US Nuclear Tests Killed Far More Civilians Than We Knewhttps://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly.
New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.The study, performed by University of Arizona economist Keith Meyers, uses a novel method (pdf) to trace the deadly effects of this radiation, which was often consumed by Americans drinking milk far from the site of atomic tests.
From 1951 to 1963, the US tested nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada. Weapons researchers, not understanding the risks—or simply ignoring them—exposed thousands of workers to radioactive fallout.
The emissions, however, did not just stay at the test site, and drifted in the atmosphere. Cancer rates spiked in nearby communities, and the US government could no longer pretend that fallout was anything but a silent killer.
When cows consumed radioactive fallout spread by atmospheric winds, their milk became a key channel to transmit radiation sickness to humans. Most milk production during this time was local, with cows eating at pasture and their milk being delivered to nearby communities, giving Meyers a way to trace radioactivity across the country.
The National Cancer Institute has records of the amount of Iodine 131—a dangerous isotope released in the Nevada tests—in milk, as well as broader data about radiation exposure. By comparing this data with county-level mortality records, Meyers came across a significant finding:... “Exposure to fallout through milk leads to immediate and sustained increases in the crude death rate.” What’s more, these results were sustained over time. US nuclear testing likely killed seven to 14 times more people than we had thought, mostly in the midwest and northeast.
When the US used nuclear weapons during World War II, bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conservative estimates suggest 250,000 people died in immediate aftermath. Even those horrified by the bombing didn’t realize that the US would deploy similar weapons against its own people, accidentally, and on a comparable scale.
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Like the spike in mortality figures from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, only spread over several years.
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The Forgotten Downwindershttps://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/the-forgotten-downwinders/Content?oid=928401
... Unfortunately, Hughes perfectly fits the prototype of an Idaho fallout victim. Her rural upbringing, her childhood during the Nevada Test Site's atmospheric heyday of 1951 to 1962 and her fondness for fresh, unprocessed milk made her an ideal target for exposure to the radioactive byproduct Iodine 131. Ten years ago, her doctors discovered a metastasized tumor in her thyroid gland, the organ that most bears the brunt of I-131. The cancer has since spread to her lungs, kidneys and spleen. After consulting numerous doctors, Sarah came to believe, like an increasing amount of Idaho cancer victims, that fallout from Nevada is to blame for her condition--and that governmental compensation is a step toward redressing the wrong.
Evidence supporting claims like Hughes' has exploded in the last decade.
In 1997, the National Cancer Institute released a study concluding that rural counties in Idaho and Montana had the highest exposure rates to I-131 to be found anywhere in the nation. The reasons for these high numbers have been well documented, and are
not mere coincidence, according to Snake River Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Maxand:
... "Nuclear technicians would wait until the wind was blowing north toward Idaho to detonate these devices," he explains, "because they wanted to ensure that there weren't plumes of radiation heading toward urban centers."
Once in the sky, the I-131 (whose half-life is a mere eight days) would follow weather patterns north to farmlands, settle on grass, be eaten by cows and goats and contaminate their milk. In Ada County, the radiation levels were slight, due to the age of our shelved milk. But in rural areas like Gem, Blaine, Custer and Lemhi Counties, an inhabitant could easily be exposed to several hundred times the normal or background levels of radiation. In children and women, the effects on thyroid glands were more concentrated, leading to many modern-day cancer patients who may be fallout victims without realizing it .
Radiation didn't stop at the Canadian border. We probably killed a few thousand Canadians, too. A study of hundreds of thousands of deciduous teeth, collected by
Dr. Louise Reiss and her colleagues as part of the
Baby Tooth Survey, found a large increase in Strontium 90Sr levels in through the 1950s and early 1960s. The study's final results showed that children born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1963 had levels of Strontium 90Sr in their deciduous teeth that was 50 times higher than that found in children born in 1950, before the advent of large-scale atomic testing.
Commentators on the study said that the fallout was likely to cause increased cases of diseases in those who absorb strontium-90 into their bones.
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.. Russia tested 130 nuclear bombs, including the world's biggest (nicknamed Tsar Bomba), near the Arctic Circle from 1954-1991 sending radioactive fallout across the polar ice into the Capital Region.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission monitored the fallout with Geiger counters and told locals that radiation levels were much lower than they truly were.
The commission lied when a hunk of a 44,000 ft tall radioactive cloud from a 1953 U.S. nuclear test drifted for 36 hours all the way to Troy. There radioactive fallout inundated Troy, NY with a thunderstorm's rain.Albany journalist Bill Heller tells the story in "
A Good Day Has No Rain." Nevada nuclear tests continued to contaminate upstate.
Rochester-based Kodak threatened to sue the federal government because radioactive fallout was damaging its film. The commission placated Kodak by giving the company advance notice of nuclear tests. New Yorkers were never given this information. Some medical experts linked the radiation exposure to increased thyroid and childhood cancers here.
"The government protected rolls of film but not the lives of people," said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at a 1997 hearing about the Troy radioactive contamination.
"Where were the warnings to parents of children?"Heller's unsettling history can make Americans wonder about the trustworthiness of information from the government.
