Americans are told the story of the scientists who built the atomic bomb as part of an intellectual race to find the world’s most potent weapon of war.
More than 100 atmospheric weapons tests were conducted in the U.S. and its territories between 1945 and 1962. It resulted in widespread radioactive fallout across much of the U.S., largely spread by prevailing winds and rain. In addition, contaminated waste was shipped and haphazardly stored across the country, creating new toxic Superfund sites stretching from Colorado to New York.
The narrative ignores radioactive fallout across the United States: in cities near the first explosion, in neighborhoods downwind of checkpoints, in villages near uranium mines, or in suburbs near nuclear landfills. Citizens lived in such places and died young of cancer and other diseases, or gave birth to small children with uranium in their bodies.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is set to expire this summer. Since the radiation treatment program’s inception in the 1990s, more than 54,000 claims have been processed for those affected, but not all are eligible.
Thousands more could have been recognized and compensated with legislation proposed in Congress last year. The measure cleared the Senate with bipartisan support but was struck from the final version of a massive defense spending bill as lawmakers haggled over details in the House.
Source New Mexico: RECA passes US Senate
By Danielle Prokop
The U. S. Senate voted to expand the eligibility and extend the duration of a fund for other people exposed to radiation through the federal government, adding New Mexicans injured during the first nuclear test at Trinity.
In a 69-30 vote, the Senate passed S. 3853, which budgets the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (called RECA) beyond its June expiration date for six more years. The bill also increases the number of bills and expands the number of other people who can receive bills from the fund nationwide.
Many “downwind” communities are excluded from compensation. The expansion assignment would integrate for the first time thousands of New Mexicans from the domain surrounding the Trinity control site, as well as citizens of Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Guam. And of just a handful of counties affected by the fallout, it would include the entire states of Utah, Nevada and Arizona.
Additionally, the bill would specifically increase the number of uranium workers who could be covered by extending the 1971 to 1990 generation.
And the bill recognizes nuclear tea dumping communities in Missouri, as well as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alaska.
Downwinders: The bill would allow RECA to cover citizens of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and Guam, and would include all of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, from only certain counties. In particular, it recognizes for the first time the Trinity Test and Guam downwinders.
Uranium miners: The measure would extend the deadline for eligible uranium personnel to 1990 or reduce it to 1971. It would compensate those who mined, milled or transported ore in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington and Utah. Array Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas.
More conditions: The bill would cover new cancers, and it would also allow chronic kidney illness as a qualifying disease for uranium workers.
Waste disposal: Communities harmed by Manhattan Project waste or waste from other tests deposited in certain areas of Missouri, Alaska, Tennessee and Kentucky could receive compensation up to $25,000 under the bill.
Better pay: Taking inflation into account, the measure increases the flat-rate payment to $100,000 for in-zone participants and on-site participants, up from $50,000 and $75,000. If signed, the bill would allow previous applicants to submit new programs to make up the difference.
The Missouri Independent: US Senate approves compensation for St. Louis nuclear waste exposure
By Allison Kite
The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, extends the expiring Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and expands it to cover other people who have been exposed to radioactive waste that remains dispersed in the Saint-Louis region.
“The United States Senate has the opportunity to do its part — its small part — to continue to make this nation what it could be, what we promised it will be, and to put right things that have been wrong,” Hawley said just before senators voted 69-30 in favor of his bill.
The legislation, which is backed by President Joe Biden, would represent a federal recognition of — and apology for — St. Louis’ decades-long struggle with radioactive waste.
St. Louis’ dominance was central to the Manhattan Project, the call given to the World War II effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Mallinckrodt Chemical works with subtle uranium at the St. Louis center. Louis during the war, which was used in the first sustained nuclear bomb. Chain reaction in Chicago, a key advance in the progression of the bomb.
Last summer, the Senate voted 61-37 in favor of Hawley’s update to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But the expansion was included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and was eliminated through a convention committee of senators and representatives.
Hawley has criticized Senate Republican leaders, particularly Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for allowing the expansion to be removed from the defense bill.
McConnell voted in favor of the bill passed by senators on Thursday, which is a separate extension of RECA and still wants to pass the House of Representatives.
The White House announced its endorsement of the legislation Wednesday evening, saying in a statement that the administration looks forward to working with legislators to ensure funding for the program.
“The president believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions,” the statement says.
