Atomic Testing Though Modern People

Atomic Testing

Though modern people have concerns about atomic testing and the impact of radioactive fallout, ignorance about the atomic bomb and radiation meant that people who were exposed to such testing in the 1950s and 1960s were frequently unaware of the toxic and possibly fatal consequences of such radiation. On the contrary, rather than strive to avoid toxic fallout for bystanders, the government actually went out of its way to minimize the perception of risk. For example, in Las Vegas, businesses actually touted the nuclear testing as "a super fireworks spectacle for tourists." The government did not discourage this use, but instead allowed thousands of civilians and military personnel to fallout that it knew, or certainly suspected, would be hazardous if not lethal.

Although the government did need to determine the impact of an atomic weapon that was detonated above-ground, the selection of above-ground testing sites was not based on scientific needs. On the contrary, "the government wanted a nuclear proving ground on the continent to save money after it conducted expensive atomic tests in the Pacific Ocean. It also wanted federal scientists to be able to continue their secret work far from the Korean War." As a result, at the end of 1950, Truman approved the Nevada Test Site in the desert 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "The barren testing range carved out of the Mojave Desert would be home for the next several decades to 928 of the 1,054 above- and below-ground nuclear experiments conducted by the U.S." In fact, while most people think of nuclear testing as something from the distant past, that testing continued well into the latter-half of the 20th century, and only ended in the Nevada desert in 1992. Today, the area is still used for testing, though not for traditional nuclear testing. However, "by presidential order, the site must be ready to resume nuclear weapons tests within 18 months to three years after a presidential or congressional order."

Although nuclear testing may have been conducted primarily in the Nevada desert, it is a fallacy to assume that such testing only impacted that immediate area. On the contrary, the immediate and long-range negative impact of those tests are currently quite well-known, despite government attempts to keep that information secret. The government did not officially release information about the side-effects of nuclear testing until 1993, and much of that information continues to be classified. In fact, for most of the history of testing, the government actively downplayed the possible negative effects of such testing. For example, in May of 1953, the:

government triggered an above-ground nuclear blast code-named "Harry," whose radioactive fallout blanketed not only the arid desert, but farm fields, homes, schools, factories and businesses across the country. The fallout even wiped out film at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Government agents washed cars and brushed (with whisk brooms) the clothes of residents of St. George, Utah. The government assured those residents everything was safe, but at least 4,390 sheep grazing in Utah died from radiation sickness. The government admitted nothing.

It took years for the government to finally acknowledge any type of liability for exposing thousands of people to radiation, though its impact was realized long before that time. Downwinders, those people exposed to radioactive fallout by nature of being downwind from the tests, experienced a victory in 1984, when "a federal judge in Salt Lake City ruled the government had been negligent by exposing thousands of downwinders to radioactive fallout." However, the victory was a small one; test site workers who sued the government were unsuccessful in their suit. Military workers have also had a problem getting compensation or even getting the VA to cover radioactive-fallout related medical expenses. A look at the stringent requirements for those benefits helps explain those difficulties. Furthermore, although the Federal government has finally acknowledged that the nuclear testing program contributed to some deaths, it maintains that few civilians have died as a result of those tests. Moreover, even those who have received favorable judgments are not guaranteed compensation; most of them continue to wait for payments.

One of the problems with receiving compensation is that there is a significant amount of disagreement in the scientific community regarding the effects of radioactive fallout:

Some scientists, among them a several Nobel laureates, have warned that the radiation may eventually cause as many as ten million deaths worldwide. Other scientists claim the fallout was dispersed and diluted by air and water to the point where it could not be harmful. Congressional hearings have found negligence in the testing program and horrifying consequences.

Necessity of the Testing

Looking back, it is easy to second-guess the government and suggest that nuclear testing was an absolute error. However, that attitude ignores the fact that America faced a tremendous threat in the 1950s and 1960s. The threat of war with Russia, the world's other major superpower of the time, seemed very likely.

