Cold War Remnant: Cancer for Baby Boomers

[Liberation Angel]

Source: Politics Daily



Walter Shapiro

Cold War Remnant: Cancer for Baby Boomers


Even with a half-century's hindsight, the U.S. government's willingness to risk the health of the nation's children seems somewhere between unfathomable and unconscionable.

Between 1951 and 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated more than 100 nuclear bombs in the atmosphere over its Nevada Test Site, just 65 miles from Las Vegas. The radioactive fallout menaced not only the ranchers and the miners unlucky enough to live in that remote area of southern Nevada, but -- as a new study unveiled Tuesday demonstrated -- untold millions of unsuspecting Americans as well. The winds carried Strontium-90, Iodine-129 and other lethal particles across a broad swath of the country. Infants who were bottle-fed, which was then considered the modern approach, were particularly vulnerable to the Strontium-90 that ended up in cows' milk.

In 1961, as John Kennedy was poised to resume atmospheric testing after a two-year moratorium, he met with White House science adviser Jerome Wiesner in the Oval Office one rainy day. The president wondered how fallout reached the earth. Wiesner explained that it was washed out of the clouds by rain. "You mean," Kennedy asked, "it's in the rain out there?" As Wiesner tells it, the president then "looked out the window, looked very sad and didn't say a word for several minutes." Nonetheless JFK, fearful that the Soviet Union might score a nuclear breakthrough, authorized a new round of above-ground testing before negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

With Nov. 9, 2009 marking the 20th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall, Cold War retrospectives are again in season. But the grim legacy of nuclear testing is apt to be lost amid the memories of Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, the Berlin airlift, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan's famed exhortation at the Brandenburg Gate. The mushroom clouds over the Nevada desert seem so long ago, so devoid of any real-world consequences. But a study released Tuesday documents the enhanced cancer risk that Baby Boomers face because of these long-ago atmospheric tests. Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano analyzed the lingering radiation in infant teeth (donated long ago by the parents of baby boys born in the St. Louis area between 1959 and 1961) and compared the results to contemporary cancer data from the subjects. "What we found out was shocking," Mangano said. "Persons who had died of cancer had more than double the Strontium-90 in their (baby) teeth than did healthy persons." The original variance in Strontium-90 levels among individuals, he explained, was caused by seemingly small factors such as how much milk expectant mothers drank, diet and the source of the municipal water supply.





More at Link...

Read more: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/10/21/cold-war-remnant-cancer-for-baby-boomers/

---

Simply Horrifying.

For those who were living during this era, it explains a lot of today's cancers.

For those whose parents or loved ones were born and exposed to this radiation, it explains a lot as well.

t is also one more reason not to trust the Nuclear Industry when it says emissions of radio-iodine and Strontium 90 from commercial reactors are safe.

I pray Obama does not support nuclear in the new energy bill soon to come up...

[Tikki]

1. Here's the thing...just like "oil feeds my family"...many of us were...

little kids trapped in the "nuke feeds my family" + the
doing something good for America (they thought at the time).

These cancers really do exist among those who had no say in where they were being raised.

There is NO SAFE NUKE.


The Tikkis...Children of the Radiant Glow"

[ramapo]

2. I remember milk getting dumped

Born in 1955. Grew up in NJ. Aware of nuclear fallout at a way too young age.

I remember the tests of the early '60s and hearing about the clouds of radiation floating across the country. There was a definite impact on Northeast dairy farms.

This made going out in the rain pretty creepy.

We were all irradiated to some degree during the 1950s and 1960s.

[intheflow]

6. I also remember playing with tar bubbles

that were on my street (which was "paved" by spraying a layer of tar, then dumping pebbles on the tar, then using a roller truck to make the road smooth). I later learned that it was probably toxic sludge the county was using as a way to dispose of industrial waste and cut municipal costs. :(

[ramapo]

12. Other toxic memories

Clouds of DDT sprayed during the evening while we were on vacation at the Jersey shore.

Mercury! Oh that stuff was fun to play with!

[intheflow]

19. I'd forgotten about the DDT spraying!

I remember that, too, specifically that the air smelled bad after a fly-by.

[Tansy_Gold]

23. We had "tar bubbles" on our playground.

The "blacktop" was the same tar-and-gravel concoction as chip-sealed streets.

