|
20 Radioactive Dangers We All Face |
|
|
|
DOWNWINDER DAY
January 27, 2010 -
|
Is Linda Hill a downwinder? A
bittersweet NPR
story of one woman's use of humor to cope with the impacts of surgeries
from multiple cancers may be inspiring to listeners, but could Linda Hill be a 'downwinder,'
or a victim of radiation poisoning from nuclear testing fallout by the U.S.
during the 'Cold War'? Most people associate the worst afflicted in that category of victims
with the states of Utah, Arizona and Nevada. But a 1997 government study
found that anyone living in the continental United
States since 1951 "has been exposed to radioactive fallout and all organs
and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure." California,
which NPR says is Linda Hill's native land, is a 'downwind' state.
All of that fallout doesn't just wash away and fully decay. Longer-lived isotopes, including radiocesiums and radiostrontiums, won't decay to safe levels for over 300 years. As such, water supplies and some food supplies in Utah and Nevada, for example, are still contaminated from past fallout events. Idealist believes a 2007 wildfire in Milford, located in south central Utah, lifted from the soils enough lingering Cesium-137, a common nuclear testing fallout isotope, to cause extreme gamma radiation spikes at a DOE monitoring station for over one week. Residents of and 'transplants' to areas like northern Utah may still be living amidst the toxic remains of fallout from Nevada. In Northern Utah, fallout clouds in July 1962 linked to the Nevada nuclear tests of Sedan, Little Feller II, Johnie Boy, Small Boy, and Little Feller I caused 'relatively high' radioactive iodine levels in milk supplies; they were among the highest levels ever recorded up to that time. A 1997 government fallout study found there is a 'suggestive' link of radioactive iodine exposure from fallout and thyroid cancer. Earlier nuclear material tests at the Nevada Test Site, including "Project 57," had dumped pounds of plutonium - the most toxic substance in the universe - over Northern Utah. It may be impossible to prove that Linda Hill is a downwinder. But the ignorance of some who say she was 'from California' and therefore not a 'downwinder' sustains the long-held myth that radiation victims from U.S. testing fallout only live inside the lines drawn by politicians on a map of Utah, Arizona and Nevada. We are a nation of 'downwinders.' That is a fact that we need to cope with via humor, poetry, anger, compassion, and with all the other tools in our emotional toolkits. But above all, we need to deal with this fact as responsible citizens. As citizens we owe it to our countrymen and countrywomen to raise their awareness where the government has failed, to debunk myths that have deprived downwinders of recognition and assistance, and to erase political lines to effect a just and needed compensation program.
|
Over the past several years, U.S. 'downwinder' groups representing fallout victims of Nevada nuclear testing have pushed for their own 'box' on the calendar. If we have Memorial Day to honor fallen military personnel, one could argue, then the 'downwinders' should have a day of their own.
The day chosen for 'Downwinder Day' is January 27 for the simple reason that it is the anniversary date of the first atomic explosion in Nevada (January 27, 1951). Fundamentally, by choosing the anniversary of the 1951 "Able" A-bomb test in Nevada, downwinder groups didn't intend to exclude victims of other fallout events. The first downwinders are located in a swath of states from New Mexico to Indiana that were hit with fallout from the world's first nuclear test on July 16, 1945 dubbed 'Trinity.' There are downwinders of fallout from nuclear weapons laboratories, from Soviet and U.S. Pacific megaton-hydrogen bomb testing fallout which rained down from the stratosphere and even downwinders of the Plowshare experiments which rocked towns and hamlets in Mississippi, Colorado, Alaska and New Mexico.
The term 'downwinder' has come to refer to anyone who unwillingly paid with their health or life from poison-creating nuclear weapons development activities. Preston Truman, founder of the group 'Downwinders,' often remarks that 'We Are All Downwinders' since the Nevada tests he saw as a child from mountaintops in Southern Utah ended up poisoning Americans in every county in 48 states.
Truman's
effort to have this day for downwinders recognized met success last year when
the State of Idaho's Governor, Butch Otter, acknowledged January 27 as the 'Downwinders
Day of Remembrance' in an official Proclamation which asserts that 'Idahoans
living downwind from nuclear tests suffered as a result of the nation's nuclear
testing program....the Governor recognizes the sacrifices of the "Downwinders"
and all the other participants in and victims of the Cold War, and hereby
memorializes their losses.'