Not only would a war with Russia have resulted in deaths, it could have resulted in the death of modern democracy and free market principles, since the Russian ideology of the time was communist:

The tests may have been dangerous, but they took place during dangerous times. The Soviet Union, an avowed enemy of the United States, was developing a nuclear arsenal that very quickly became powerful enough to destroy every city in North America. In the infancy and adolescence of nuclear science, bombs, designs, fuels, and triggers had to be tested. If the United States let the Soviet Union get ahead in the design or production of atomic weapons, the weakness of the U.S. arsenal might very well have tempted its enemy to launch a nuclear war. Atomic testing, therefore, in one form or another, in one place or another, had to happen to maintain a balance of power. Ironically, the only place American bombs exploded was in American territory

However, the fact that the bombs were only exploded in American territory does not mean that only Americans suffered as a result of America's atomic testing program. Of course, it is now known that radioactive pollution can have long-ranging negative effects that impact the entire world. In addition, non-Americans were directly injured by the tests. One well-documented incident involved the downwind contamination of a tuna Trawler by the Bravo cloud. Several of the crewmen became ill and one of them died. The tuna had to be discarded. Though the United States did not admit guilt, it paid $2 million in compensation for the life, the ship, the injuries, and the discarded tuna. Not surprisingly, "the funeral of the dead crew member was attended by 400,000 people, an indication of the loathing of nuclear weaponry by the people of Japan."

In addition, several well-respected atomic-bomb researchers indicated that such extensive atomic-bomb testing would not have been necessary if the United States had not heralded in the nuclear era by dropping atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These scientists actually warned of that possibility, but Truman ignored them. After those bombs were dropped, the same scientists seemed to acknowledge the necessity of nuclear testing, so that the United States could maintain nuclear superiority. They suggested that secrecy would not prevent other countries from obtaining atomic bombs because the basics of the weaponry were already well-known. Furthermore, they downplayed suggestions that the United States could prevent other countries from developing the bomb by monopolizing the base components of the bomb.

Types of Nuclear Tests

There are several ways to classify types of nuclear tests. The first way is by the location of the test. The United States has used three venues for the testing of atomic weaponry: the atmosphere, the ocean, and underground. The second way is by how the test was deployed, whether by tower, tunnel, airdrop, or other method. The third way is by the purpose of the test, "whether the test was part of the weapons development program, a DoD effects test, a joint United States- United Kingdom (U.S.-UK) test, or was part of some special program that involved the use of nuclear devices." There were a total of 1,054 nuclear tests in the time period between July 1945 and September 1992. There is no apparent consistency or order to the frequency of tests each year. However, the late 1950s and the 1960s saw more tests than the time periods before or after. There were 210 atmospheric tests performed: 1 by airburst, 52 by airdrop, 25 by balloon, 36 by barge, 12 by rocket, 28 on the surface, and 56 from a tower. There were 839 tests performed underground, 9 via crater, 763 via shaft, and 67 via tunnel. There were five underwater tests. The tests occurred in a wide variety of location: three in the South Atlantic; 106 in the Pacific Islands; one in Alamogordo, New Mexico; three in Amchitka, Alaska; one in Carlsbad, New Mexico; one in Central, Nevada, one in Fallon, Nevada; one in Farmington, New Mexico; one in Grand Valley, Colorado; two in Hattiesburg, Mississippi;five at Nellis Air Force Range; one in Rifle, Colorado; and the remaining 904 at various locations on the 5,000 square-mile Nevada Test Site.

The First Nuclear Test

Of course, the first nuclear test occurred before the 1950s and was part of the United States' effort to develop an atomic weapon during World War II. This test occurred at 5:30 A.M. On July 16, 1945, at a missile range outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Even that test was enough to convince a large group of scientists that the atomic weapon was a dangerous and powerful weapon. "The Franck Report," a petition issued by Leo Szilard and 68 other scientists urged President Truman to first demonstrate the capabilities of the atomic bomb before using it as a weapon against the Japanese, because of the mass destruction that came with the bomb.

This test, known as the Trinity Test, was a tremendous success. "The energy developed in the test was several times greater than that expected by scientific group. The cloud column mass and top reached a phenomenal height, variously estimated as 50,000 to 70,000 feet. It remained towering over the northeast corner of the site for several hours." Even at that time, the government was aware of the potentially adverse affects of exposure to radioactive fallout; initial testing looked at radiation levels in houses surrounding the test area. Colonel Stafford Warren, who was Chief of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, wrote a memo shortly after that test, and his memo indicates concern about possible radioactive exposure to civilians in the area. He noted that:

While no house area investigated received a dangerous amount, ie, no more than an accumulated two weeks dose of 60r, the dust outfall from the various portions of the cloud was potentially a very serious hazard over a band almost 30 miles wide extending almost 90 miles northeast of the site...It is this officer's opinion that this site is too small for a repetition of a similar test of this magnitude except under very special conditions. It is recommended that the site be expanded or a larger one, preferably with a radius of at least 150 miles without population, be obtained if this test is to be repeated.

