Posted on 09/04/2004 5:49:28 PM PDT by neverdem
ping
They should get their hearings (closed to public), they should get support and coverage for early detection and treatment... and relocation funds if the area is deemed a danger to future generations. A panel consisting of community leaders and government officials to decide, and generate a report, and recommendations.
It is the proper thing to do.
It was the start of the Cold War, what's your point?
Recompense is due. It is the only honorable path.
[Asbestos suit DONNED. Sarcasm torpedo ARMED. FIRE!]
Given the recent news about the Beslan school massacre,
I suggest that we resume above-ground nuclear tests.
a) These tests *could* be performed on known terrorist
training sites, or in the Bekka Valley, etc.
b) We could also eliminate excess nukes from the
Russian stockpile in the same way. I bet they'd
be only too glad to help :-)
If they're anything like Chernobyl, there's little effect. If they're anything like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's a health benefit in increased longevity and decreased incidence of disease.
However, the prevailing wind in the area of Idaho mentioned in the article is from the northwest, directly downstream from the Hanford nuclear reservation in the state of Washington.
We know that sometime in the '50s, Hanford released 5,000 curies of radioactive iodine "just to see what it would do." That stuff would have swept over the town of Emmett in Idaho, as well as my old home town of Weiser.
My mother died of thyroid cancer in 1988.
These people need to be treated fairly. However, the lack of knowledge is not one of their strong points. Every "kid" at the time knew of Strontium 90 and all the other crap.
"Given the recent news about the Beslan school massacre,
I suggest that we resume above-ground nuclear tests. "
I support that idea.
Whoops, I didnt quote your whole post. I meant above ground tests on Middle Eastern targets ;)
That may well be, but I am so skeptical of anything the NYT prints that it is hard for me to accept any story they print at face value.
I hate to put a crimp in the story, but anytime you're complaining about the negative effects of something that happened 50 years ago, those effects by definition couldn't have been too great.
(Or you wouldn't still be alive.)
A 1956 movie staring John Wayne was filmed in Utah, downwind from the NPG. One of the canyons they filmed the movie in was known to funnel the wind and dust into it. Many of the cast and crew later developed and died of cancer. The rate of cancer for a group of people in equal size was less than 1/2 the number that actually developed cancer.
My father-in-law worked at Oak Ridge in the middle 50's and died of a rare form of cancer in 1994. Richard Feynman died of the same rare form of cancer in 1988. Maybe it's just a coincidence.
Anything that takes 40 or 50 years to kill you cannot be logically classified as an enormous threat.
The gentleman's plight is a sad one, BUT colon cancer is a major cause of cancer deaths in America and most of the sufferers weren't downwind of a nuclear test.
Most cancers take decades to develop. I can't find a national organization of Pediatric Oncologists. The closest I could find is the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
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