Hawley told a telephone convention Monday that RECA’s self-expansion bill is expected to cost about a third of the value of the edition approved by senators last summer. (The Union of Concerned Scientists said the new charge estimate is less than a fraction of (CBO’s original estimate is $147 billings. )The law still covers the same geographic areas, he said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has not released an independent analysis of the new legislation.
The standalone RECA would provide policies for other people exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska or Kentucky and diagnosed with myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and cancers of the thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx and small intestine. , pancreas, bile ducts, gallbladder, salivary gland, bladder, brain, colon, ovary, bone, kidney or lung. It covers liver cancer as long as the patient does not have cirrhosis or hepatitis B.
Surviving spouses and children could also seek compensation if the individual exposed to the radioactive waste has died.
The bill introduced by senators last summer would also have covered diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, sclerosis and Hashimoto’s disease. These situations are not included in the new edition of the bill.
Under the bill, the fund for uranium workers and miners would be extended for six years. Last summer’s bill would have extended it to up to 19 years.
In urging his colleagues to vote in favor of the bill, Hawley noted that the federal government is currently conducting tests on homes in the St. Louis area to determine whether a subdivision built in the 1990s was built on radioactive contamination.
‘We Were Scrapped’: Trinity Downwinders and New Mexico Miners Who Remain Anonymous
The world’s first downwinders are continuing the fight, as more and more communities across the state affected by uranium mining come forward.
By Danielle Prokop and Marisa Demarco, Source New Mexico
Those who came closest to the first nuclear explosion in history have been suffering for generations.
In New Mexico, neighbors at the Trinity test site were not warned or evacuated until the U. S. government detonated the atomic bomb in 1945. The light was so bright that it could be seen from hundreds of miles away. Nearly half a million people resided within a 240-kilometer radius of the explosion. Witnesses said the ash fell for several days.
Cancers, diseases, premature deaths, infant mortality, and many more have plagued the rest of New Mexicans since the U. S. government detonated the bomb on the Day of the Dead. But despite more than a decade of organizing and advocacy, they have not been recognized or paid.
Declassified documents show that in the days immediately after the explosion, Manhattan Project planners learned that the radius of rain was much wider and more damaging than expected.
The impacts of the Atomic Age are broad in New Mexico, in Indigenous lands and throughout the region. Not only were many exposed to radiation during the Trinity Test in 1945, subsequent uranium mining for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons sickened and killed workers and their families.
Although the mines were generally privately owned, the U. S. government was the visitor who paid for this uranium ore for decades after World War II. Hundreds of dormant and unresolved mines remain open wounds in the country, which continue to harm its neighbors.
Lawrence and Arlene Juanico have never known the country without uranium mines. Now, they’re fighting to have their effect recognized in Laguna Pueblo. The Juanicos and other volunteers worked to track diagnoses and help others apply for benefits for their circle of family members.
“No one was taking notes here,” Arlene Juanico said. My spouse and I are looking for exactly who was affected by this. “
‘We’re running out of time’: Program for Arizonans exposed to radiation set to expire in June
Survivors, politicians and Navajo Nation officials react after legislation to compensate more downwinders and miners fails in Congress.
By Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror
Marti Gerdes remembers living in Prescott as a kid and, every winter, she and her family would make snow ice cream, mixing milk and sugar with snow.
It was a gift she remembers having every time it snowed, for a year when her mother told them they couldn’t eat ice cream because “there was something wrong in the air. “
“I had no idea what he was talking about,” Gerdes said.
Gerdes and her family lived in the northern Arizona city in the 1960s, at least 300 miles from the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. government tested nuclear weapons north of Las Vegas.
Those tests sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere, dispersed through clouds and precipitation in several states, and Arizona has since shown government models and data putting others at risk of serious illness for decades.
Over the years, several Arizona political leaders have advocated for an expansion of REC-covered spaces in Arizona.
In July, U. S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz. , introduced the Downwinders Parity Act, which proposed updates to RECA to include all affected spaces in Mohave County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada. The bill would also have informed the attorney general to define before Congress the efforts that will be made to teach and raise awareness among the newly eligible. The bill co-sponsored by Rep. Rubén Gallego, D-Ariz.
When the amendments were included in the defense spending bill, Stanton said he would continue to work to expand and expand RECA.
‘How Much Money Are Our Lives Worth?’: Utah Downwinders Call RECA Expansion Failure a Betrayal
More people across the state may have been included in the U. S. program. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security is a U. S. government for those who might have been exposed to radiation testing from Cold War weapons.
