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Long-term Mental Health Consequences of the Accident at Three Mile Island

1990; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00207411.1990.11449162

1557-9328

Evelyn J. Bromet, David Parkinson, Leslie O. Dunn,

Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health

The accident at Three Mile Island (TMI), in central Pennsylvania, began on 28 March, 1979, at 4:00 am., when several water pumps malfunctioned in the Unit 2 plant Within the next few days, ... a soies of events compounded by equipment failures, inappropriate procedures, and human mors and ignorance escalated into the worst crisis yet experienced by the nation's nuclear power industry [1]. Two days lato, the Governor of Pennsylvania issued an advisory to all pregnant women and preschool children to leave the five-mile area surrounding Three Mile Island and provisionally closed all schools within a five-mile radius. In all, 144,000 residents were temporarily evacuated. This advisory was followed the next day by the ballooning of the hydrogen bubble and threats of a subsequent explosion. Schools woe not reopened until 10 April. Since the immediate crisis, the Three Mile Island area has endured intermittent radiation leaks; the news in January 1980 that the accident came within 30-60 minutes of a meltdown; the venting of krypton gas from the containment building housing the damaged reactor, continual concerns about the safety of the cleanup operations; worries that personal illnesses may be due to the TMI accident; and controversy surrounding the reopening of the undamaged reactor. At each anniversary, the national media give special coverage to TMI; but in the local area, TMI continues to dominate the news on a daily basis. Most public health agencies concluded that the extent of radiation leakage during the crisis was too small to cause serious health problems in the communities surrounding the plant; but because of the magnitude and unusual nature of the stresses endured by the community, there was considerable concern about potential mental health effects. Several federal and state agencies including the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island [2-4], the Department of Health of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [5], the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [6-13], and the National Institute of Mental Health [14-25] therefore supported investigations into possible mental health consequences. Because these sets of studies dif-