What the Bomb Does

To really understand the impact of atomic testing on intentional and unintentional victims, it is important to understand what the bomb does. First, it is important to realize that a nuclear weapon is so powerful because it works in two ways; first, it brings the massive destruction of a tremendously large traditional bomb, second, it brings long-lasting repercussions from radiation. The blast itself creates overpressure that is much greater than the pressure in a pressure cooker; it can crush human lungs, destroy brick houses, cause deafness, and creates a very high-velocity wind that turns objects, humans, and animals into missiles. It also creates a tremendous amount of both light and heat. The light can be seen from hundreds of miles away and can cause injuries to both people and property from a tremendous distance. The heat is intense, causing vaporization at the center of the explosion, creating an outward-expanding fireball of destruction, and creating flash burns on skin- the radius of those burns depends on the power of the weapon as well as atmospheric conditions. A nuclear explosion sends out an electromagnetic pulse, which can cause electronics in the near vicinity to stop working, destroying infrastructures. The first time of radiation experienced in a nuclear explosion is direct nuclear radiation, including gamma rays, neutrons, beta particles, and alpha particles. Nuclear fallout consists not only of nuclear material, but of other material that is propelled upwards during the blast, and which falls to the ground after the blast:

No early fallout is associated with high-altitude explosions, although an explosion well above the ground causes radioactive residues to rise to a great height in the mushroom cloud and descend gradually over a large area.

The distribution of fallout depends on the topography of the land and weather conditions, especially the direction and speed of winds. Radioactive fallout may travel and settle in areas hundreds of miles from the explosion site.

Radioactive fallout may be the most dangerous effect of a nuclear explosion because the area of exposure to fallout is much wider than that of direct nuclear radiation.

The Bomb's Impact on Humans

It is impossible to definitively state the long-term consequences of the use of nuclear weapons on the human population, because it is very possible that the genetic mutations caused by the radiation will continue to have an impact into the distant future. However, the study of victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the effect felt by people downwind of nuclear testing in the United States has demonstrated that atomic weapons have both immediate and long-term effects on their victims. "Radiation and radioactive fallout affect those cells in the body that actively divide (hair, intestine, bone marrow, reproductive organs)." Therefore, victims can experience hair loss, loss of blood cells (exposing them to other illnesses), intestinal problems, cataracts, and skin issues. Less immediate consequences can include leukemia, cancer infertility, and birth defects. Radiation exposure can cause a wide-variety of cancers, and increases a person's risk of developing any type of cancer by about 50% over the general population. High-dose radiation exposure, such as that one might experience with nuclear fallout, is specifically linked to leukemia, with children being the most susceptible, female breast cancer, lung cancer, and multiple myeloma.

Furthermore, it is anticipated that human beings will experience the negative effects of fallout for years to come:

Increased cancer risk is the main longterm hazard associated with exposure to ionizing radiation. The relationship between radiation exposure and subsequent cancer risk is perhaps the best understood, and certainly the most highly quantified, dose-response relationship for any common environmental human carcinogen. Our understanding is based on studies of populations exposed to radiation from medical, occupational and environmental sources (including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

Japan), and from experimental studies involving irradiation of animals and cells. Numerous comprehensive reports from expert committees summarize information on radiation-related cancer risk using statistical models that express risk as a mathematical function of radiation dose, sex, exposure age, age at observation and other factors. Using such models, lifetime radiation-related risk can be calculated by summing estimated age-specific risks over the remaining lifetime following exposure, adjusted for the statistical likelihood of dying from some unrelated cause before any radiation-related cancer is diagnosed.

Extent of the Testing

Nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s was not an isolated or even a rare event, and Americans are probably still learning the full impact of those explosions:

One hundred and forty-nine atomic bombs have exploded over American soil. No one knows how many people, if any, these bombs have killed. The initial heat and shock of the explosions probably killed no one. Open-air atomic explosions, however, have more lasting and distant effects. They create and release tremendous amounts of highly dangerous radioactive materials. Radiation causes cancer, leukemia, cardiovascular problems, cataracts, immunological weakness, genetic defects, pre-natal problems, mental retardation, and many other problems. Any deaths caused by radiation normally occur only years or decades later. Estimates of deaths worldwide from American, Soviet, British, French and Chinese nuclear tests range from something near zero to several million.

Of course, not all of the test subjects were civilians. On the contrary, approximately one -- "quarter of a million military personnel were exposed to atomic explosions and/or their aftermath. Many of these service people were provided completely inadequate protections, and this was not due to ignorance or oversight on the part of the government. On the contrary, according to Glenn Cheney:

They were used as human guinea pigs as the military sought to see the effects of radiation on their physical and mental health. They were used as human robots to gather information near ground zero or in radioactive clouds. They were ordered into positions as close as 1.2 miles from atomic explosions to see if they would survive. Some of the soldiers were protected by nothing more than a trench dug six feet deep. Some had the advantage of sunglasses or a cotton face mask.