By Kyle Dunphey, Utah News Desk
People like Mary Dickson aren’t legally considered downwinders, the term used to describe those exposed to radiation during Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and New Mexico.
“Every time I say I’m a downwinder, I’m like, ‘Oh, did you grow up in St. Petersburg?John’s, George?'” said Dickson, of Salt Lake City, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1985. “It’s been frustrating because for 30 years, I’ve been looking for other people to realize that no, it’s not just southern Utah, it’s everywhere.
In Utah, the government’s radiation payment program covered citizens living in one of 10 counties (Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington, and Wayne) for two consecutive years from 1951 to 1958. People who worked in mines, mills, or transportation of uranium ore in Utah from 1942 to 1971 were also eligible.
Under the proposed expansion, in Utah those diagnosed with certain cancers caused through nuclear testing would have been entitled to compensation. The measure would also have extended the RECA, which expires next June. Limited eligibility under the existing bill has been a primary source of frustration for physical care providers like Becky Barlow, director of the radiation exposure screening and education program at St. Louis. John’s. George, who examines other people exposed to radiation and helps them seek compensation.
“Obviously, radiation doesn’t interfere with county lines,” said Barlow, whose program covers lower Utah and parts of Nevada and Arizona. Still, Barlow receives calls from all over the Mountain West domain from other people who suspect they’ve had poor health due to radiation, but he’s still eligible for the federal program.
‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation for them
Residents are suffering from the existing effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing and clouds irradiated over Idaho decades ago.
By Mia Maldonado, Idaho Capital Sun
For nearly two decades, Tona Henderson collected newspaper articles, letters and photographs documenting who in the small town of Emmett had been diagnosed with cancer, in addition to her own family. The result is a wall in her home covered with photographs and pages showing the names of network members who may have been exposed to deadly radiation from the country’s Cold War nuclear weapons testing program.
Henderson is the director of the Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit representing people who lived in Idaho between 1951 to 1962 when the United States tested nuclear weapons aboveground in Nevada. She has been a leading advocate for the federal government to provide financial compensation to Idahoans impacted by that nuclear testing, which sent radiated clouds beyond Nevada’s boundaries to other neighboring states, including Idaho.
Gem County, along with Custer, Blaine and Lemhi counties in Idaho, are among the five U. S. counties. The U. S. is most affected by the fallout from Nevada’s nuclear tests in the mid-20th century, according to the National Cancer Institute.
At the time, young Americans were at the highest risk of thyroid cancer if they ate milk from pastures where cows and goats grazed and that was infected with iodine-131, a radioactive substance released into the environment during nuclear weapons tests.
Children, whose thyroid glands are smaller and still developing, consume more milk than adults, which puts them at higher risk for cancer due to the concentration of iodine-131 in the thyroid gland.
Emmett is a tight-knit community, Henderson said. The population stands at about 8,000 people today, according to the latest census numbers. She used to run a doughnut shop in town, and customers, knowing her role in tracing diagnoses, would tell her about locals facing cancer. From 2004 to 2019, she said she recorded hundreds of instances of cancer diagnoses among Emmett residents who were present during the testing period.
“That’s a lot of other people for such a small town,” he says. “The fight is not over. “
“What Should We Do?”: New Awareness of Historic Nuclear Radiation in Montana Neighborhoods
Fallout from weapons tests elsewhere could have had devastating health consequences in the state. Political support for recognition and compensation grows.
By Blair Miller, Daily Montanan
Growing up in Cut Bank, Montana, Patti Jo Ruegamer spent most of her summer days commuting to the farm with her parents in Meriwether, about 40 miles to the west.
While her parents worked, she would go to the neighbor’s house, where she and other young people would drink new milk from the cows and spend the day riding horses, swimming in the river, or strolling.
However, the clouds floating overhead may simply be due to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons experiments carried out by the United States government many miles away in the 1950s and 1960s.
A landmark study conducted by the National Cancer Institute in 1997 showed that of the 25 smartest counties in the United States that won the highest radioactive result from firearm tests in Nevada, 15 were in Montana. The report identifies Meagher County, Montana, where White Sulphur Springs is located, as having received more radiation than any other county in the United States.
The researchers found that citizens of 15 Montana counties (Meagher, Broadwater, Beaverhead, Chouteau, Jefferson, Powell, Judith Basin, Madison, Fergus, Gallatin, Petroleum, Lewis and Clark, Blaine, Silver Bow and Deer Lodge) gained estimated doses of iodine. -131. a your thyroid between nine and 16 rads.