Three years prior, the Mohave Downwinders headed by the late Eleanore Fanire convinced the Mayor of Kingman, Arizona, to recognize the day. They call it 'National Downwinders Day.'
I don't suggest there be any debate about what the day ought to be officially called, and if one wants to be diplomatic we can call it 'National Downwinders Day of Remembrance,' and 'Downwinders Day' for short.
The platform of the downwinder movement has primarily centered on the issue of justice. In the vast majority of cases, downwinders were never warned 'of known or foreseeable long-range biological consequences... from exposure to fallout radiation from open-air atomic testing.' These were the words used by Federal judge Bruce Jenkins in his 1984 decision that handed a victory to downwinders in their most highly publicized case to date. Jenkins declared that the government was negligent in failing to warn downwinders of the radiation coming their way and that the government was negligent in not telling downwinders what to do in case they were, or knew they might be, 'exposed' - Jenkins wrote that the U.S. government 'failed to adequately and continuously inform individuals and communities near the test site of well-known and inexpensive methods to prevent, minimize or mitigate the known or foreseeable long-range biological consequences of exposure to radioactive fallout.'
Because downwinders, not only in the American West but also in the Pacific and a myriad of areas across the globe, suffered injury or death owing to the 'negligent' actions of government entities, they all must be recognized and compensated. It only seems just.
In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)(42 U.S.C. 2210) to include geographical areas in the U.S. that received significant 'prompt fallout' from the Nevada Test Site. Dose reconstruction studies and historical data suggest, however, that the two dozen rural counties in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, currently "covered" by RECA, were not the only such areas to receive significant prompt fallout. Areas in the Pacific such as Guam, and areas in the West including southern Mohave County, Arizona, and Idaho and Montana, clearly are wrongly omitted from RECA legislation and amendments. (Guam received fallout from nuclear tests at the U.S. Pacific Proving Grounds.) Downwinders have been calling for 'expansion' of the act to cover these other areas.
We need a Downwinder Day just as veterans and our countrymen need Memorial Day. Downwinder Day is an appropriate occasion for acknowledging the downwinder plight - to honor the memory of those whose lives were cut short by fallout and pledge to assist the victims that still need our help. We must appeal to our fellow countrymen to help bring attention to our cause and justice to the lives of downwinders (even if it is a symbolic act of acknowledgment and apology).
I don't honestly know what one does on Downwinder Day. Certainly, one thing we need is a memorial, a monument. That would be a place to start our 'tradition.'
Years ago, a southern Utah artist and resident sought to create the "Wind Wall," which the Southern Utah News described as a proposed "90 foot-long memorial engraved with the names of those who have lost their lives as a result of radiation exposure from nuclear testing in Nevada."
The artist who conceived the Wind Wall, Jesse Johnson of Kanab, Utah, said he hoped "to draw attention and validation to the tragic loss of at least 15,000 people as a direct result of nuclear testing in Utah and other states since the 1950's. The monument will be erected in or near Washington County - the region most heavily affected by the group of deadly cancers known as "Downwinder's Syndrome"."
I propose that we resurrect this idea, which has seemingly languished, and financially support the artist in his endeavor to create the 'Wind Wall,' somewhere in Washington County, Utah. I propose that we set as our goal to build this monument so it will be there for those weeping for their lost kin and to those who are suffering or know those who are suffering.
Our Mother Earth only has the invisible scars of fallout while honorably holding with her gentle hands the coffins of our downwinders. The best path to healing ourselves and our families and our country is through a monument. It will be our way of declaring an end to abuses wreaked on Mother Earth from nuclear war and nuclear war mongering. Until we have a monument, a 'Wind Wall,' I ask you to light a candle in your home, on a pond, or on a mountaintop for the memory of those downwinders who fell to the poisons sent by wind by what I have come to call the 'secret nuclear war,' the unknown nuclear war within the 'Cold War.' This and each Downwinder Day, I also ask you to bring awareness of the plight of radiation victims to those around you and help this small, struggling movement reclaim its voice, to be heard nationally and internationally, for justice to all downwinders.
-Andrew
Kishner, founder, Idealist.ws
Idealist's public document archives: 1. 
2.
'The
greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that
the only
victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.'
- Forgotten
Guinea Pigs Report, 1980
In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called Mighty Oak.
learn more on our global fallout page
This site best viewed
in Firefox