Cheney's assertions would seem ludicrous if they could not be placed against a backdrop of immoral government testing. For example, most people are aware of the government's testing program that injected healthy African-American males with syphilis to study the course of the disease. Nor was this testing limited to a non-nuclear environment. On the contrary, "a government research program had hospital patients injected with plutonium, the deadliest substance in the world... The program and its results were hidden from the public."

Growing Awareness

Even though the people of the United States had to have some idea that atomic weapons were awesome and destructive, having witnessed how the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy marshaled in the end of the Pacific portion of World War II, for years the general public failed to truly appreciate the danger associated with these tests. That type of ignorance seems impossible to comprehend, but the government repeatedly assured people that these tests were safe. In addition, many of the negative impacts of radiation are not immediately obvious. Yes, the nuclear tests resulted in the documented immediate deaths of livestock, but they did not result in documented immediate human casualties. Instead, they resulted in deaths and illnesses many years after exposure, sometimes in the next generation of victims. To link these events to the atomic testing required multiple incidents of the same illness, plus public awareness of those illnesses. After that, victims still had to amass evidence linking these various illnesses to radioactive fall-out.

Government Cover-ups

When many first became aware of the connection between the atomic tests and the negative health consequences experienced by downwinders, they anticipated that the Federal government would provided some type of assistance for the victims of this testing. However, the federal government failed to do so, but continued to deny a connection between the health consequences and the atomic testing. As a result:

Twenty years after the tests in the atmosphere stopped, Americans started asking questions. Did the tests have to happen in such secrecy? Did the AEC have to deny the dangers of fallout? Could it not announce upcoming tests? Could it not warn the public about approaching clouds of radiation? Could it not carefully monitor levels of radiation and the doses that people received? Could it not keep track of the health of local residents? Could it not care?

It was not simply a matter of government ignorance. On the contrary, like the tobacco industry, the U.S. government engaged in active fraud to deny the dangers associated with its atomic testing. " it is now generally acknowledged that government agents and agencies denied the known danger of radiation, lied to the public about the safety of the tests, perjured themselves in court, withheld information that would have indicated guilt, falsified records that indicated problems, and discouraged research that might have revealed the danger of testing." This is especially egregious when one considers that some relatively simple precautions could have spared people many of the dangers of nuclear fallout exposure.

One of the most striking and oft-repeated details about the testing is that the government assured the downwinders that it was harmless. Several downwinders can produce government documents stating that the radiation could not harm them. Even more have stories about the government downplaying the risks of any radiation. Furthermore, when they got sick, they were often lied to about the nature of their disease. "Women with severe radiation illness, hair loss, and badly burned skin, were clinically diagnosed in hospitals as 'neurotic.' Other severely ill women were diagnosed with 'housewife syndrome.'"

Anyone claiming that the government was unaware how much damage these tests could do to the surrounding population is simply engaging in escapist fantasy. It must be remembered that the United States had tested nuclear weapons in the Bikini Islands before bringing the testing to the U.S. mainland. Therefore, it knew exactly how toxic these tests could be. It knew that targets of atomic bombs would receive enough radiation to kill humans by radiation poisoning or cancer. They knew that clothing would be radioactive and that water had a particular ability to concentrate radiation. They found that decontamination efforts were mostly ineffective and had their own dangers. For example, to decontaminate target ships that had been exposed to the atomic bomb, the only effective method was sand-blasting, which exposed those doing the decontamination to increased radioactivity.

In addition, government officials frequently told workers to lie about the results of their radioactivity monitoring readings. Much of this evidence did not come to light until victims began to sue the government for compensation:

Frank Butrico, a Public Health Service radiation safety monitor who worked in St. George, Utah, during the 1953 series, testified in a 1982 wrongful death suit filed by 24 cancer victims and their relatives that his "instruments were off the scales" after a particularly heavy dusting of St. George by fallout from a bomb nicknamed Dirty Harry. Mr. Butrico told the court that he was instructed by the operating staff at the Nevada Test Site to report only that "radiation levels were a little bit above normal but not in the range of being harmful." Later, Mr. Butrico testified during the trial of the lawsuit, he discovered that his radiation reports had been tampered with by a.E.C. officials at the N.T.S.