But much of the rest of the state, including the Blackfoot Indian Reservation where Ruegamer lived, recorded between 6 and 9 rads, also among those in the United States.
‘It lives in geologic time’: Nuclear contamination and health risks remain throughout Colorado
How the proposed expansion of a payment program could affect the state and the ongoing struggle to achieve it.
When Jane Thompson left Uravan, in western Colorado, several decades ago, it was still a quiet advertisement for the city of about 1,000 people, all of whom had ties to the uranium plant owned by Union Carbide.
“It’s a wonderful position to grow,” said Thompson, who is helping grow the city’s legacy as president of the Rimrocker Historical Society. His grandfather was a miner until he retired. His father also after his parents got married. “They were the second-to-last to leave Uravan when they sent everyone. “
Uravan and the nearby mining towns that survived, in addition to Nucla and Naturita, are among the many places in Colorado where locals got caught up in the Manhattan Project’s bomb and nuclear weapons race, and in many cases took the risks.
“We Went Crazy”: Years of Pain After a Formative Years Near Coldwater Creek, Missouri.
RECA expansion could have helped with care for people suffering after living near contaminated waterways and sites in the state. A U.S. senator vows to keep fighting for it.
By Allison Kite, Missouri Independent
Her parents bought a new home while thousands of other families flocked to the developing suburbs of St. John’s. Louis. La community of Winters was full of other children to play with. He spent most days splashing in a stream that flowed near his house. .
But Winters didn’t know at the time that the creek’s waters could simply be dangerous. The creek he played in was a small tributary of Coldwater Creek, which had unknowingly been infected through radioactive waste left behind during World War II. When Coldwater Creek was flooded, its waters returned to the creek near the home of Winters’ relatives.
The St. Louis region was pivotal to the development of the first nuclear bomb in the 1940s. Uranium for the Manhattan Project — the name given to the effort to develop the bomb — was refined in downtown St. Louis. The leftover radioactive waste has plagued the metro area ever since.
Private companies and government agencies with oversight of the radioactive material documented the possible dangers of the radioactive waste repeatedly but made little effort to keep it from spreading as suburbs sprung up around the airport and Coldwater Creek throughout the 1950s and 1960s. An investigation last summer by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press laid bare the way they dismissed the spreading contamination as “slight,” “minimal” or “low-level.”
The reaction of federal and state lawmakers in Missouri to the “atomic fallouts” accelerated. Within days, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. , and Rep. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, vowed to act, calling the investigation “devastating” and denouncing the federal government’s “negligence. “”For decades, the federal government has actively and consciously treated St. John’s Day. “Louis as a dumping ground for noxious and poisonous radioactive tea,” Bush said.
In response, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced his office would “do everything in our power to hold the federal government accountable.” His office assigned several attorneys to the case and are still investigating. A state representative for the affected area convened a townhall, telling residents:
“Because journalists dropped those documents and found out that our federal government knew about it and never told the public for 50 years, it was huge. We were desensitized to the madness. “
The U. S. Senate, with bipartisan support, voted narrowly in late July to expand a payment program for Americans who have become ill due to radiation exposure resulting from the advancement and testing of nuclear weapons at home and Cold War agreements. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the proposal, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm toured one of the infected sites with a stopover in St. John’s. Senators attached the bill to the annual defense bill; Although our report was described as a “bombshell,” it was eventually removed from the latest edition of the law after the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would collect $147 billion over a decade.
Still, lawmakers and involved families in seven Western states are pledging to reintroduce legislation to extend and expand the federal radiation payment program in 2024, and a rush of spending previously introduced in Missouri would boost the state’s investment for a payment of victims, which would raise our report.
And, in the clearest sign yet that the federal government is taking responsibility for the Coldwater Creek contamination, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (U. S. Army Corps of Engineers) has called in the U. S. Department of Defense. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security announced in January that it would install signs along the waterway to warn the public of the dangers, more than 70 years after staff first did so. He learned that barrels of radioactive waste had been left nearby.
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by Derek Kravitz, Idaho Capital Sun March 8, 2024
Americans are told the story of the scientists who built the atomic bomb as part of an intellectual race to find the world’s most potent weapon of war.
Between 1945 and 1962, more than one hundred atmospheric weapons tests were conducted in the United States and its territories. As a result, they caused widespread radioactive fallout across much of the United States, spread largely through prevailing winds and rain. In addition, infected tea is randomly shipped and stored across the country, creating new poisonous Superfund sites that stretch from Colorado to New York.
