The Five Series Study: Mortality of Military Participants in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Tests

More than 200,000 U.S. military personnel participated in atmospheric nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Questions persist, such as whether that test participation is associated with the timing and causes of death among those individuals. This is the report of a mortality study of the approximately 70,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen who participated in at least one of five selected U.S. nuclear weapons test series1 in the 1950s and nearly 65,000 comparable nonparticipants, the referents. The investigation described in this report, based on more than 5 million person-years of mortality follow-up, represents one of the largest cohort studies of military veterans ever conducted.

• Front Matter
• Summary
• 1 Study Rationale and Overview
• 2 Other Studies of Radiation Exposure of Military Personnel
• 3 An Overview of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Testing Program
• 4 Data Sources
• 5 The Participant Cohort
• 6 The Referent Cohort
• 7 Exposure Definition and Measurement
• 8 Mortality Ascertainment
• 9 Analysis Structure
• 10 Description of Cohort Characteristics
• 11 Findings
• 12 Discussion
• References
• Appendix A: A Review of the Dosimetry Data Available in the Nuclear Test Personnel Review Program
• Appendix B: National Association of Atomic Veterans Medical Survey
• Appendix C: Epidemiology Primer
• Appendix D: Verification of Completeness and Accuracy of the Participant Roster
• Appendix E: Additional Analysis
• Appendix F: Biographical Summaries