(C) Colorado Newsline This story was originally published by Colorado Newsline and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . ‘How much money are our lives worth?’: Utah downwinders call RECA expansion’s failure a betrayal [1] ['Kyle Dunphey', 'More From Author', '- January'] Date: 2024-01-12 People like Mary Dickson aren’t legally considered downwinders, the term used to describe those exposed to radiation during Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and New Mexico. “Every time I say I’m a downwinder, I get ‘Oh, you grew up in St. George?’” said Dickson, of Salt Lake City, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1985. “It’s been really frustrating because for 30 years, I’ve been trying to raise awareness that no, it wasn’t just southern Utah, it went everywhere.” That definition seemed likely to expand in December when a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, sponsored an amendment to the defense spending bill that would have broadened the Radiation Compensation Exposure Act, or RECA. With the proposed expansion, anyone in Utah diagnosed with certain cancers caused by nuclear testing would have been eligible for compensation. The measure also would have extended RECA, which is set to expire this June. But despite the expansion clearing the Senate on a bipartisan vote, it was cut from the House version of the bill after negotiations among congressional leaders. Hawley, in an interview with The Hill, credits his fraught relationship with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as the reason the amendment was stripped. Hawley said McConnell was “dead set” on striking the provision. “You’re playing with people’s lives! Get rid of the political infighting. That was so discouraging,” Dickson said. Now, the clock is ticking for all downwinders. ‘It never went far enough’ In Utah, the government’s radiation compensation program covered residents who lived in one of 10 counties — Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Millard, Piute, San Juan, Sevier, Washington and Wayne — for two consecutive years from 1951 to 1958, or during the summer of 1962. People who worked in uranium mines, mills or transporting ore in Utah from 1942 to 1971 were also eligible. The University of Utah also maintains an archive and oral history project, complete with maps of estimated radiation dosage levels, dedicated to the state’s downwinders. The limited eligibility under the current bill has been a source of major frustration for health care providers like Becky Barlow, director of the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program in St. George, which screens people exposed to radiation and helps them apply for compensation. “Obviously radiation doesn’t stop at the county line,” said Barlow, whose program covers the lower half of Utah, and parts of Nevada and Arizona. Still, Barlow gets calls from all over the Mountain West from those who suspect they got sick from radiation, but who aren’t eligible under the federal program. That includes people who worked in but didn’t live in counties covered by RECA, or who lived just two blocks away from the county line, or had kidney cancer, certain kinds of leukemia, autoimmune disorders or other diseases that are linked to radiation but not included in the act. “I take calls from a lot of different people in a lot of different areas,” Barlow said. “It has changed their family experience. Their family experience is now a family experience of cancer and a history of cancer; what grandpa had cancer, which sister had cancer.” But new research proves what activists like Dickson have been saying for years — that all of Utah was exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, mostly from the tests in Nevada. A detailed map published this summer as part of an academic model of radioactive fallout from the Trinity Test explosion in New Mexico in July 1945 and around 100 subsequent tests in the Nevada desert shows a dark purple streak — indicating some of the highest concentrations of contamination — originating from the Nevada Test Site and leading right through Salt Lake City. “The vast majority of people who were made sick will never know that’s what made them sick,” Dickson said. “We didn’t even get an apology, we’re not recognized as downwinders and all these people in all these states are literally dying off.” Dickson and other activists said they recorded abnormally high rates of cancer and autoimmune disorders in Salt Lake City. Cancer plagued Dickson’s Canyon Rim neighborhood, she said, and many children she grew up with developed tumors. People exposed to radiation can develop cancer at any stage in their life — children are most at risk, with girls being particularly susceptible. Dickson’s own inner circle was heavily impacted, she said. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1985 at 29 years old; her older sister died from complications from lupus, which studies show can be caused by radiation exposure; her younger sister has stomach cancer and another has autoimmune diseases. She has a niece who developed breast cancer, another niece with thyroid issues and other health complications including lupus. “It’s everywhere. It never ends,” Dickson said. “I thank God I got better and I’m OK. There’s a woman I worked with and she died, and she always said ‘You have to keep doing this, the rest of us are too sick.’ So I feel this intense obligation.” Dickson’s activism continued, with lobbying trips to Washington, D.C., and rallying impacted communities to contact their elected representatives. When she learned the amendment was stripped from the defense bill, Dickson described it as a “betrayal.” “How much money are our lives worth? They give the excuse of money, but it’s an excuse, it’s not a reason. It’s a matter of priorities because there’s so much money that keeps getting invested in these weapons,” Dickson said. Former Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch helped pass the original RECA bill in 1990. The law took effect in 1992, and in the decades since, more than 54,000 claims have been filed with the U.S. Department of Justice, about 75% of them approved. As of the end of 2022, about $2.6 billion had been paid out, with downwinders receiving $50,000 and uranium workers getting $100,000. But many who lived through years of nuclear testing say the program was too narrow. Studies show that radiation went far beyond the roughly two dozen counties originally included in RECA. The Princeton-led fallout research team found that contamination spread to 46 states, Canada and Mexico, starting with the detonation of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico — the Trinity Test Site in 1945 — and 93 additional atmospheric tests conducted in Nevada through 1962. The expansion would have increased the amount of money available to people exposed to radiation from $75,000 to $150,000 for onsite participants, and from $50,000 to $150,000 for downwinders. It would have also expanded the eligible regions to include new parts of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and the territory of Guam. What’s next for Utah’s downwinders? Utah’s newest member of Congress, Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy, grew up in Lincoln County, Nevada, one of the first populated areas to sit in the shadow of a mushroom cloud. Ranchers noted cattle that consumed contaminated vegetation would turn dark brown or black. “Everybody in my hometown had stories about going and sitting in the back of trucks to watch the clouds, and cows that changed color. It’s just part of the fabric of life out there,” Maloy said. Her dad, who grew up in New Mexico and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 30 years old, “might be a downwinder,” she said. Many of her friends had parents and grandparents who developed cancer at young ages. Her district encompasses most of the counties in Utah that are already eligible under RECA. Just weeks into her first term, Maloy says her first priority is the next year’s spending bills. But expanding RECA, she told Utah News Dispatch, is high on her list. “I think we can get it done. It’s going to take Utah’s members being really focused on this, and it’s going to take me being really focused on this, because the second (congressional) district is the most impacted,” she said. “I do think there are people fighting for it in Congress.” Maloy said all of Utah should be eligible for compensation; that the compensation rates should be increased from its 1990s-era levels; and that certain cancers and diseases that weren’t originally included in RECA should be added. “But it can’t just become a boondoggle so big that it collapses under its own weight, and then the people who are clearly impacted and need the compensation can’t get it,” she said. The big question, according to Maloy, is: What should compensation look like 60 years after the last aboveground test? And how can Congress stop it from becoming another case of runaway federal spending? “What we need,” she said, “is a good clean RECA bill that helps people in Utah, that isn’t so broad that we can’t get it funded.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/01/12/utah-downwinders-reca-expansion-betrayal/ Published and (C) by Colorado Newsline Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/coloradonewsline/