USA’s Radiation Exposure Compensation Act addresses ‘gruesome legacy’ of atomic testing
The new bill, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico on April 19 to address the “gruesome legacy” of Cold War era weapons development, expands coverage to the entire states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, as well as those harmed by the original Trinity blast in 1945, in Alamogordo, N.M., and by the nuclear tests conducted upwind of Guam in the Pacific
Keeping Fear Alive. BuzzFlash.org, ROBERT C. KOEHLER, 29 April 2010, “………legislation introduced into Congress this month to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has put the suffering born by so many Americans — who lived downwind of the nuclear tests, worked in the industry or mined the uranium — back into the news.
The original RECA legislation, passed in 1990, compensated a handful of downwinders in 22 rural counties in Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The new bill, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico on April 19 to address the “gruesome legacy” of Cold War era weapons development, expands coverage to the entire states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, as well as those harmed by the original Trinity blast in 1945, in Alamogordo, N.M., and by the nuclear tests conducted upwind of Guam in the Pacific. It also triples compensation for those who became ill from the fallout to $150,000.
“Many families in the downwind states have stories like mine,” Tona Henderson wrote recently in the Idaho Statesman. “Some of these stories are so sad because entire families have died of cancer. . . .
“Both sides of my family have been in the Treasure Valley since the 1870s. They lived very long lives — until they started dying of cancer after the testing started.
“Since the 1950s, I have had 26 family members get cancer; 13 of those have died. One was my cousin, who died of Ewing’s sarcoma at the age of 15.”
As I sit with the terrible potential of the nuclear era, the possibility of accident or aggressive use of the double-edged sword, I sit also with its neglected, little-known realities. Until the first RECA legislation was passed, nuclear tests were still officially safe, just as they remain, officially, necessary for our defense. As far as I’m concerned, such military-industrial propaganda is as toxic as the fallout. Maybe it’s part of the fallout: the corrosion of truth and common sense, the rape of compassion…..
Keeping Fear Alive | BuzzFlash.org
No comments yet.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Leave a comment