CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In the 1950s exploding atomic bombs produced mushroom clouds abovethe Nevada Test Site (NTS). The inhabitants of St. George, Utah—theso-called downwinders—were repeatedly in the fly zone of these toxic,wind-blown clouds, so much so that St. George became known nationwideas Fallout City, USA. The result of this fallout has been called "An AmericanNuclear Tragedy," with major emphasis on Utah. It was widely believedthat the heavy hand of government censorship suppressed knowledge ofthe adverse health effects suffered by the Utah downwinders. Censorshipworked, so the story goes, because of the my-country-wrong-or-rightignorance of the devout Mormons who absolutely could not questiongovernment officials.
The federal record of communicating with downwinders waswretched. Downwinders were woefully uninformed of simple, commonsense practices that would have greatly reduced their exposure to eachfallout episode, namely to stay indoors and under cover, to wear a hatoutdoors, and to bath and change clothes upon returning home, to scruband clean food, and to avoid feeding cows forage dusted with radioactivefallout. Feeding cows on stored feed rather than on open pasturage almosteliminates any fallout hazard in milk.
To be fair, however, many in the radiation protection community inthe early 1950s believed that any adverse health effects were due to longlasting overexposure. Small doses of ionizing radiation were believed tobe entirely safe. This presumption of safety was supported by most of theavailable scientific data at the time.
In 1976 two media outlets in Salt Lake City—television station KUTVand the Deseret News—belatedly alerted the country to the possible adversehealth effects of fallout by telling the Paul Cooper story. Cooper claimedhis leukemia was caused by the fallout exposure he received during militarymaneuvers associated with shot Smoky at the NTS in 1957.
Fallout City downwinders soon found their voice, telling their storiesto 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 membersafflicted with cancer.
Then in the fall of 1978 Stewart Udall and a team of lawyers reportedthat downwinders' cancer rates had reached epidemic levels. According toPhilip L. Fradkin, in Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy,
"Udall was quoted often in local newspapers that fall. Afterinterviewing 125 people during a four-day period in October1978, the Washington lawyer said the enormity of the situationwas shocking, cancer rates were three or four times greater thannormal."
At a press conference held to announce plans for a class-action lawsuitagainst the United States, Udall was quoted saying he was stunned by theabnormally high number of suspected fallout cancer victims. Udall wouldlater write: "The sturdy Mormon families [are] struggling with tragediesinflicted by a cancer epidemic foisted on them by the Atomic EnergyCommission."
Udall and Associates eventually composed a list of 1,192 plaintiffsconsisting of heirs of deceased cancer victims or individuals still survivingwith cancer. The list of cancer victims totaled 262 actual cases drawn frommany counties in Utah (and some outside Utah), including 144 deceasedcancer victims and 118 surviving cancer victims. Two dozen of theseplaintiffs were picked for the Allen et al. v. United States trial beginning onSeptember 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. Thefollowing quote is from People magazine: "Reputable scientist now suspectthat the test caused a phenomenally high rate of cancer and thyroid diseaseamong residents of St. George."
In 1979 Salt Lake TV station KUTV aired Clouds of Doubt, anaward-winning documentary on the downwinders. Later in 1981 thestation produced another documentary called Downwinders.
Irma Thomas, one of St. George's leading citizens, became knownnationwide. Her story of a St. George neighborhood racked with cancerwas told in at least three major newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, The NewYork Times, and The Washington Post. Television networks also covered herstory. Irma appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show and TedKoppel Live.
A number of popular books appeared about downwinders sufferingall sorts of health problems—cancer, birthing a defective child, having amiscarriage and so on. These books laying bare the details of a governmentcover-up were rushed into print.
The books contained many statements like the following from KillingOur Own:
Cancer had never been a noticeable problem before [insouthwestern Utah]. But, as the 1950s wore on, and for decadesafterward, the ravaging effects came like a pestilence in serialform: leukemia, usually the quickest to result from radiationexposure, came first; numerous types of cancer ... tended toarrive 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 hadripped through the area—a plague that may have caused thecancer-related deaths of John Wayne and over 100 other castand crew members of The Conqueror.
After the Allen trial ended in 1984, thirteen years passed withdiminished public concern nationwide about the health effects resultingfrom exposure to fallout. Then the release of the National Cancer Institute's1997 report on nationwide exposure to radioactive iodine from the NTSled to renewed interest in fallout-caused cancers especially in Idaho andMontana but also across continental United States. All Americans livingin the 1950s became aware that they too are downwinders.
Other events provided additional local stimuli for renewed interestin downwinders' stories. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of Easternand Midwestern interests, proposed to store nuclear waste temporarily inwestern Utah. Another company, now known as Energy Solutions, wantedto bring in radioactive waste from overseas. At a number of town meetingsin southern Utah sponsored by The National Research Council, chargedwith reviewing the guidelines for the Radiation Exposure CompensationAct, many downwinders showed up to tell heart-wrenching stories offallout-induced cancers. A few years later our government proposedconducting a non-nuclear explosion called Divine Strake at the NTS thatwould stir up residual fallout particles.