Island Testing

When the United States government initially began its testing program, it started testing in the Marshall Islands, a sparsely inhabited American territory. However, it would be erroneous to assume that those tests did not have a significant and lasting impact on a population of people. First, the inhabitants of Bikini Island were moved to another island so that Bikini Island could be used as a testing site. Initially, people on nearby islands were temporarily evacuated from their homes until the government could be certain that the fallout would not hit them. However, the government soon changed this program:

After Bravo, however, even though it was clear that winds were blowing clouds of radiation toward the islands, no effort was made to evacuate them until two and three days later. Nearby U.S., Navy ships, instead of coming to rescue the inhabitants, were ordered to leave the area immediately. Later, these inhabitants would claim that it looked a lot like they had been used as guinea pigs who were left in radioactive conditions just to see what would happen to them. The difference between them and guinea pigs, of course, is that true laboratory animals receive carefully controlled diets and are carefully monitored.

As more islands were evacuated, living conditions on uncontaminated islands grew worse. An island near the navy base at Kwajalein was nothing more than an overcrowded labor camp that served American personnel - a hellish environment for people who had lived from fishing and farming. People on some islands had to live off canned food delivered by ships which were often delayed by months of bad weather. The island of Rogelap was approved for resettlement in 1957. Within a year, however, the inhabitants' levels of radioactivity shot up because they were eating food grown there. Radioactive cesium-137, chemically similar to potassium readily rises into plants. When people ate locally grown crops, their bodies accepted the cesium as a nutrient. Likewise their internal levels of strontium-90, chemically similar to calcium, increased to 20 times normal.

Because there were no accurate medical records for the people of the Marshall Islands, it is impossible to determine the full extent of the negative impact the testing had on those people. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the government failed to keep accurate records after the tests were performed. However, there were some results that were clearly linked to radiation exposure. For example, "from 1954 to 1958, about 30% of pregnancies of women exposed to radiation resulted in fetal deaths. Among women not exposed, the rate was only 14%." The islanders reported increased rates of birth defects, though that could not be conclusively linked to the radiation. In fact, in 1983, the Compact of Free Association allowed the people of the Marshall Islands to become an independent nation; the agreement allowing them to do so included a $75 million payment from the United States for problems caused by the nuclear tests.

The Nevada Tests

Initially, the government, specifically President Truman, was reluctant to order testing on mainland American soil because of the perceived dangers of such testing. However, as the Korean War progressed, President Truman recognized the type of emergency he believed was necessary to justify such testing. The Nevada Test Site was chosen because it was located in the middle of the desert, 60 miles from Las Vegas, the closest major city. The weather in the Nevada desert favored its use as a testing site, because the winds blew in a predictable way, away from more densely populated areas, and the lack of rain meant there would be no nuclear rainfall.

Unfortunately, there was a sense of urgency about the tests, which meant that even the near-ideal conditions of the Nevada desert were not sufficient to ensure safety. Scientists had to run a huge battery of tests, because the United States wanted to develop an entire nuclear arsenal, and to know what would make it capable of deploying both clean and dirty nuclear bombs. "The urgency often meant sticking to a schedule even if it compromised safety. Test managers, the individuals who had responsibility for each test, were under considerable pressure to stay on schedule. Tests were conducted under less than ideal weather conditions that sent fallout toward populated areas."

Initially, the government thought that it was protecting those downwind of the tests. For example, "pre-shot planning included real concerns for off-site safety. Calculations predicted that 25-kiloton bombs could be exploded above the ground without exceeding the allowed dose of 6-12 roentgens beyond a 100-mile radius. Monitors in cars, truck and airplanes would track the drift of fallout." Since they legitimately did not anticipate off-site fallout, the testers initially did not warn citizens of the possibility of drifting fallout.

While the area was virtually uninhabitable, there were people there. "The surrounding population consisted of nearby ranches and, beyond that, to the east, several small cities and towns in Utah." In fact, the demographics of the people involved made it more likely that they would be impacted by nuclear fallout. Most of them were Mormons, they often drank milk from their own cows, drew water from their own springs, ate vegetables from their own gardens, and when the women had babies, they breast-fed them. While these characteristics would normally have contributed to a healthy lifestyle, they actually exacerbated the likelihood that these people would be negatively impacted by nuclear fallout.

At the very least, these people should have been warned of the dangers of nuclear testing.