The narrative ignores radioactive fallout across the United States: in cities near the first explosion, in neighborhoods downwind of checkpoints, in villages near uranium mines, or in suburbs near nuclear dumps. Citizens lived in such places and died young of cancer and other diseases, or gave birth to small children with uranium in their bodies.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is set to expire this summer. Since the radiation program first was created in the 1990s, more than 54,000 claims have been processed for those affected. But not everyone has been eligible.
Thousands more could have been recognized and compensated with legislation proposed in Congress last year. The measure cleared the Senate with bipartisan support but was struck from the final version of a massive defense spending bill as lawmakers haggled over details in the House.
Source: New Mexico: RECA expansion passes U. S. Senate
By Danielle Prokop
The U.S. Senate voted to expand eligibility and extend the life of a fund for people exposed to radiation by the federal government — including New Mexicans harmed by the first-ever nuclear test at Trinity.
By a vote of 69 to 30, the Senate passed S. 3853, which budgets the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act – known as RECA – for six years after it expires in June. The bill also increases the number of bills and expands the number of other people who can get bills from the fund across the country.
Many “downwind” communities are excluded from compensation. The expansion assignment would for the first time include thousands of New Mexicans from the domain surrounding the Trinity control site, as well as citizens of Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Guam. Of a handful of counties affected by the fallout, the entire states of Utah, Nevada and Arizona would be affected.
In addition, the bill would specifically increase the number of uranium workers who could be covered by expanding the generation from 1971 to 1990.
And the bill recognizes communities where nuclear tea was dumped in Missouri, as well as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alaska.
Downwinders: The bill would allow RECA to cover citizens of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and Guam, and would include all of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, from only certain counties. In particular, it recognises the downwinders of Trinity Test and Guam for the first time.
Uranium miners: The measure would extend the deadline for eligible uranium personnel to 1990 or reduce it to 1971. It would compensate those who mined, crushed, or transported ore in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, and Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, and Texas.
More conditions: The bill would cover new cancers and also allow chronic kidney disease to be an eligible disease for uranium workers.
Waste disposal: Communities harmed by Manhattan Project waste or other test waste deposited in parts of Missouri, Alaska, Tennessee and Kentucky could receive up to $25,000 in reimbursement as part of the bill.
Better pay: Taking inflation into account, the measure increases the lump sum payment to $100,000 for downwinders and site participants, from $50,000 and $75,000. If signed, the bill would allow former claimants to submit new programs to make up the difference.
The Missouri Independent: U. S. Senate approves compensation for exposure to St. Petersburg’s nuclear wasteLouis
By Allison Kite
The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, extends the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which is set to expire, and expands it to cover other people who have been exposed to radioactive waste that remains scattered in the St. Louis area. Louis.
“The U. S. Senate has an opportunity to make its component — its small component — to continue to make this country what it can be, what we promised it will be, and right the wrongs,” Hawley said shortly before. Senators voted 69-30 in favor of his bill.
The legislation, subsidized by President Joe Biden, would constitute federal popularity and an apology for St. John’s decades-long struggle. Louis against radioactive waste.
St. Louis’ dominance was central to the Manhattan Project, the call given to the World War II effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Mallinckrodt Chemical works with subtle uranium at the St. Louis center. Louis during the war, which was used in the first sustained nuclear bomb. Chain reaction in Chicago, a key advance in the progression of the bomb.
The Senate last summer voted 61-37 in favor of Hawley’s update to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But the expansion was included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and stripped out by a conference committee of senators and representatives.
Hawley criticized the Senate’s Republican leaders, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for allowing the defense bill’s expansion to be eliminated.
McConnell voted in favor of the bill passed by senators on Thursday, which is a stand-alone extension of the RECA and still wants to pass the House of Representatives.
The White House announced its endorsement of the legislation Wednesday evening, saying in a statement that the administration looks forward to working with legislators to ensure funding for the program.
“The president believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions,” the statement says.
Hawley told a telephone convention Monday that RECA’s self-expansion bill is expected to cost about a third of the value of the edition approved by senators last summer. (The Union of Concerned Scientists said the new charge estimate is less than a fraction of (CBO’s original estimate is $147 billings. )The law still covers the same geographic areas, he said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has released an independent investigation into the new legislation.
