporation, located in Golden, Colorado, and is accessed through an IVUE Workstation. The system is not updated.

HAI staff searched for relevant record titles in these two databases by combining keywords with Boolean search terms. The keywords were taken from HAI's records selection criteria (see Appendix B). The databases provided the following number of "hits," or indications that document title(s) with the following term(s) exist in the record collections. Each hit had at least one of the words in the combination of terms. For example, a successful search resulting from the first combination of terms had either "environment" or "environmental monitoring" in the document titles. The 706 Technical Library database can be searched with forms of words. For example, "radioact" can be used to find titles with radioactive and radioactivity. The United States v. Rockwell Litigation Support Service, however, does not have this capability. The first column of numbers are the hits for the 706 Technical Library, the second are the hits for the United States v. Rockwell Litigation Support System Database:

Environment	568	1377
Incidents/Occurrences/Accidents/Safety	906	2310
Medicine/Health	98	3135
Alarm/Body Counter/Dose/Dosage/Dosimet/Film Badge	230	862
Waste/Drum/Tank/Hazardous Material/Materials Handling	1445	3138
Detect/Radioact/Radiat/Beta/Neutron/Gamma/Alpha	214	616

Due to the nature of database search techniques, researchers should not consider HAI's search of the databases to be exhaustive. This is intended to provide an idea of the volume of material available on these particular topics. In addition, the use of the databases are restricted to personnel with specialized training.

Environmental Measurements Laboratory (EML)

U.S. Department of Energy
376 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014-3621
Telephone Number: (212) 620-3607

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 Sample 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.

OTHER REPOSITORIES

Post Street Archives

205 Post Street
Midland, MI 48640
Telephone Number: (517) 832-0870

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.

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 DOE, 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.