While it would take years, in many cases, for the negative effect of radioactive fallout exposure to manifest in the human population, animals experienced those negative effects at a much quicker rate. In fact, "soon after the tests began, rural residents noticed wildlife, such as deer and birds, thinned from large rangelands regularly dusted with fallout from the upwind Nevada Test Site." This may seem like a relatively insignificant detail, but "the damage the nuclear tests inflicted on the flora and the fauna of the Nevada Test Site could not be reversed, thereby completely changing the nature of the environment with every atmospheric nuclear test that was performed." Prior to the testing there was extensive flora and fauna on the Nevada Test Site, just as there had been in the Marshall Islands, but testing destroyed those miniature ecosystems. Livestock also experienced problems. Sheep seem to be hit the hardest, and several sheep ranchers lost thousands of dollars worth of livestock. Cattle also experienced problems, and the AEC actively tested milk for contamination, though it did not take steps to prevent people from drinking that milk. Not surprisingly, with the lack of precautions taken, by the mid-1950s, people were beginning to feel the negative impact of radioactive fallout exposure.

Human Guinea Pigs

What is clear at this time is that the atomic tests tested the impact of nuclear radiation on humans. While civilians may not have been intentionally used as laboratory animals, military personnel certainly were used for experimental purposes. Some military personnel even report seeing caged human beings, clad only in denim pants, being subjected to high levels of radiation close to ground zero. The military used troops in training exercises with the AEC. "The military wanted the tests to achieve two objectives: to train the troops to operate during an atomic attack, and to assess their psychological response to a nearby atomic explosion." The army built a camp at the Nevada Test Site. The soldiers were warned about secrecy, poisonous snakes and insects, but not the danger of radiation. In fact, they were told patently false information about the radiation.

The army wanted to prepare its troops for potential nuclear warfare. Therefore, they had the troops engage in war games simulating an attack by a communist enemy. The attack strategy was to use a nuclear weapon to open a line in the enemy's line, and then attack in person. One of the purposes of the training strategies was to see if troops could survive this type of radiation exposure, by examining "how well the men stood up to the shockwave, how effectively trenches sheltered them, how much the radiation would affect their ability to fight." They also felt that these exercises would teach soldiers how to fight in an atomic battlefield, because its atmosphere was so unfamiliar to the average person. Equipment, cattle, and other animals were placed in the battle arena to see how they would fare during the explosion. The soldiers were not warned about the dangers they faced, and were actively misled and told that they would only be exposed to safe levels of radiation:

They were not informed of even the most basic protective measures. Their health was not monitored after the tests, and they were never advised to watch for symptoms of the illnesses caused by radiation. Years later, when the illnesses began to occur, the military and AEC denied responsibility, and the Veterans Administration denied benefits. At the time of the tests, the soldiers were warned never to reveal that they'd witnessed an atomic explosion.

Moreover, it appears that the military intentionally kept false records about the radiation exposure, which meant that the military could deny their benefits claims:

Many records have disappeared, but those that haven't indicate that almost none of the military personnel received an excessive dose of radiation. The reason for that may be a case of secret records. In 1982, a former Army medic, Van R. Brandon, admitted that he had been ordered to keep two sets of books. "One set was to show that no one received an exposure above the approved dosimeter reading," he said. "The other set of books was to show what the actual reading was. That set of books was brought in a locked briefcase attached to [an officer]'s wrist by a set of handcuffs every morning." In the absence of records, veterans could not receive medical disability compensation years later when they contracted any of many other illnesses years later.

In addition to military personnel, the Nevada Test Site workers were also exposed to tremendous levels of radiation. In fact, since many of them were responsible for gathering equipment that had been used at ground zero, they were often exposed to more radiation than soldiers. These workers faced a danger that was not faced by most of the soldiers; they brought radiation home to their families. The rates of cancer were higher than normal for the wives and children of these Nevada Test Site workers. However, these workers have not found justice in the courts.

Test Site workers have not been successful in suing the government and are prohibited by the Warner Amendment from suing their contractors.

They are entitled to a lump sum of $75,000 under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, an amount that does not come close to the cost of treating cancer, much less cover pain and suffering.

Some people do not agree that the soldiers were guinea pigs, but not because they feel that soldiers were not intentionally exposed to radiation. On the contrary, they stress the fact that the absence of long-term monitoring of these exposed military personnel made them imperfect guinea pigs at best. "Until the late 1970s the U.S. Government had made no epidemiological inquiries into the health of these servicemen, established no studies about long-term effects of their radiation exposure. As 'guinea pigs,' at least 250,000 U.S. troops[12] -- directly exposed to atomic radiation during seventeen years of nuclear bomb testing -- were neglected by their overseers." It was 1977 before a federal agency, the Center for Disease Control, undertook a comprehensive study of veterans who had been exposed to radiation as a result of nuclear testing:

The survey was confined to the 3,224 men who were in the Nevada desert military maneuvers at a 1957 atomic test code-named Smoky. An initial eighteen-month assessment, released in 1979, discovered more than twice the normal leukemia rate among those servicemen. In more detailed statistics that followed, the federal researchers found nine cases of leukemia among those same soldiers -- a ratio nearly three times the average. "

The Smoky test soldiers, however, represent only about 1% of U.S. servicemen exposed to nuclear testing. Extrapolation of the completed federal study conclusions would strongly indicate that several hundred veterans died from leukemia alone as a result of their involvement in the tests. The estimate does not include deaths from numerous forms of cancer, blood disorders, and other ailments.