The standalone RECA would provide policies for other people exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska, or Kentucky and diagnosed with myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and cancers of the thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, and small intestine. , pancreas, bile ducts, gallbladder, salivary gland, bladder, brain, colon, ovary, bone, kidney, or lung. It covers liver cancer as long as the patient does not have cirrhosis or hepatitis B.
Surviving spouses and children can also claim reimbursement if the user exposed to radioactive waste dies.
The legislation senators considered last summer would have also covered diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis or Hashimoto’s disease. Those conditions are not in the new version of the bill.
Under the bill, the fund for uranium workers and miners would be extended for six years. Last summer’s bill would have extended it to up to 19 years.
In urging his colleagues to vote for the bill, Hawley noted the federal government is now testing underneath homes in the St. Louis area to determine whether a subdivision built in the 1990s was constructed on top of radioactive contamination.
‘We Were Scrapped’: Trinity Downwinders and New Mexico Miners Who Remain Anonymous
The world’s first downwinders keep up the fight, as more communities in the state punctured by uranium mines step forward.
By Danielle Prokop and Marisa Demarco, Source New Mexico
Those closest to the first nuclear explosion in history have been suffering for generations.
In New Mexico, neighbors at the Trinity test site were not warned or evacuated until the U. S. government detonated the atomic bomb in 1945. The light was so bright that it could be seen from hundreds of miles away. Nearly half a million people resided within a 240-kilometer radius of the explosion. Witnesses said the ash fell for several days.
Cancers, diseases, premature deaths, infant mortality, and many more have plagued the rest of New Mexicans since the U. S. government detonated the bomb on the Day of the Dead. But despite more than a decade of organizing and advocacy, they have not been recognized or paid.
Declassified documents show that in the days immediately following the explosion, Manhattan Project planners learned that the rain radius was much wider and more damaging than expected.
The effects of the Atomic Age are far-reaching in New Mexico, on native lands, and in the region. Not only were many exposed to radiation during the 1945 Trinity test, but the subsequent extraction of uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons sickened and killed personnel and their families.
Although the mines were mostly privately owned, the United States government was the paying visitor for this uranium ore for decades after World War II. Hundreds of unresolved inactive mines remain open wounds across the country, and continue to harm their neighbors.
Lawrence and Arlene Juanico have never known the country without uranium mines. Now, they are fighting to have their effect on Laguna Pueblo recognized. The Juanicos and other volunteers worked to track diagnoses and help others apply for benefits for their circle of family members.
“No one was taking notes here,” Arlene Juanico said. “My partner and I are working to get an accurate amount of who was all affected by that.”
‘Time Is Up’: Program for Arizonans Exposed to Radiation Will Expire in June
Survivors, politicians and the Navajo Nation are reacting after Congress rejected a law to further compensate miners and miners.
By Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror
Marti Gerdes remembers living in Prescott as a child, and every winter she and her family would make ice cream out of snow, mixing milk and sugar with snow.
It was a gift she remembers having every time it snowed, for a year when her mother told them they couldn’t eat ice cream because “there was something wrong in the air. “
“I had no clue what she was talking about,” Gerdes said.
Gerdes and her family lived in the northern Arizona city in the 1960s, at least 300 miles from the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. government tested nuclear weapons north of Las Vegas.
Those tests sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere, dispersed through clouds and precipitation in several states, and Arizona has since shown government models and data, putting others at risk of serious illness for decades.
Over the years, several Arizona political leaders have advocated for an expansion of spaces covered by RECA in Arizona.
In July, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., introduced the Downwinders Parity Act, which proposed updates to the RECA to include all the affected areas of Mohave County in Arizona and Clark County in Nevada. The bill would have also instructed the attorney general to outline for Congress what efforts will be made to educate and conduct outreach to those made newly eligible. The bill was co-sponsored by Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.
When the amendments were included in the defense spending bill, Stanton said he would continue to work to expand and expand RECA.
‘How Much Money Are Our Lives Worth?’: Utah Downwinders Call RECA Expansion Failure a Betrayal
More people across the state may have been included in the U. S. program. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security is a U. S. government for those who might have been exposed to radiation testing from Cold War weapons.
By Kyle Dunphey, Utah News Dispatch
People like Mary Dickson aren’t legally considered downwinders, the term used to describe those exposed to radiation during Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and New Mexico.
“Every time I say I’m a downwinder, I get ‘Oh, you grew up in St. George?’” said Dickson, of Salt Lake City, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1985. “It’s been really frustrating because for 30 years, I’ve been trying to raise awareness that no, it wasn’t just southern Utah, it went everywhere.