Meanwhile, companion bills in the House and Senate were introducedin April of 2011 to expand RECA to all counties in seven western statesand to increase the compensation to $150.000. More recently rumors thatradiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear reactor may be dangerousto people in the United States caused a run on potassium iodide at drugstores in St. George. All of these stimuli caused Utah media to periodicallyfeature downwinders' stories—three pages worth in a recent issue of theDeseret News and nearly seven pages worth in a recent issue of The Spectrum,a southwestern Utah daily.
The Utah nuclear tragedy is comprehensively re-evaluated herein byfocusing on what is now known about both the short-term and long-termhealth effects of radioactive fallout exposure to Utah downwinders, andon the history of the controversy surrounding the claims that mushroomclouds over Utah seriously impacted the health of the residents ofsouthwestern Utah. The controversy is considered from the perspectivesof the downwinders, the government, radiation protection scientists, andwriters of six popular books.
The reader will find that the author has relied mainly on peer-reviewedscientific publications, on the United Nations Scientific Committee onthe Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), on the 2005 report fromthe National Research Council of the National Academies, titled HealthRisks from Exposure to Low-Levels of Ionizing radiation, BEIR VII Phase2, and on the National Committee on Radiation Protection (NRCP) forinformation related to the fallout controversy.
Some people find the discussion of fallout-induced cancer deathsalmost irreverent. The author can sympathize with this point of view. Thediscussion is not pleasant. On the other hand, the public needs to knowprecisely the risks involved in radiation exposure. Today, with heightenedfears about radiation leaks from damage nuclear power plants in Japanand the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, the discussion of fallout-inducedcancers provides valuable basic information about what is known aboutexposure to radiation and its health risks. A balanced perception of thehealth risks of ionizing radiation is of great societal importance to issues asvaried as radiological terrorism, the future of nuclear power, nuclear wastestorage, occupational radiation exposure, the clean-up of nuclear waste sites,medical x-rays (whole-body scanning by computed tomography resultsin much higher organ doses of radiation than conventional single-filmx-rays), manned space exploration, and frequent-flyer risks.
There is no need to exaggerate the health effects of atmospherictesting of nuclear weapons. The truth is bad enough as documented byenvironmental radiation studies on populations living downwind fromatmospheric weapon testing on islands in the Pacific Ocean, in the SovietUnion and in the United States. Obviously, it would have been much worseif the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain had continuedatmospheric weapon testing after 1963.
One critic of everything nuclear claims: "Fear of radiation, scientific"experts" continually suggest, is completely unfounded." The authorhas failed to find a single scientific "experts" making such a ridiculousstatement. All experts agree that high doses of radiation can be quicklylethal, as tragically demonstrated at Hiroshima. A few years after thedestruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki excess leukemia cases clearlylinked to radiation exposure were found. Until there is proof of a "safe"level of radiation exposure, however small that level might be, everybodyshould avoid unnecessary exposure to ionizing radiation.
The author is a downwinder, raised in St. George. The author was 16during the 1953 testing period exposing St. George residents to nearly 90%of their total radiation exposure from all the atmospheric testing at theNTS. While teaching physics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City,the author routinely told his students that nuclear weapons testing at theNTS caused a cancer epidemic in southern Utah. One student, however,challenged him to provide scientific proof of a cancer epidemic in southernUtah. The author decided to do what a true scientist should do: becomea genuine, disinterested inquirer. The author proceeded to consider allavailable data, both scientific and anecdotal, whether or not the data wentagainst his biases and preconceptions at the onset of the investigation. Thisbook is the result of that investigation.
CHAPTER 2
FALLOUT CLOUDS OVER UTAHAND THE WORLD
The world's first atomic bomb, Trinity, was tested in New Mexico July16, 1945. The detonation took place about 100 feet above the desert sand.The awesome ball of fire squatted briefly on the desert sand, then roseswiftly above the earth; as it did so, a semi-vacuum was created suckingup into the churning inferno of hot gases 100 tons or more of vaporizedsoil. In about 20 seconds the fireball cooled sufficiently to allow the soilcomponents to precipitate out in the form of fine solidified soil particlescoated with radioactive atoms created by splitting the uranium atoms intosmaller atomic species. In six to eight minutes the dust cloud cooled to airtemperature at about 10,000 feet.
After a nuclear explosion the radioactive atomic species attachthemselves to the solidified soil particles that eventually fall to earthas radioactive fallout exposing people downwind to radiation. Peopledownwind are also exposed to gamma rays emitted by particles in thecloud, as it passes overhead. The gamma-ray dose depended on how dilutethe cloud is, how high it is above ground level, and how fast it moveddownwind.
Close to the shot tower (ground zero) the fallout was visible—visibleto several ranchers, who reported that a thin film of fallout dust was visiblefor several days after the blast. The closest ranch to the blast was abouttwelve miles north of ground zero.