We'd get in trouble for playing with them at recess because we'd invariably get the stuff on our hands and then get it all over the desks and even our clothes.

Whether it was toxic sludge or not, who knows. But there were so many things we played with: The sound-absorbing asbestos ceiling tiles in the classrooms were great fun to use as peg-boards.

Every few months some e-mails one of those silly nostalgia things about how great it was when we were kids, when no one worried about lead in paint and kids rode bikes without helmets and we wurvived. Yeah, WE did, but how many others didn't?



Tansy Gold, who rarely longs for the good ol' days 'cause they weren't all that good

[unkachuck]

51. yep, yep, yep....

....as an unsuspecting youth, I swam in creeks with industrial waste and sewerage....played in unfenced toxic waste dumps where the ground perpetually smoked....air filled with rust particles that would embed themselves into car paint and lungs....hell, at the time, they even irradiated bad tonsils in kids instead of surgically removing them....

....you know, a country that wants the love, respect and loyalty of its' people, should really try hard not to kill them....unfortunately, they're STILL trying to kill us....

[AndyA]

3. So we really should have single payer, since the government is responsible

for many of the illnesses people suffer today.

[Liberation Angel]

25. That is a damn good point. We should have FREE health care.

I would not mind if they just added this to the payroll tax and increased the SS taxes fr the wealthy so it was an equitable contribution.

[dflprincess]

54. A great point

but I believe the government still denies that exposure to radition in the 50s and 60s has anything to do with cancer. I know it denies that the Dirty Harry cloud had anything to do with so many cancers turning up in the cast and crew of "Ghengis Khan" that was filming in Utah when the cloud went through (includes John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Morehead).

They'll use the amount of time that's passed to claim that no connection can be found between the tests and any cancers in Boomers. That's what they did with the Atomic Vets. I've known people whose dads were in that category and all those dads died of cancer - yet the DoD denied any connection.

[Liberation Angel]

58. The nuclear industry is TOO POWERFUL to admit they're killing people

and the government has been complicit.

That changed a bit under Clinton and sems to be changing a LOT under Obama

BUT

This is not yet an issue which has enough attention on it (which is why I posted this story - which i actually first saw on AOL health news)

If more people become aware maybe Congress will look closer.
Mangano is a gem (author of the study) and has dedicated his life to helping save us from this murderous technology

[Mulehead]

4. Are reparations in order?

Defense plant workers who were exposed to excessive doses of radiation during WWII and who subsequently developed cancers (a good friend, now 91 years young, developed and survived a disfiguring face cancer patterned exactly like the x-ray scope aperture she used to examine welds in submarine hulls) recently received compensation from the Federal government. Should Cold War-era boomers who develop cancers and who can prove a link to the fallout radiation get reparations/free health care from the Government? Can they sue? I was born in 1959 and was raised on Minnesota milk. I still have a lock of hair my mother cut in 1961. Is it radioactive? Am I? Several pals from there/then have developed thyroid disorders, weird and rare cancers, etc.

[Liberation Angel]

27. Baby teeth lock in strontium -90 as it is a calcium mimic and is absorbed by teeth and bones

I don't know about hair samples but if you have bay teeth (or even adult teeth) or bone samples that would tell a story.

Keep up to date on the baby teeth study at


www.radiation.org

at some point they may well examine adult teeth.

I would sincerely hope that at the very least Congress would legislate compensation in terms of medical and reparations I strongly support.

Bottom line is stopping the harm in the future (no nuke subsidies and eliminating nuke weapons, Depleted Uranium, etc)

[BlueIdaho]

5. Not to mention us "Downwinders"

Who were unfortunate enough to live in the radioactive emissions path of nuclear facilities like Hanford.

[hedgehog]

30. I think the point of the OP is that there are a lot of people living

today who are Down winders and don't know it. For example, so much radiation came down in the snow in Rochester, New York that the Kodak company complained it ruined fresh film.

http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/box7_5.aspx

We never saw the flash or heard the thunder from the tests, but we were down winders none the less.

[Liberation Angel]

32. Wow - that's amazing

I never heard that story

Thanks

[hedgehog]

37. My husband, who lived south of Bufalo at the time, recalls being warned

against playing with "the blue snow".

Another famous incident from troy New York ( across the Hudson river from Albany)

"The highest level of radioactivity deposited anywhere in the country from that test was right here in Troy."

