161 



STATEMENT OF DR. DONALD ODOWD, CHAIRMAN, ARCTIC 



RESEARCH COMMISSION 



Dr. O'DOWD. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting the U.S. Arc- 

 tic Research Commission to comment on radioactive and other en- 

 vironmental threats emanating in Russia and threats to the well- 

 being of the U.S. Arctic, its peoples, their culture, its economy and 

 ecosystem. 



Let me say a word about the Arctic Research Commission. It was 

 created by the Arctic Research and Policy Act of 1984, consists of 

 seven members appointed by the President, and it is charged to for- 

 mulate Arctic science and engineering research policy for federal 

 agencies that do and fund Arctic research. It sdso recommends and 

 monitors coordination of federal Arctic science and serves as an ad- 

 vocate for and promotes Arctic science. 



Mr. Chairman, relevant to this hearing, as you mentioned ear- 

 lier, the Arctic Research Commission visited Magadan in early July 

 to meet with Russian counterparts. At that meeting we met with 

 representatives of the Arctic Research Commission of the Russian 

 Academy of Sciences and also with the Commission on Arctic and 

 Antarctic Affairs of the Russian federation. These are referred to 

 as the Committee from the Academy and the State Committee con- 

 cerned with Arctic affairs. Also present were representatives of the 

 Far East branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and rep- 

 resentatives from numerous institutes from the Far East branch. 



The objectives of this trip were to determine how the Russian 

 commissions operate, what are their jurisdictions, how our two sys- 

 tems are alike and different, what we might do in cooperation with 

 the Russian Academy, who are the players, not only by name but 

 to have an opportunity to meet the people, and finally, exploration 

 of the field conditions for research in the Russian Far East. We did 

 this at the invitation of the Russian Academy, which goes back 

 about two years. 



During the meetings we raised the issue of radioactive, heavy 

 metal, chemical and related pollution on the Russian north. We in- 

 quired about its extent, severity, danger and how it's spread by air, 

 ocean and land transport. The acknowledgement that we received 

 was that the problem is severe, it was pretty apparent that he peo- 

 ple with whom we are talking did not know how severe, and prob- 

 ably no one knows. My guess is that although in this country we 

 have a reasonably good idea of our pollution problems, we continue 

 to learn more about them as our abilities to measure these things 

 grow better — in Russia I suspect no one has anj^hing but the va- 

 guest idea of how great the problem might be. During the course 

 of our meeting, someone raised the question about six million 

 deaths that might be attributable to radiation exposure over the 

 nuclear era in Russia. This is a number that had been used by a 

 Russian minister visiting in Washington some time ago. I thought 

 the response might be a response of, "that's three orders of mag- 

 nitude too great." The response was, "well, that seems a little 

 high." And in talking with people informally, two or three million 

 did not seem to be a shocking number to the scientists that we 

 talked to. It's a shocking number to us, but in that context it was 

 not. 



