::::::::
Without any recent significant prodding by downwinder groups or new revelations from fallout studies, somehow, and apparently without explanation, over the past few months a Congressional A-team of Western Senators and Congresspersons had been drawing up and readying press releases and making changes to a draft bill that would effect a massive overhaul of an existing compensation law for Cold War radiation victims. Then, without much of any prior indication, the sluice gates opened on April 19 - a significant date in the law's history - when New Mexico's Senator Tom Udall introduced the massive Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Amendments of 2010. What ensued next was a flood of press releases from half-a-dozen senate offices and articles in nearly every major news outlet in the Mountain States. Then, on April 22, a companion bill was introduced in the U.S. House by New Mexico's Rep. Ben Ray Luján and cosponsored by key Congresspersons and the U.S. Delegate from Guam.
Finally, the stage for amending RECA
was set. But why now? What precipitated all of this? Downwinders? Compassion? Science?
In a nutshell, and this is just my
opinion, this bill and the Congressional coalition that built around it was the
work of a Colorado law firm working on behalf of a client, the Navajo Nation,
which consists of uranium workers and downwinders who are largely ineligible
for (awards and medical benefits under) RECA in its current form and have been demanding improvements in RECA with
their voices, and their cash. Another
reason for the timing: the bill's co-sponsoring senators are mostly Democrats
who know they will be loved - and voted for in this tumultuous political
climate - dearly if they get this new RECA bill passed.
The new RECA amendments amount to a massive overhaul. You've probably read about how downwinders in a honking slice of the United States - nearly all Mountain States but not Wyoming - will be covered for Nevada Test Site fallout, New Mexicans for Trinity test fallout in one month in 1945, and Guam residents from all Pacific Proving Ground testing fallout.
The proposed legislation will do
good. The surprising leap in the
downwinder claimant award from $50,000 to $150,000 (yes, those who already got
the $50k will get another $100k) will help tens of thousands of families, and
all downwinder RECA awardees will get much needed medical coverage and health
screenings.
But RECA and its amendments fall short. How? Well, there is this black and white world painted by RECA and when you really think about it, it is truly appalling.
In this black and white world...fallout never posed a problem after the testing stopped; people were exposed to fallout from inhaling air or ingesting poisoned foods only during the testing time-frames and only if they were poisoned for 24 months straight or during the 'summer' of 1962. So, if Downwinder Jane moved to St. George in 1953, got irradiated by Dirty Harry, and then left to California, or Florida, in 1953 or 1954, she'd be ineligible for RECA. In this black and white world of RECA, after the last nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site and Pacific Proving Grounds were conducted in 1962, milk and wheat globally ceased to be poisoned. Our foods even managed to stop being poisoned between Halloween in 1958 and the end of June 1962. Oh, in this RECA world, too, there wasn't a stratosphere in the U.S. until way into the 1970s. Why? Because only a stratosphere would have contained the fallout radiation produced from Pacific and Soviet tests that was hundreds of times more plentiful than Nevada Test Site fallout and that through the mid-1960s fell out over the United States creating unprecedented levels of contamination in air, food and water that was much, much worse than we experienced in 1962 or the 1950s. Oh, and the fallout clouds stopped and disappeared at the Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota and North Dakota state lines, in addition to the national borders of Canada and Mexico. And no one from any of those areas ever ate any radioactive foods, or poisoned milk or breathed in an ounce of alphas or betas in their air. Oh, and none of the family members of onsite participants of nuclear tests or uranium workers ever hugged their daddies when they got home covered in hot particles. Nope their clothes were rad-free! And all of the plutonium at the Nevada Test Site that is currently not cleaned up will never hurt a soul again because the winds will cooperate with Senator Udall and not blow off-site and across county, state and national boundaries. Oh, and the downwinders of poisonous fallout in RECA eligible states miraculously will have NO genetic deformities passed on for countless generations. Their genes are fine, fine, fine, so we don't need to worry about defects of any sort that will be hereditary and cause perpetual changes to, in part or whole, the human race. And the best part: all of our scientific knowledge of fallout and low-level radiation and related diseases has actually reached its pinnacle so there will be no monies for fallout or downwinder studies but the new RECA will allocate $3 million for uranium studies because the jury is still out on effects of being in the uranium mines, but not being exposed to weapons testing fallout.
I say all of this to make a point. The point is we need to stop thinking that any RECA bill will, in effect, close a sad chapter in our history for good, or for good in a good enough way. We need to begin the long, hard, difficult and very, very painful process of closing that chapter concerning how humanmade radiation from the Cold War impacted the lives of millions across the globe. Other than the much needed medical benefits of the bill, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Amendments of 2010 makes me feel mostly that all we are doing is slamming a bunch of cash on that chapter to close it and keep it closed for good.
What would be an alternative - to
slamming the chapter shut? Hearings
would be a good idea. Also, a task force. Also,
funding for more fallout and downwinder studies.
But most importantly, and quite obviously, we should close the very menace that caused this problem in the first place. If the radioactive fallout from nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site led to literally hundreds of thousands of cancers and diseases as the new RECA amendment bill alleges, then why is the Nevada Test Site still open? The test site's only purpose, as the name suggests, is to resume testing of nuclear bombs. Our taxpayer dollars are being used to keep the site open and keep it primed (through subcritical experiments) so that nuclear warheads can be tested there should the need ever arise. So, then, why is Congress saying 'sorry, here's money' when they could also be promising us that our children and their children will forever be safe from fallout from our own government's nuclear bombs and then proceed by closing all nuclear test sites. Our government leaders should pledge to us that this won't happen again. That we will never test nuclear bombs anywhere - underground or aboveground - ever again.