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/ASPStories/story.asp?StoryID=833516#ixzz0UcDpo4VC


http://churchtree.tripod.com/troyincident.html:

[dflprincess]

55. I lived south of Buffalo when I was a kid

and I remember we were told not to eat the snow (and not just the yellow stuff) - I don't remember blue snow being mentioned. But then, the air around Buffalo was filthy back then when the steel & Ford plants were still going strong. The pollution from industry alone probably made anything falling from the sky dangerous.

[PJPhreak]

7. I always wondered about this,

My GF had Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma when she was 13...This is a form of cancer that usually shows up in men in their late 30's or early 40's...She was born in Carlsbad NM in 1962,Downwind from the Nevada Test Site.
Her case was so rare back in 1974 she has been a case study with the CDC and the Dallas Oncology Clinic since. Thats 36 years!! her medical file looks like a copy of "War and Peace" in a file folder,its 8 inches thick!!!

Her care also bankrupted her family.

And it seems that you can't sue the Government over this...even tho they knew that this was happening and did nothing about it!

And the Ins.Co.'s call Cancer a "Preexisting Condition" Even if you got Cancer from the testing of Atom Bombs in the Nevada Desert!

[juno jones]

8. I also suspect the high number of thyroid problems are traceable

to the radioactive iodine. It's used in medicine to kill over active thyroids, wonder wht it does to healthy ones?

[ramapo]

13. My wife has a bad thyroid

It has been under performing for 20+ years. She was born in '53 and probably got a dose or two of iodine.

[Liberation Angel]

17. My entire family has thyroid issues and we are "downwinders"

The scary thing about thyroid damage (not just cancer but damage which causes hypothyroidism" is that it damages the endocrine system, causing hormonal problems, auto-immune and immuno-deficiency etc which can lead to more disease as well as depression and other problems.

The thyroid absorbs the radio-iodine (iodine is essential for thyroid function) which then mutates the thyroid hormone producing cells or destroys them (like needles pricking a baloon when they decay) and change the dna.

It is a serious problem.

More info can be found at


www.radiation.org where Mangano (author of the study in the OP) is a featured epidemiologist with a Masters in Public Health.

[Liberation Angel]

16. Even Fox News Reported on increases in Thyroid Cancers near nuclear plants

FOX NEWS BREAKS STORY ON THYROID CANCER EPIDEMIC AROUND INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR PLANT NEAR NY CITY

March 10, 2009 – An unusually high local rate of thyroid cancer, documented in new official data, near the Indian Point nuclear reactors just north of New York City, was the subject of a Fox News story:

"Cancer Cluster" broadcast on March 8 as part of the evening Fox Report.


The Fox story featured Chris Peterson, a victim of thyroid cancer (which has spread to his lungs) who grew up 5 miles from Indian Point, and Joseph Mangano of the research group Radiation and Public Health Project. Mangano, whose group has published 23 scientific articles and 7 books, presented data on thyroid cancer incidence near Indian Point at a public hearing held in February by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on its draft statement of environmental risks of extending Indian Point’s license 20 years. Mangano's report reviewed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention county-specific cancer incidence data for the U.S. (42 states plus DC), recently made available for the first time. The CDC provided thyroid cancer rates for 806 U.S. counties that have 15 or more cases of the disease; 70% of Americans live in these 806 counties. Among them, Rockland ranked 5th, Orange 15th, Putnam 26th, and Westchester 122nd.

Thyroid cancer is unusually sensitive to radiation. Radioactive iodine, found only in nuclear weapons and reactors, destroys and injures cells in the thyroid gland, leading to cancer and other disorders. A 1997 study National Cancer Institute study estimated that up to 212,000 Americans developed thyroid cancer from atomic bomb fallout.

The Fox story reported that Rockland, Orange, Putnam, and Westchester Counties, which flank Indian Point, had the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 8th highest thyroid cancer rates in 2001-2004 of all 62 New York State counties. A total of 992 local residents were diagnosed with thyroid cancer in this period.

“It is disturbing that local thyroid cancer rates are among the highest in the U.S.,” says Mangano, adding that experts know little about thyroid cancer causes other than radiation exposure. “Thyroid cancer is associated strongly with manmade radioactive isotopes. Any study of impacts of keeping Indian Point operating should take these data seriously.” Official statistics show that in the late 1970s, the four-county thyroid cancer rate was 1.5% below other New York counties, but is now 54% higher (67% above the U.S.). The two Indian Point nuclear reactors began operating in 1973 and 1976. Over 70% of thyroid cancer cases occur in young/middle age adults in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.


