Cancers from US nuclear testing set to double: study

[dArKeR]

A US study has found that the number of cancers caused by hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands is set to double, more than half a century after the tests were conducted in the tiny Pacific nation.

The study by the US government's National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated 530 cancers had already been caused by the tests, particularly the explosion of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb code-named Bravo on March 1, 1954.

It said another 500 cancers were likely to develop among Marshall Islanders who were exposed to radiation more than 50 years ago.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/18/2003250976

Thank you TW for reporting on American Gov. agencies!

[medeak]

1. how about Nevada and Utah? n/t

[NVMojo]

3. Yeah, and Idaho and other adjacent areas that were "dusted"!!!

[0007]

2. Never seen so many military personnel at M.D. Anderson last month.

M.D. Anderson is the number one cancer center in the World.

[OzarkDem]

12. Were they Army?

DoD funds a lot of cancer reseach. They have a pretty good program, better run than NCI's.

http://cdmrp.army.mil/research.htm

[underpants]

4. So the concrete did work after all huh?

Picture taken by the US Defense Nuclear Agency in 1980, shows a huge dome, over top of a crater left by one of the 43 nuclear blasts on the island, capping off radioactive debris from nuclear tests over Runit Island in Enewetak in the Marshall Islands. A US study has found that the number of cancers caused by hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands is set to double, more than half a century after the tests were conducted in the tiny Pacific nation.(AFP/HO/File/Giff Johnson)

[dArKeR]

6. Good grab on the pic!

[kurtyboy]

9. I was at Eniwetok in the early nineties--spent a few days.

The islanders had recently returned after decades in nuclear exile at Ujelang and Ebeye (the "Slum of the Pacific"). I have many photgraphs of the abandoned DOE sites, and of the scarred people of the island. It was my impression (but I am not a doctor) that the returned islanders were less robust that other islanders I've met in my Pacific travels. They had way more skin lesions and appeared to be stunted, many with joint ailments and twitches that I'd not noticed elsewhere. That being said, they seemed every bit as jolly as any other islanders I've met--if a little more suspicious of Westerners.

I spent a day at Bikini also. It was still to "hot" (too much radiation) to re-occupy at that time, and I believe it remains so today, half-a-century after the tests. At one point, we flew over the site of the MIKE shot, "Mike yielded 10.4 megatons, one thousand times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb, vaporizing the island of Elugelab <one of the many islands comprising Bikini Atoll>. The crater the explosion left behind--two hundred feet deep and more than a mile across--is starkly visible...The Mike fireball alone expanded to more than three miles in diameter; its blast would have obliterated all five New York City buroughs." (from "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, 1995: Simon and Schuster. Also check out "Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll" by Jonathan Weisgall, 1994: Naval Institute Press)

I could clearly make out the underwater crater, and imagined the three islands that used to be there. The environmental destruction is obvious on the Atoll--replanted coconut trees, in strait rows, fail to thrive (less than 4 meters tall in most cases, and I can't recall them bearing fruit. If breadfruit trees got replanted, they sure weren't obvious to me.) Terrestrial crustaceans (sand crabs, coconut crabs) should have been abundant without human predation, but I saw none.

On the other hand, from the air I could see an outrageous number of tropical gamefishes of remarkable size cruising the lagoon. Groups of ulua averaging 20 kilos or more (In broad daylight!) made my mouth water at the chance of catching them.

Nonetheless, the experience left me with the same sort of sick feeling I felt when I visited Auschwitz (a decade before the fall of Communism). How could humans do this to their own kind, to their own environment, to their own selves?

I haven't an answer, yet.

[Massacure]

14. That only covers the fallout.

Some substances only last seconds or minutes.

[CBGLuthier]

5. Don;t forget about Fernald either

That's the one that got me. Spent the first ten years of my life living less than ten miles from them.

It's calculate they released 230 tons of radioactive material over a 30 year period.

Glad I never was much of a milk drinker in those days.

[dArKeR]

7. Fernald

http://www.fernaldcab.org/recomandreports.html

http://www.fernald.gov/

[chlamor]

8. No such thing as "Test Bombs"

Crimes against humanity.



www.warresisters.org

[dArKeR]

10. Nice website, Frank is proud of you!

[chlamor]

11. .

[struggle4progress]

13. kick

[Megahurtz]

15. Niiice.......

:(