504 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
In January 1981, Senator William Roth, Jr. asked the General 
Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the United States past 
program of radioactive waste disposal at sea. In response to 
that request, the GAO issued a report in October 1981 entitled 
"Hazards of Past Low-Level Radioactive Waste Ocean Dumping Have 
Been Overemphasized." It was hoped that the GAO Report would 
clarify issues; instead, it is permeated with inadequate docu- 
mentation, misrepresentation of evidence, and failures to acknow- 
ledge the existence of other pertinent evidence. GAO's defective 
conclusions flow from this invalid analysis. 
The GAO Report's principal findings and conclusions are 
three-fold: 
@ the Federal Government has no complete and 
accurate catalogue of information on how much, 
what kind, and where low-level nuclear waste 
was dumped because detailed records were not 
required; 
@e the overwhelming body of scientific research 
and opinion shows that concerns over the poten- 
tial public health and environmental conse- 
quences posed by past ocean dumping activity 
are unwarranted and overemphasized; and 
@ although the Environmental Protection Agency 
has been slow in developing low-level radio- 
active waste ocean dumping regulations, its 
current approach is sound. Nonetheless, 
improvements are needed in developing specific 
dumpsite monitoring requirements. 
An analysis of an issue as complex and controversial as 
ocean dumping of radioactive wastes must be done with documenta- 
tion and an accurate representation of all the pertinent evidence. 
The Report falls far short in both those tasks. This paper 
analyzes the GAO Report and examines the pertinent evidence. 
Contrary to GAO's findings and conclusions, we find that: 
@ the incomplete and inaccurate information that 
plague the issue of past ocean dumping of nuclear 
waste presents a serious problem which requires 
more complete elaboration in order to determine 
actual or potential hazards; 
@ there is not enough hard evidence to provide 
sufficient certainty that public health and 
environmental hazards will not result from 
past dumping practices; 
