Perhaps this will help a bit on our discussion. I am not trying to beat a dead horse, but given this, is it too much of a stretch to think in the 50s the public was not adequately instructed?
ST
timesonline.co.uk
March 01, 2002
'15,000 died of cancer' after US atom tests
From Damian Whitworth in Washington
RADIOACTIVE fallout from nuclear weapons tests caused at least 15,000 fatal cancers in America in the past half century, according to reports of a government study.
The federal investigation apparently found that nuclear tests around the world produced more fallout than previously realised and all Americans born after 1951 were exposed.
The newspaper USA Today reported that it had seen portions of the study, the government’s first effort to assess the effects of nuclear detonations on the entire country. The study, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, estimated radiation dispersal based on computer analyses of weather patterns, population trends and other data. The cancer figures were estimated.
Data revealed that fallout from Pacific islands and Nevada tests covered much of the US, with dense pockets in Iowa, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research analysed the report and estimated that as many as 80,000 people who lived in, or were born in, the US between 1951 and 2000 will contract cancer as a result of the fallout.
Nuclear weapons powers “owe the world a real accounting of what they did to its health”, Arjun Makhijani, of the institute, said. “The US has been the only honest country so far.
“This report and other official data show that hot spots occurred thousands of miles away from the test sites,” said Dr Makhijani. “Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine. Hot spots from US Pacific area testing and also Soviet testing were scattered across the US from California, Oregon, Washington, and in the West to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in the East.”
When nuclear testing began, people who lived or worked near by were often not told, or given little notice. The actor John Wayne, who died of cancer, made a film about Genghis Khan in 1955. Shooting was about 100 miles downwind of the Nevada test site. |