In Utah, the government’s radiation payment program covered citizens living in one of 10 counties (Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington, and Wayne) for two consecutive years from 1951 to 1958. People who worked in mines, mills, or transportation of uranium ore in Utah from 1942 to 1971 were also eligible.
Under the proposed expansion, in Utah those diagnosed with certain cancers caused through nuclear testing would have been entitled to compensation. The measure would also have extended the RECA, which expires next June. Limited eligibility under the existing bill has been a primary source of frustration for physical care providers like Becky Barlow, director of the radiation exposure screening and education program at St. Louis. John’s. George, who examines other people exposed to radiation and helps them seek compensation.
“Obviously radiation doesn’t stop at the county line,” said Barlow, whose program covers the lower half of Utah, and parts of Nevada and Arizona. Still, Barlow gets calls from all over the Mountain West from those who suspect they got sick from radiation, but who aren’t eligible under the federal program.
‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation
Residents work to understand the ongoing impacts of nuclear test fallout and radiated clouds over Idaho decades ago.
By Mia Maldonado, Idaho Capital Sun
For nearly two decades, Tona Henderson collected newspaper articles, letters, and photographs documenting who in the small town of Emmett had been diagnosed with cancer, as well as her own family. The result is a wall of his home covered in photographs and pages showing the names of network members who may have been exposed to deadly radiation from the country’s nuclear weapons testing program during the Cold War.
Henderson, director of the Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit that represented the rest of the people of Idaho between 1951 and 1962, when the U. S. tested nuclear weapons on the surface in Nevada. She has been a leading advocate for the federal government to offer financial reimbursement. Idahoans affected by those nuclear tests, which sent irradiated clouds beyond Nevada’s borders to other neighboring states, Idaho added.
Gem County, along with Custer, Blaine and Lemhi counties in Idaho, are among the five U. S. counties. The U. S. is most affected by the fallout from Nevada’s nuclear tests in the mid-20th century, according to the National Cancer Institute.
At the time, young Americans were at the highest risk of thyroid cancer if they ate milk from pastures where cows and goats grazed and that was infected with iodine-131, a radioactive substance released into the environment during nuclear weapons tests.
Children, whose thyroids are smaller and still developing, consume more milk than adults, putting them at higher risk for cancer due to the concentration of iodine-131 in the thyroid gland.
Emmett is a tight-knit community, Henderson said. According to the latest census, the population currently stands at about 8,000 people. He ran a donut shop in the city and customers, knowing his role in following up on diagnoses, would tell him about citizens facing cancer. From 2004 to 2019, he said he recorded many cases of cancer diagnoses among Emmett citizens during the probationary period.
“That’s a lot of other people for such a small town,” he says. “The fight is not over. “
“What Should We Do?”: New Awareness of Historic Nuclear Radiation in Montana Neighborhoods
The consequences of weapons testing elsewhere may have had devastating consequences for the fitness of the State. The popularity and reimbursement of policies are growing.
By Blair Miller, Daily Montanan
Growing up in Cut Bank, Montana, Patti Jo Ruegamer would spend most summer days going to the farm with her mother and father in Meriwether, about 25 miles west.
While her parents worked, she would go to the neighbor’s house, where she and other young people would drink new milk from the cows and spend the day riding horses, swimming in the river, or strolling.
The clouds drifting above them, though, may have contained radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons experiments performed by the U.S. government hundreds of miles away in the 1950s and ’60s.
A landmark study conducted by the National Cancer Institute in 1997 showed that of the 25 most sensitive counties in the U. S. , the number of counties in the U. S. was the most vulnerable. Of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that obtained the maximum radioactive result from weapons tests in Nevada, 15 were in Montana. The report identifies Meagher County, Montana, where White Sulphur is located. Springs ranks as the county that has received more radiation than any other county in the United States.
The researchers found that citizens of 15 Montana counties (Meagher, Broadwater, Beaverhead, Chouteau, Jefferson, Powell, Judith Basin, Madison, Fergus, Gallatin, Petroleum, Lewis and Clark, Blaine, Silver Bow and Deer Lodge) gained estimated doses of iodine. -131. a your thyroid between nine and 16 rads.
But much of the rest of the state, including the Blackfoot Indian Reservation where Ruegamer lived, recorded between 6 and 9 rads, also among those in the United States.