Moreover, many people believe that downwinders were intentional test subjects, even if the experiments were poorly designed. They base this belief on documented instances of the government intentionally exposing civilians to radiation, without informing them of the risks or possible consequences. The nature of these experiments is clearly intentional, and their purported purpose was to establish safety guidelines for workers in the nuclear energy field:

Some of these classified government experiments included:

Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s. Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalized teenagers radioactive iron and calcium in their

Cereal during the years 1946-1954.

Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.

Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.

Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation. This experimentation continued into the early 1970s.

Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from cesium and cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.

Administering radioactive material to psychiatric patients in San Francisco and to prisoners in San Quentin.

Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients hospitalized at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s. The experiment provided data to the military concerning how a nuclear attack might affect its troops.

Exposing 29 patients, some with rheumatoid arthritis, to total body irradiation n (100-300 rad dose) to obtain data for the military. This was conducted at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.

Given such an exhaustive list of intentional testing on innocent civilians, it seems more likely that the downwinders were not warned of possible radiation side effects to see what impact that radiation had on them. After all, documents reveal that the government was definitely aware that radiation was likely to have a negative health impact on the downwinders:

secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them. Under the title "Medical Experiments in Humans," the memorandum read: "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such field work should be classified 'Secret.'"

Impact of the Tests

One of the most immediate impacts of the tests was the death of livestock. Although cattle, horses and sheep were all impacted by the tests, the sheep were hit the hardest:

The sheep and their owners were Iron County's first victims of radioactivity. While being trailed across Nevada from winter range to the lambing yards at Cedar City, some 18,000-20,000 sheep were exposed to large quantities of radioactive fallout from tests in March and April 1953. Kern and McRae Bulloch first noticed burns on their animals' faces and lips where they had been eating radioactive grass. Then ewes began miscarrying in large numbers and at the lambing yards wool sloughed off in clumps revealing blisters on adult sheep. New lambs were stillborn with grotesque deformities or born so weak they were unable to nurse. Ranchers lost as much as a third of their herds.

Ranchers and veterinarians suspected radiation poisoning. In fact, Iron County agricultural agent Steven Brower used his AEC-supplied Geiger counter at the sheep pens, and the needle was off the scale. Though field scientists seemed to have concurred with that determination, "the AEC reportedly forced its scientists to rewrite their field reports and eliminate any references to speculation about radiation damage or effects." Ranchers brought lawsuits against the government for the damage to the herds, but government expert witnesses testified "that radiation damage could not have been a cause or a contributing cause to the sheep deaths." The judge believed the government evidence and ruled against the ranchers, setting a precedent of non-compensation for radioactive fallout damage.

Although wild animals and livestock were the hardest-hit initially, the impact soon spread to the human population. "Within three to five years after atmospheric testing, leukemia and other radiation-caused cancers appeared in residents of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada living in areas where nuclear fallout had occurred. Communities in which childhood leukemia was rare or unknown had clusters of cases in the late 1950s and early 1960s." Initially, these occurrences were seen as circumstantial, because of the tremendous confidence the people had in the federal government, which continuously assured people that the testing posed no threat to their health.

Though the government continued to assure people that the radiation was harmless, civilians were growing increasingly concerned about the impact of radiation exposure. By 1953, newspaper articles were starting to show suspicion about the safety of the tests and indicating that fallout was dangerous. Though no tests supported their suspicions, the high rates of cancer became too great to be coincidental:

The same year nuclear testing began, a boy named Preston Truman was born near Enterprise...When he was in high school, Preston Truman was diagnosed with a form of cancer called lymphoma. Chemotherapy and other medical treatment over the next thirteen years cost about $100,000. As was true for all other downwind residents, the government did not provide a penny. But Truman was relatively lucky. In 1980 he was in remission from the usually fatal lymphoma. Out of nine children who were his friends in the immediate area of Enterprise when he was a child, Truman was the only one who reached the age of twenty-eight. The rest died of leukemia or cancer.

