Andrew P. Hull

Andrew P. Hull (1920-1999) was a senior health physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory whose responsibilities included tracking the radiation released onto Long Island by the federal research facility.

"For decades, federal, state and local officials factored in Hull's analyses in ruling out the possibility that the lab's activities may have threatened public health or safety," reported Charlie Zehren in Hull's 1999 obituary. "He supported the ill-fated Shoreham nuclear plant. Most recently, Hull offered assurances in the wake of revelations in January, 1997 that Brookhaven failed for 12 years to detect leaks of radioactive tritium from the spent fuel pool of the High Flux Beam Nuclear Reactor." Zehren added, however, that Hull was "an open, engaging man who always insisted that cold scientific facts speak for themselves" and "was not above criticizing the lab or its operations."

Hull was reportedly a member of the board of advisors of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a libertarian think tank that lobbies against what it regards as "the liberal and often-extremist agenda of major environmental groups like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth." As recently as October 2004 (more than five years after his death), CFACT continued to list him as an advisor on its website. However, his daughter Connie has disputed the idea that Hull was politically conservative. "My father never did a thing in his life to aid and abet anything remotely resembling Right Wing politics," she stated. "Quite the contrary! As a young man, he was a left-leaning Democrat who helped Abe Ribicoff become elected governor of Connecticut, and he was a life-long community activist for progressive social and environmental causes."