More at link:

http://www.radiation.org/press/090311_pressrelease_fox.html

[darkstar]

9. I was/am? part of the St. Louis baby teeth study

"Send your teeth to science!" the jingle said. I just moved back to the area and learned that they are looking for all of us kids in the submittable cohort to in an effort to study cancer incidence, mortality rates, etc.

Always glad to do my share....

Edit:

And, oh yeah, it's world wide. I've edited a ton of wetlands science studies, and in order to look at building rates in the near term--vs big geological time--the look at the "stripes" of strontium 90 in core samples and use them as year referents because they know, for example, that the hottest band will equal 1960 I think). It becomes the calibration point of the core sample. True in Louisiana, but valid in the Po Delta as well.

[Liberation Angel]

35. That is really interesting information everyone should know about

I did not know about that and it is really intertesting.

I am really glad you posted that.

Its fascinating.

[Rozlee]

10. What about the 300 tons of depleted uranium used in Gulf War I and 1500 tons used in Gulf War II

Yeah, I know I harp on this continuously, but deal with it, I'm not going to stop. As a former Reserve Army RN who went to the Gulf and worked at Brooke Army Medical Center as a civil service nurse, and still have friends who work there, I am hearing so many horror stories about our kids coming back home from these three wars with secondary problems not related to their war injuries. The birth defects and cancers first seen in Iraqis in Basra after the first Gulf War, Gulf War Syndrome, high cases of still-births and birth deformities being seen now in Fullujah, the high rate of certain illness in Gulf War vets and birth defects in their kids, such as Goldenhars'. My husband, a pilot in Vietnam, still remembers the orange drums of Agent Orange containers that were often leaking, that he used to transport, and the overwhelming smell of it on the runway where it was used as a defoliant to clear the area around the airfield of jungle foliage that snipers could hide in. I don't see how he's maintained his health all this time. But, I know our troops in these new wars are time bombs of illness and tragedy waiting to happen if what I'm hearing from BAMC is correct. The war machine just doesn't care what it crushes in it's movement forward. To emphasize this, depleted uranium, in the Army's field guides before 1996, was one of the agents the military ordered it's troops to suit up for immediately if it was detected in the area due to it's classification as a highly radioactive danger. As soon as it's battlefield use as a weapon was discovered and developed, it was removed from the field guides from it's NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) danger list. The merchants of death that fuel the military industrial complex, such as Halliburton and KBR, don't care how many of our soldiers or civilians they kill or maim. It's all about the big profits they can line their pockets with. And if you think I'm a loony conspiracist, you're free to do so, but look at the story above and keep telling yourself that.

[Raster]

20. I don't think you are a "loony conspiracist." History--true history, not the refurbished kind--has

proven over and over again that the main motivator for the Military Industrial Complex is PROFIT. You can't have profit in the war industry without death and mayhem. And when death and mayhem are your calling cards, little things like collateral damage and human casualty are not even secondary concerns.

[Liberation Angel]

24. Casualties ARE a primary concern: Casualty Production by radiological agents is...

one of the things our military trains for.

It has long been a part of "eugenics" and malthusian population theory that reduction of the population is required.

Eliminating the weak and powerless is "good" for those in power.

But due to the stupidity of these theories, they are killing all of us and even their own,

However, from experience I know that there are preventaive measures that can be used (such as potassium iodide pils or diets rich in iodine) which can act as preventives to the damage (both Strontium 90 and I-131 will more or less pass through the body and not be absrobed nd stored if one has sufficient calcium and iodine already stored in the body).

Personally i feel like nuclear power plants ARE population control devices. Just release some effluents or emissions and the infant mortality and spontaneous abortion rates soar locally and downwind.

The closer you are the more likely you are to suffer a miscarriage or for your child to have birth defects and die in the first year of life or at birth. Or later from cancer. Many young kids get leukemia near these plants. i lost several friends to leukemia as a young adult and know of many more...even still... downwind of the plants.

[Raster]

50. I grew up in Southeast Arizona. I personally knew persons that EVERY YEAR

went down to the county courthouse to the health department for *tests*. It was never country health officials that conducted the tests. This went on for about five years.

