Dr. Daniel W. Miles - Radioactive Clouds of Death over Utah: Downwinders Fallout Cancer Epidemic Updated

RADIOACTIVE CLOUDS OF DEATH OVER UTAH

DOWNWINDERS FALLOUT CANCER EPIDEMIC UPDATED

By
DR. DANIEL W. MILES

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Copyright 2013 Dr. Daniel W. Miles.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-7538-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4669-7540-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4669-7539-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013900270

Trafford rev. 01/29/2013

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

In the 1950s exploding atomic bombs produced mushroom clouds above the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The inhabitants of St. George, Utahthe so-called downwinderswere repeatedly in the fly zone of these toxic, wind-blown clouds, so much so that St. George became known nationwide as Fallout City, USA. The result of this fallout has been called An American Nuclear Tragedy, with major emphasis on Utah. It was widely believed that the heavy hand of government censorship suppressed knowledge of the adverse health effects suffered by the Utah downwinders. Censorship worked, so the story goes, because of the my-country-wrong-or-right ignorance of the devout Mormons who absolutely could not question government officials.

The federal record of communicating with downwinders was wretched. Downwinders were woefully uninformed of simple, common sense practices that would have greatly reduced their exposure to each fallout episode, namely to stay indoors and under cover, to wear a hat outdoors, and to bath and change clothes upon returning home, to scrub and clean food, and to avoid feeding cows forage dusted with radioactive fallout. Feeding cows on stored feed rather than on open pasturage almost eliminates any fallout hazard in milk.

To be fair, however, many in the radiation protection community in the early 1950s believed that any adverse health effects were due to long lasting overexposure. Small doses of ionizing radiation were believed to be entirely safe. This presumption of safety was supported by most of the available scientific data at the time.

In 1976 two media outlets in Salt Lake Citytelevision station KUTV and the Deseret News belatedly alerted the country to the possible adverse health effects of fallout by telling the Paul Cooper story. Cooper claimed his leukemia was caused by the fallout exposure he received during military maneuvers associated with shot Smoky at the NTS in 1957.

Fallout City downwinders soon found their voice, telling their stories to a crew filming the documentary titled Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang. Stories by downwinders told of fallout snow that burned their fingers, their faces, and other exposed body parts. Others told of family members afflicted with cancer.

Then in the fall of 1978 Stewart Udall and a team of lawyers reported that downwinders cancer rates had reached epidemic levels. According to Philip L. Fradkin, in Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy,

Udall was quoted often in local newspapers that fall. After interviewing 125 people during a four-day period in October 1978, the Washington lawyer said the enormity of the situation was shocking, cancer rates were three or four times greater than normal.

At a press conference held to announce plans for a class-action lawsuit against the United States, Udall was quoted saying he was stunned by the abnormally high number of suspected fallout cancer victims. Udall would later write: The sturdy Mormon families [are] struggling with tragedies inflicted by a cancer epidemic foisted on them by the Atomic Energy Commission.

Udall and Associates eventually composed a list of 1,192 plaintiffs consisting of heirs of deceased cancer victims or individuals still surviving with cancer. The list of cancer victims totaled 262 actual cases drawn from many counties in Utah (and some outside Utah), including 144 deceased cancer victims and 118 surviving cancer victims. Two dozen of these plaintiffs were picked for the Allen et al. v. United States trial beginning on September 20, 1982, in the Federal District Court in Salt Lake City.

The national publications and networks picked up the downwinders story. Several major fallout-cancer stories appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Las Angeles Times . Articles also appeared in Time , Newsweek , Family Circle, Life , Parade, People and other magazines. The following quote is from People magazine: Reputable scientist now suspect that the test caused a phenomenally high rate of cancer and thyroid disease among residents of St. George.

In 1979 Salt Lake TV station KUTV aired Clouds of Doubt, an award-winning documentary on the downwinders. Later in 1981 the station produced another documentary called Downwinders.

Irma Thomas, one of St. Georges leading citizens, became known nationwide. Her story of a St. George neighborhood racked with cancer was told in at least three major newspapers, the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , and The Washington Post . Television networks also covered her story. Irma appeared on Good Morning America , the Today Show and Ted Koppel Live.

A number of popular books appeared about downwinders suffering all sorts of health problemscancer, birthing a defective child, having a miscarriage and so on. These books laying bare the details of a government cover-up were rushed into print.

The books contained many statements like the following from Killing Our Own :

Cancer had never been a noticeable problem before [in southwestern Utah]. But, as the 1950s wore on, and for decades afterward, the ravaging effects came like a pestilence in serial form: leukemia, usually the quickest to result from radiation exposure, came first; numerous types of cancer tended to arrive later.

On the back cover of The Day We Bombed Utah:

In May 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission conducted a safe nuclear test called Dirty Harry near St. George, Utah Within a few years, a plague of cancer and birth defects had ripped through the areaa plague that may have caused the cancer-related deaths of John Wayne and over 100 other cast and crew members of The Conqueror.

After the Allen trial ended in 1984, thirteen years passed with diminished public concern nationwide about the health effects resulting from exposure to fallout. Then the release of the National Cancer Institutes 1997 report on nationwide exposure to radioactive iodine from the NTS led to renewed interest in fallout-caused cancers especially in Idaho and Montana but also across continental United States. All Americans living in the 1950s became aware that they too are downwinders.

Other events provided additional local stimuli for renewed interest in downwinders stories. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of Eastern and Midwestern interests, proposed to store nuclear waste temporarily in western Utah. Another company, now known as Energy Solutions, wanted to bring in radioactive waste from overseas. At a number of town meetings in southern Utah sponsored by The National Research Council, charged with reviewing the guidelines for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, many downwinders showed up to tell heart-wrenching stories of fallout-induced cancers. A few years later our government proposed conducting a non-nuclear explosion called Divine Strake at the NTS that would stir up residual fallout particles.

Meanwhile, companion bills in the House and Senate were introduced in April of 2011 to expand RECA to all counties in seven western states and to increase the compensation to $150.000. More recently rumors that radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear reactor may be dangerous to people in the United States caused a run on potassium iodide at drug stores in St. George. All of these stimuli caused Utah media to periodically feature downwinders storiesthree pages worth in a recent issue of the Deseret News and nearly seven pages worth in a recent issue of The Spectrum , a southwestern Utah daily.