‘He’s Living in the Geological Age’: Nuclear Contamination and Health Hazards Remain Colorado
How the proposed expansion of a compensation program could impact the state, and the ongoing fight to make it happen.
When Jane Thompson left Uravan, in western Colorado, several decades ago, it was still a quiet advertisement for the city of about 1,000 people, all of whom had ties to the uranium plant owned by Union Carbide.
“It’s a wonderful position to grow into,” said Thompson, who is helping to grow the city’s legacy as president of the Rimrocker Historical Society. His grandfather was a miner until he retired. His father also after his parents got married. “They were the second to last to leave Uravan when everyone was sent away. “
Uravan and the nearby mining towns that survived, plus Nucla and Naturita, are some of the many places in Colorado where locals were caught up in the Manhattan Project’s bomb and nuclear weapons race, and in many cases took on the risks.
“We Went Crazy”: Years of Pain After a Formative Years Near Coldwater Creek, Missouri.
The expansion of RECA may have helped care for other people suffering after living near waterways and infected sites in the state. A US senator promises to keep fighting for it.
By Allison Kite, Missouri Independent
Her parents bought a new home while thousands of other families flocked to the developing suburbs of St. John’s. Louis. La community of Winters was full of other children to play with. He spent most days splashing in a stream that flowed near his house. .
But Winters didn’t know at the time that the creek’s waters could simply be dangerous. The creek he played in was a small tributary of Coldwater Creek, which had unknowingly been infected through radioactive waste left behind during World War II. When Coldwater Creek was flooded, its waters returned to the creek near the home of Winters’ relatives.
St. Louis’ dominance played a pivotal role in the development of the first nuclear bomb in the 1940s. Uranium for the Manhattan Project (the call for efforts to expand the bomb) lies subtly in downtown St. Petersburg. Since then, radioactive debris has been infesting the metropolitan domain.
Private corporations and government agencies guilty of tracking radioactive tissues have continually documented the conceivable risks of radioactive waste, but have made little effort to prevent its spread as suburbs sprang up around the city. airport and Coldwater Creek circa the 1950s and 1960s. An investigation last summer via The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and the Associated Press revealed how they described the spread of pollution as “mild,” “minimal” or “low. “
The reaction of federal and state lawmakers in Missouri to the “atomic fallouts” accelerated. Within days, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. , and Rep. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, vowed to act, calling the investigation “devastating” and denouncing the federal government’s “negligence. “”For decades, the federal government has actively and consciously treated St. John’s Day. “Louis as a dumping ground for noxious and poisonous radioactive tea,” Bush said.
In response, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that he would “do everything I can to hold the federal government accountable. “He has assigned several attorneys to the case and the investigation is still ongoing. A state representative from the affected domain summoned a city corridor to tell residents:
“Because journalists dropped those documents and found out that our federal government knew about it and never told the public for 50 years, it was huge. We were desensitized to the madness. “
The U. S. Senate, with bipartisan support, voted narrowly in late July to expand a payment program for Americans who have become ill due to radiation exposure resulting from the advancement and testing of nuclear weapons at home and Cold War agreements. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the proposal, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm toured one of the infected sites with a stopover in St. John’s. Senators attached the bill to the annual defense bill; Although our report was described as a “bombshell,” it was eventually removed from the latest edition of the law after the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would collect $147 billion over a decade.
However, lawmakers and affected families in seven western states have pledged to reintroduce legislation to expand and expand the federal radiation payment program in 2024 and a spending spree previously introduced in Missouri would increase state investment for a victim payment fund, elevating our report.
And, in the clearest sign that the federal government is taking responsibility for the pollution of Coldwater Creek, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers announced in January that it would install signs along the waterway to warn the public about the dangers, more than 70 years after staff first did so. He learned that barrels of radioactive waste had been left nearby.
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Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: [email protected]. Follow Idaho Capital Sun on Facebook and Twitter.
Derek Kravitz is the research and knowledge editor of MuckRock, a collaborative nonprofit news site that focuses on public records and guilty journalism. She works on grant-funded projects through Columbia and Stanford’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation, adding the Documenting COVID-19 project. Previously, he was director of research at ProPublica and a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and The Washington Post. Kravitz is one of 3 finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
Marisa Demarco is an Albuquerque-based journalist and lifelong New Mexican whose work has won national and regional awards. She’s spent almost two decades as a reporter, producer and newsroom leader. She is a national editor with States Newsroom.
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