A few days later the fallout cloud passed over Rochester, New York.Film inspectors at Eastman-Kodak found hundreds of splotches on thegreen 14-by-17-inch film sheets used for industrial X-rays. Kodak'sradiation specialists soon found that the splotches were caused by falloutfrom Trinity. The Trinity blast produced more fallout downwind than anyatomic bomb detonated at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) because it wasdetonated so close to the ground. Following the Trinity test atomic bombswere dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1945.
Between 1946 and 1951 the United States tested five atomic bombsat Bikini Atoll and Enewetok Atoll located in the Marshall Islands.Logistic problems associated with the remote South Pacific sites led to thedevelopment of the NTS to test relatively low-yield devices designed totest various design concepts. Between 1951 and 1962 about 100 tests wereconducted at the NTS—tests yielding explosive energy equal to as muchas 74,000 tons (74 kilotons) of TNT to as little as 0.2 tons of TNT.
Meanwhile, during the 1950s the much more powerful hydrogenbombs were being tested near several small islands in the Pacific Ocean.From 1952 to 1958 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) conductedhydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands at Bikini and Enewetok. OnMarch 1, 1954, Bravo was detonated from a barge on Bikini. The explosivepower of Bravo was equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT—about a1000 times greater than the explosive power of the bomb dropped onHiroshima in 1945. The ball of fire as it roared into the sky sucked upthousands of tons of sand, coral reef material, and water. An hour afterthe blast, a soft rain of whitish ash was falling fifty miles downwind. Asa consequence of the blast, whitish coral reef material covered a Japanesetuna trawler, the Lucky Dragon. Years later a reconstruction of the eventsshowed that the fishermen received near lethal doses of radiation. Over200 Marshall islanders within 100 miles of the Bravo test also receivedsevere over-exposure.
Panic over fallout from Bravo first broke out in Japan with the returnof the Lucky Dragon on March 14, 1954. The Lucky Dragon crew wasfirst afflicted with nausea, fever, and bleeding gums. Later they sufferedulceration of the skin and temporary hair loss. Japanese newspaperscarried huge headlines announcing that the 23 seamen had been strickenby the American atomic test. The tuna catch of the Lucky Dragon washighly radioactive as were the catches of other boats fishing throughoutthe downwind areas. American newspapers gave front-page coverage tothe tuna scare and Life magazine ran a feature story on the fate of the23 seamen. Left-wing student groups mounted violent anti-Americanprotests in the streets.
The Lucky Dragon accident alerted the scientific community to the newradiation peril, and a number of physicists and biologists began pressingthe AEC for the facts about the Lucky Dragon and radioactive fallout.The controversy over atmospheric testing escalated resulting in worldwidepanic. On Easter Sunday, April 19, 1954, Pope Pius XII devoted most ofhis message to the radiation hazards of the hydrogen bomb. BRAVO hadtouched a deep and sensitive nerve, giving rise to fear that bordered onterror.
An epic battle began to ban fallout fields forever, when a number ofnoted scientists became concerned about the possible health effects of thelong-lived radioactive fission products in fallout that would contaminatethe earth for decades. The earliest concern focused on possible geneticalterations among offspring of the exposed. In the November 1954 issueof the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, physicist Dr. Ralph E. Lapp gave theAmerican people the first detailed description of fallout and its perils. Dr.Lapp raised the fear that hydrogen bombs created global fallout by puttingradioactive particles high into the stratosphere that would gradually fallback to earth in rainfall contaminated with long-lived radioactive cesiumand strontium.
Shot Tesla, a small seven-kiloton blast on March 1, 1955, at the NTS,heightened the growing public concern in the United States. Radioactiverain fell on Chicago a few days later resulting in the highest Geiger countsthe city had ever recorded. The cloud passed over New York making thecity's air four times as radioactive as usual. "In Colorado, two universityscientists warned on March 12 that the Nevada test had polluted the state'satmosphere to a dangerous degree." Other scientists warned the press ofpossible consequences of fallout exposure such as lung cancer, leukemia,and the birth of deformed children.
Dr. Lapp, in 1956, began a one-man crusade against further nuclearbomb test predicting that if bomb tests continued at double the presentrate until 1962, it would produce enough radioactive strontium to exposethe entire world population to the maximum permissible dose. Dr. Lappoften clashed with the AEC over what he considered the AEC reluctanceto give the American people straight answers about the dangers of fallout.A Washington Post book reviewer in 1956 called him "A one-man atomictruth squad and nuclear lie detector."
The AEC tried to counter the public's fallout fears with a full-scalepublic-relations campaign conducted nationwide. The AEC assuredthe American people that rigorous safeguards would keep the radiationexposure to harmless levels, and also warned them that it would bedisastrous to lag behind the Russians in weapon development. The AECcarefully conducted strategies initially appeared to convince the Americanpeople of the need to continue testing atomic weapons.
