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Nuclear test fallout caused, and still causes, cancers in Hollywood and the ‘downwinders’

Government denials about any cancer-causing fallout unravelled in the 1980s, when lawsuits uncovered internal AEC reports showing scientists and bureaucrats downplayed and distorted evidence. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990, establishing a fund for downwinders with cancer and serious illnesses apparently linked to above-ground nuclear weapons testing. Compensation is capped at $50,000 per person.

The fund has disbursed about $2bn and is set to continue until first-generation downwinders have died out.

Hollywood and the downwinders still grapple with nuclear fallout,Guardian, Rory Carroll , 6 June 15  The US turned swathes of desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it, bequeathing a medical mystery that still haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities and raises the question: how much do you trust the government? “…………….Last week, half a century later, Rebecca Barlow, a nurse practitioner at theRadiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP), which operates from the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St George, now a prosperous little city with an airport, leafed through her patient records. “More than 60% of this year’s patients are new,” she said. “Mostly breast and thyroid, also some leukaemia, colon, lung.”

This is a story about cancer. About how the United States turned swathes of the desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it, bequeathing a medical mystery which to this day haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities and raises a thorny question: how much should you trust the government?

“It’s gone into our DNA,” said Michelle Thomas, 63, an outspoken advocate for the so-called downwinders, the name given to the tens of thousands exposed to fallout. “I’ve lost count of the friends I’ve buried. I’m not patriotic. My government lied to me.”

Hollywood is set to remember its own cameo in the story with next year’s 50th anniversary of the release of The Conqueror, the film which allegedly killed Wayne plus leading lady Susan Hayward, director Dick Powell and dozens of other cast and crew members. In the meantime there will be another anniversary: this summer it will be 70 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

The Manhattan Project scientists conducted the first atomic tests in great secrecy in 1945 in New Mexico. After the second world war, testing shifted to the southern Pacific Ocean on the grounds of public safety. But the war in Korea and escalating rivalry with the Soviet Union prompted a shift back to the US mainland for greater security. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), an agency with near Olympian powers which ran the nuclear programme, selected a government-owned bombing and gunnery range in Nevada partly because winds would blow “radiological hazards” away from Las Vegas and Los Angeles towards “virtually uninhabitable” land downwind to the west, home to ranches and Mormon communities.

From 1951 to 1962 the AEC detonated more than 100 bombs, sending huge pinkish plumes of radioactive dust across the stony valleys and canyons of southern Utah and northern Arizona. It gave each “shot” names like Annie, Eddie, Humboldt and Badger. The official advice: enjoy the show. “Your best action is not to be worried about fallout,” said an AEC booklet. Families and lovers would drive to vantage points for the spectacle, then drive home as ash wafted down on their communities. It was a cheap date.

At first the local press cheered the chance to beat the Russians and be part of history. “Spectacular Atomic Explosions Mean Progress in Defense, No Cause For Panic,” said an editorial in the The Deseret News. Clint Mosher, a columnist, said he never saw a prettier sight. “It was like a letter from home or the firm handshake of someone you admire and trust.’’

Seated in her home in St George last week, Claudia Peterson, 60, another downwinder advocate, gave a wry smile at the memory. “We were Mormons and very patriotic. Perfect guinea pigs. We weren’t going to question anything. It was impossible to believe our government would consider us expendable.” Peterson has lost a father, sister, daughter and nephew to diseases she attributes at least in part to radiation.

Eleven bombs were detonated in 1953, including several between March and June that coated St George and other towns in grey dust. The most notorious were a 51-kiloton shot called Simon and a 32-kiloton shot called Harry (later dubbed Dirty Harry). Thousands of sheep died. An AEC press release blamed “unprecedented cold weather”.

A year later St George’s 4,800 residents found themselves hosting an exotic invasion of actors, producers, technicians and stuntmen. Howard Hughes, the eccentric head of RKO Pictures, lavished money on what he envisaged as a stirring tale of romance and epic battles on Asia’s steppes. The cast and crew filled the motels and enlisted locals as labourers and extras. About 300 Shivwit Indians played Mongol villagers……..

as years passed and cast and crew fell sick, it [the film]acquired a darker reputation. Powell got lymph cancer and died in 1963. “It got him pretty quickly,” said Norman. The same year Pedro Armendáriz, a Mexican actor who played Khan’s right-hand man, Jamuga, shot himself after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hayward, who played a Tartar princess, died of brain cancer in 1975.

By the time Wayne succumbed to stomach cancer in 1979, The Conqueror had been dubbed an RKO Radioactive Picture. ……..

Government scientists, drawing on data from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, used to visit schools to check thyroids and radioactivity levels, recalled Peterson, another advocate. “They wore black suits like the Blues Brothers. They knew what was happening.”

Above-ground testing paused in 1959 and briefly resumed in 1962, after which it went underground, where hundreds more bombs were detonated (including some on behalf of Britain’s nuclear programme) until a moratorium in 1992.

Government denials about any cancer-causing fallout unravelled in the 1980s, when lawsuits uncovered internal AEC reports showing scientists and bureaucrats downplayed and distorted evidence. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990, establishing a fund for downwinders with cancer and serious illnesses apparently linked to above-ground nuclear weapons testing. Compensation is capped at $50,000 per person.

The fund has disbursed about $2bn and is set to continue until first-generation downwinders have died out. Their children and grandchildren, regardless of any health problems, are excluded. The Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) has eight clinics in the region. They diagnose and advise about treatment, which is free if you qualify……….

Multiple factors cause cancer and we will never know if radiation contributed to John Wayne’s death. But there is no doubt the atmospheric nuclear testing programme wrought a terrible toll on many families. Peterson, the activist who has lost multiple relatives, had an epiphany when she visited bereaved families in Kazakhstan, where the Soviet Union did its own testing. “I was afraid of these people my whole childhood and then discovered they weren’t monsters. It was our own governments that were killing us.” http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne

June 8, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Legal, USA