[Odin2005]

60. LOL, what paranoid BS.

"nuclear power plants ARE population control devices"

The Freeps say the same thing about the Swine Flu vaccine. :eyes:

[Liberation Angel]

59. Hey - NEVER give up this battle.

The industry "recycles" the deadly stuff everywhere - weapons especially.

As long as they convince enough people that those like who who fight to expose this stuff are CTs, then they can keep up their murders.

[CountAllVotes]

11. maybe this explains it

my brother died of cancer at the age of 42. No one had a good explanation as to what caused his cancer.

He was born in 1959 and was dead 9 mos. after the diagnosis. :cry:

:dem: :kick:

[Liberation Angel]

18. I lost three female cousins (brain cancer) - two were in their early forties.

Two of them were in their early 40's and lived very near a nuke plants effluent pipes (within 5 miles) which pump nuclear waste into the waters of Long Island Sound.

I am very sorry for your loss.

All three of my cousins were very beautiful women with beautiful kids.

[CountAllVotes]

21. thank you

sorry to read about your losses as well. It is sure sad. And to think, the worry is that all boomers will retire and suck the system dry.

My best friend died of cancer at 35. I know of too many others as well. :(

[Mari333]

14. When I was 11 years old I developed a huge goiter on my neck

The doctors were puzzled, and , basically, my thyroid gland shut down.
I checked the area in Indiana where I was born and it was one of the areas that had high levels of radioactive fallout.
I was treated with , unfortunately bad at the time, radioactive treatments. bad idea.
anyway, I have never had a functioning thyroid gland, and have been on medication for yrs.
always wondered why I developed something so inane as a child.

[KT2000]

15. When all is said and done

it may turn out that the casualties of the Cold War will exceed that of other wars.
Someone wrote a book about this about 10 years ago, tabulating the cancer deaths. I lost the review and hope someone know his name and the title of his book.

In addition to cancer, there are many other chronic illnesses that could have their start in nuclear testing and the chemical biological testing that was conducted on the population of the US.

[Liberation Angel]

26. Here is one study showing more than 60 Million cancer deaths from nuclear ...

http://www.euradcom.org/2003/execsumm.htm

{b}10. The committee concludes that the present cancer epidemic is a consequence of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout in the period 1959-63 and that more recent releases of radioisotopes to the environment from the operation of the nuclear fuel cycle will result in significant increases in cancer and other types of ill health.

11. Using both the ECRR's new model and that of the ICRP the committee calculates the total number of deaths resulting from the nuclear project since 1945.
....
The ECRR model predicts 61,600,000 deaths from cancer, 1,600,000 infant deaths and 1,900,000 foetal deaths. In addition, the ECRR predict a 10% loss of life quality integrated over all diseases and conditions in those who were exposed over the period of global weapons fallout.

[KT2000]

45. Wow - thanks for this

I guess much has been known for some time.

[Liberation Angel]

47. The Nuke industry CANNOT afford to have this info publicly acknowledged

so they ridicule any scientist or activist who raises these issues.

Mangano (study's author in the OP) is a brave soul.

[Liberation Angel]

22. You can check your own estimated I-131 exposure here (link) (National Cancer Institute site

http://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/



Back to Main


Estimating Your Exposure to I-131

How can people reach a sound decision about their risk of thyroid cancer? When is it time to visit a doctor?


I-131 Dose/Risk Calculator
View state and county exposure levels
Scientists estimate that about 25 percent of the radioactive materials released during atomic bomb testing in Nevada reached the ground somewhere in the United States. But information about where the wind carried these materials is not precise. In addition, most adults cannot remember exact details of their milk-drinking habits in childhood.

Still, scientists and doctors think that I-131 exposure is a potential risk factor for thyroid cancer, and that some Americans have a higher risk than others. A "personal risk profile" includes four key points that may influence a person's decision to visit a doctor or other health professional for evaluation:

Age—People who are now 40 years of age or older, particularly those born between 1936 and 1963 and who were children at the time of testing, are at higher risk.
Milk drinking—Childhood milk drinkers, particularly those who drank large quantities of milk or those who drank unprocessed milk from farm or backyard cows and goats, have increased risk.
Childhood residence—The Mountain West, Midwest, East, and Northeast areas of the United States generally were more affected by I-131 fallout from nuclear testing.
Medical signs—A lump or nodule that an individual can see or feel in the area of the thyroid gland requires attention. If you can see or feel a lump or nodule, it is important that you see a doctor.

[Liberation Angel]

28. One reason Strontium 90 is so scarydangerous is it mimics Calcium and is absorbed by bones and teeth

once in the bones it can get into the marrow where it decays into the blood and spreads to soft tissues where it causes cell mutations and becomes carcinogenic in those tissues (breast, prostate, ovaries, testes, stomach, uterus, etc.). This is why and how it causes leukemia (blood cancers) and gets to the brain causing brain tumors.

[darkstar]

36. Right...that's exactly why they wanted the teeth

[Liberation Angel]

44. Radiation is absorbed into the teeth in utero

It gets locked into the enamel and remains there throughout one's life.
The amount of exposure can be determined by grinding the teeth up and having radiochemists run them through a massive radiation detector.

As strontium particles spark off (decay) only every 15 minutes or so (which is how they can tell how much is present by its decay rate) they have to wait for TWO "sparks" to measure the exposure.

Some samples in the US measured in teeth as high as Chernobyl (lobsters in Long Island Sound had higher amounts in their shells and soft tissue meaning it is in their food chain btw).

[catzies]

29. Tihs has been the most educational thread I've read on DU today. I had NO IDEA

And I was born in '62, but in South Florida or Cold War scares were all wrapped up in Cuba.

Whoever said upthread, "The govt. SHOULD pay for healthcare because they caused the health problems" (terrible paraphrasing) I slaute you. :patriot:

Hell, I salute ALL of you and grieve for the losses of your loved ones to these secret insidious killers: cancer and our government. :cry:

[Liberation Angel]

46. Many many who've died of cancer were killed by the US nuke program

The nuke industry does both military and commercial nukes.

Turkey Point in Florida is particularly bad with emissions of strontium 90 sadly (South Florida). Crysal River is too, near Tampa.

[hedgehog]

31. I think that generally speaking, it's hard to point to one person with thyroid

disease or cancer and say that the fall out caused that particular case. The best that can be done is say for example, that in this group of people, the expectation would have been for 10 people to have cancer, and there are 100. Even then, it can only ever be a theory that it was exposure to this or that that caused the extra 90 cancers.

[Liberation Angel]

33. Pretty much almost all thyroid cancer is caused by radiation

Sure there may be other chemical causes, but most researchers agree that the main cause of almost all thyroid cancers is radiation from one source or another

The work of Mangano indicates that nuke plants cause a lot of these cancers as well, but baby boomers got heavily dosed by nuke tests

[hedgehog]

34. Have you ever seen information about the loss of thyroid function

and low level radiation exposure? I never heard of anyone with hypothyroidism when I was a kid and now it seems to be quite common among middle aged women (the women who were kids in the 50's and 60's)

[Liberation Angel]

38. I believe there are studies on it at Mangano's website

Mangano himself has dealth with hypothyroidism in his research but I don't have a handy link.

However, the research is extensive on the impact in general.

Frankly, because the researchers believe cancer is higher profile, they have not made as much out of the hypothyroid problem from this exposure (also it is harder to establish in many ways because the half life of I-191 is pretty short (less than a month which means it is undetectable in several months and usually only by a biopsy).

I will check on this though

Check the article links at


www.radiation.org

and you may find something but I will check further.

I have actually discussed this with some of the researchers (I interviewed them and participated in an Earth Day event where some of them participated) and they feel the cancer stats should rouse people to action while the hypothyroid issues are not as alarming (as they are subtle and not imminently deadly - they kill over time)

[hedgehog]

40. Thank you. Given the number of different toxic exposures

and the synergistic effects, I can see that it would be hard to prove cause and effect. Given that this is a treatable condition, it makes more sense to concentrate on cancers. If I understand you correctly, there is a possible, maybe a probable connection but we may never know for sure.

[Liberation Angel]

42. It is not so hard to prove epidemiologically - but the Nuke industry

is the most powerful industry in the world (literally they control the means to destroy the world and thereby they control most of it)

They have whole departments who nothing but attack the credibility of nuke critics (and there are plenty of their pronuke adherents who jump all over threads like these but may have changed their tactics with the new hottest "most controversial" greatest pages etc. (unrecs raise prominence fortunately).

I worked in the industry and have worked with the whistleblowers and been investigating this as a Congressional staffer and as a participant in NRC licensing hearings for years (I worked with the environmental medicine unit for a nuclear corporation).

So I know more than most.

It is a pandemic.

What is scary is that when you add the suppressed immune systems to newly mutated viruses and bacterias (mutations caused by man made radiation as predicted to cause pandemics by Andrei Sakharov 50 years ago - he was father of the Soviet H Bomb and was deemed a refudsenik because he began to oppose his own creation of death and earned Soviet scorn) you get all these new diseases which not only have we NOT evolved immunity to, but our immune systems are so fouled up due to bad thyroids and endocrine systems (and lowered body temperatures which cannot kill the viruses etc) that you get MANY more deaths a la the new strain of H1N1 AND which are crosssing species barriers.

Scary deadly shit.

with a compromised thyroid we can't fight it off...

[Liberation Angel]

41. Info on Thyroid damage (link)

This is from a chapter in Physicist Ernest Sternglass's book (an exdellent read).

He was head of the Lunar Scientific Station Project for the Nasa Apollo Missions before Nixon cut the program

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp16.html

[condoleeza]

53. That is a devastatingly scary article

as are all the other ones you can read there.

Gotta love the cold war. "Knowing the enormous sensitivity of the fetus in the mother's womb, was it really credible that any President of the United States could be blackmailed into not firing our missiles after such a hypothetical attack in the hope of "saving" the population in the cities of the east? And what would it profit the leaders of another country that had launched such a blow against us if within days, a massive cloud of drifting fallout would poison the air, the food, and water of their children for generations, even if not a single one of our missiles should ever reach their land?"

and we can't sue them. Yeah, the Gov't SHOULD pay for our healthcare.

[Liberation Angel]

57. Many women have had miscarriages/spontaneous abrtions and cannot understand why...it IS disturbing

I lost a child to miscarriage after a nuclear leak in my community at a military site.

They claimed the population (everyone I know got sick) was sick from the "Asian Flu". Later the nuke companies in the community said that Strontium 90 in baby teeth and local milk must have come from Chinese Nuclear tests.

They NEVER acknowledged that

man made RADIATION KILLS OR MUTATE BABIES IN THE WOMB

or

that exposing the public was causing Spontaneous Abortions

how many have suffered this and blamed themselves?

[hedgehog]

39. I've been aware of this for some time, but until now I've never made this connection.

My sister's heart was broken when she lost her fiance to Hodgkin's disease weeks before their wedding back in the 80's. He grew up in Buffalo. Was he a victim of the bomb tests?

[Liberation Angel]

43. Probably, based on the odds...I am sorry...

Having worked in the industry I know how these things are covered up: liability is too great.

Proof of causation is difficult (how do you know THIS radiation came from THIS nuke plant or somewhere else?) Was it GE or Westinghouse or Halliburton or General Dynamics or Bechtel which irradiated you?

It is like the smoking defense: PROVE OUR cigarets caused YOUR cancer and NOT asbestos or second hand smoke.

The legal tricks go on forever because the liability is so intense.

I am sorry for that loss for your sister.

This is what makes me so sad and angry.

And why i refuse to be in denial about it.

This will be a curse for many many generations.

(Did you see my link on the thyroid chapter of Sternglass's book yet?)

It speaks volumes in a few pages...

[AwakeAtLast]

48. My dad remembers when they were told to "stay inside for a few days"

This was in So. IL. He was born in '39, graduated in '57.

[Liberation Angel]

49. Were YOU exposed? Find out here (link) if you got DOSED by nuke tests

http://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov /

[truthisfreedom]

52. My exposure didn't increase my risk of Thyroid cancer, according to this, but

do I really trust a .gov site? Dunno. Can't say for sure.

[Liberation Angel]

56. Any exposure at all is likely to increase the risk some

there is no safe exposure --- only lesser degrees of harm.

Researchers at the Radiation and Public Health project ( www.radiation.org ) however have concluded that small doses can sometimes be more harmful than larger doses because, sort of like second hand smoke, the smaller exposures can more easily penetrate the cell walls and do their damage. This has not been acknowledged by the government or industry, however, which adheres to the old thought that there is a straight correspondence between dose and harm (the higher the dose the more risk there is proportionately).

Researchers show that low doses actually can be proportionately more harmful.