This type of cluster was not limited to Enterprise, but was actually a characteristic of downwind areas. In Cedar City, there were seven instances of leukemia in a 12-year period within a circle with a 200-yard radius. The Parowan-Paragonah-Summit area, which had a population of around 1400 people had more than 150 people suffering from cancer in 1979, alone. Childhood leukemias were especially prevalent in these areas.

Of course, cancer was not the only health issue to impact downwinders. "One fifth of the male high school graduates of the 1950s and early 1960s in Cedar City discovered they were sterile, a particularly grievous condition in a Mormon culture which places great stress on holy edicts to raise large families. For those who became parents, there were fears of genetic damage." Women suffered from miscarriages and babies suffered from birth defects, representing physical and emotional injuries.

Long-ranging Impact

However, the Nevada testing certainly had an impact far beyond the test site. "Fallout was detected all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and, depending on which way the wind blew, and it also floated north as far as Canada, south as far as Mexico, and west as far as the Pacific Ocean. In fact, the H-bomb tests in the South Pacific also sent detectable and possibly dangerous levels of radiation across the United States, not to mention the rest of the northern hemisphere."

Radioactive fallout was not limited to the area considered downwind, which was composed mainly of the southern part of Utah. On the contrary, pollution went north as well. Pleasant Grove, a city situated between Provo and Salt Lake City experienced leukemia clusters similar to those in downwind towns. In fact, a similar cancer cluster can be found in the Uinta Mountains, approximately 400 miles from the test site. Fredonia, located in northern Arizona, experienced similar problems from fallout:

In 1960 the population of Fredonia was 643. By 1965 four had passed away from leukemia -- a truck driver, who died at age forty-eight; a fourteen-year-old girl; a lumber crane operator, thirty-six; and Gayneld Mackelprang, by that time forty-three years old and superintendent of the Fredonia Public Schools. A secret memorandum by the U.S. Public Health Service's leukemia unit director, Dr. Clark W. Heath, Jr., noted, "This number of cases is approximately 20 times greater than expected."[29] in the entire previous decade 1950 to 1960 no cases of leukemia had been reported among Fredonia residents. The memo, dated August 4, 1966, and sent to the head of the federal agency's Communicable Disease Center, was marked "FOR ADMINISTRATIVE USE ONLY, NOT for PUBLICATION."

In addition, though the test site was located in the Nevada desert, it was located relatively close to a major metropolitan area: Los Angeles. As early as 1958, Los Angelinos were concerned about the impact of radioactive fallout on their city and their health. A November, 1958 article in Time Magazine discussed one fallout scare:

Over a three-day period last week, Los Angeles' health officer, Dr. George Uhl. wondered and worried as his Geiger counters showed a steady rise in the atmosphere's radioactivity level. At midweek a brisk high-altitude wind, blowing from Nevada, brought radioactivity from a test shot above normal safety levels, sent Health Officer Uhl round to see Los Angeles' Mayor Norris Poulson. Poulson phoned the AEC in Washington, finally got through to AEC Commissioner Willard Libby, was assured that 1) the fallout level was not dangerous at all; 2) the Nevada test series was almost complete.

Though those statements are now known to be false, at that time, people had no reason to doubt their veracity, and every reason to trust that their government was trying to keep them safe, not exposing them to dangerous conditions.

Los Angelinos were not merely the accidental victims of radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site. Though the AEC generally attempted to test bombs when the winds were blowing away from Los Angeles, they occasionally conducted tests with the intention that the fallout would hit Los Angeles. One such incident happened in January of 1965, when "scientists at the Nevada Test Site deliberately melted down a Kiwi nuclear rocket during a Santa Ana wind condition. The wind blew a radioactive cloud three hundred miles into the LA basin until the cloud finally died over the Pacific Ocean." The result was an increase in radioactivity in Los Angeles and other cities in the LA basin. While the number of intentional tests during Santa Ana conditions may have been small, they were significant enough to cause health problems for people in the area.

Los Angeles is also downriver, not simply downwind from some of the nuclear testing sites. For example, the City of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills all receive substantial parts of their drinking water from the Colorado River. The Colorado River is located near a uranium-ore processing facility, and "over the past fifty years, thousands of cures of radiation have leached into the river." The Department of Energy is currently cleaning up the radioactive dirt, but it is still leaching into the drinking water supply of one of the country's most heavily-populated areas. In addition, one of the major underwater nuclear tests was performed I in the Pacific Ocean 300 miles west of San Diego and radioactive waste from the AEC's laboratories was dumped in the Pacific Ocean near the coast of California, as well.

One of the most interesting factors about the radioactive fallout was the distance of its spread. In fact, New York state had a surprisingly high concentration of fallout, despite its tremendous distance from the Nevada Test Site: