First of Hanford health trials start Monday

[struggle4progress]

By JOHN K. WILEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Harriet Fugitt spent an idyllic childhood at her family's dairy farm in the Benton City area south of the Hanford nuclear reservation, where her father worked helping to make plutonium for the nation's Cold War weapons. <snip>

At a trial that starts Monday, a U.S. District Court jury will be asked to decide whether those everyday activities exposed Fugitt and her neighbors to radioactive contamination that spewed from Hanford plutonium factories, adversely affecting their health. <snip>

She blames Hanford environmental releases for "a whole salad bowl" of ailments, including fibromyalgia, fatigue, headaches, joint and muscle pain, and sensitivity to chemicals and some foods.

She is one of nearly 2,300 people, called the Hanford downwinders, who have sued major contractors who ran the federal nuclear reservation for the government after it started making plutonium in 1944. <snip>

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WST%20Hanford%20Downwinders

[rodeodance]

1. these ailments are difficult to prove but sure do with them well in the

courts.

[struggle4progress]

2. Thyroid dysfunction might be reasonably straightforward to establish.