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An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy

By Belinda Larsen
Augusta Gazette
Fri May 08, 2009,

Approximately 225,000 American servicemen participated in atmospheric nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1962 in the U.S. and over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

These Americans were placed in very hazardous, extremely dangerous areas and were constantly exposed to the unknown factors of radiation in the performance of their duties.  They were assigned to these duties with no formal training, knowledge of the hazards and with very little or no safety gear.

They were America’s atomic guinea pigs and kept away from the public.

And still today the U.S. government remains reluctant to acknowledge the health problems created by the atomic testing, which left the servicemen with hidden wounds — not from bullets or shrapnel, but from radiation.

“Thousands of veterans have died while they begged for medical help.  The government has never admitted that subjecting them to atomic radiation causes all different kinds of cancer,” said Gary Thornton of Leon, who has been working hard to bring honor and remembrance to our nation’s forgotten veterans…………………..

They were also instructed to sign a document stating that whatever they “witnessed, saw, or heard would not be revealed for 20 years under the penalty of execution and/or life imprisonment.” This was called the Atomic Secrets Act and no entries were made in the service jackets, medical records or orders of these soldiers.

Because of the sworn secrecy, it’s as if the testing never happened.

Thornton has been telling anyone who will listen that most of the Atomic veterans have experienced severe health problems, as well as their children and grandchildren.

An American Tragedy – Augusta, KS – Augusta Gazette

May 9, 2009 Posted by | environment, USA | , , , | Leave a comment

Tracking Central Asia’s Nuclear Traces

Tracking Central Asia’s Nuclear Traces registan Net 10 May 09 “……………………Recently, three Chinese tourists from Xinjiang bought a 600-lb piece of “glittering treasure” at a flea market in Kyrgyzstan. Upon sending a piece of it to a lab at Tsinghua University in Beijing, they discovered it was an enormous hunk of depleted uranium…………..

……………last year a train bound for Iran from Kyrgyzstan was stopped at the border with Uzbekistan when sensors at the border crossing detected high amounts of radiation emanating from an empty car. While the train was isolated and eventually returned to Kyrgyzstan for decontamination, the question remains: how did so much Cesium-137 go undetected in Kyrgyzstan, or through two supposedly secure border checkpoints in Kazakhstan, only being stopped in Uzbekistan? Indeed, Kyrgyzstan seems to be at the center of many nuclear security lapses in the region…

………………Tracking nuclear waste products is just as important as tracking enriched uranium (something the international community still does poorly).

Registan.net » Tracking Central Asia’s Nuclear Traces

May 9, 2009 Posted by | safety | , , , , | Leave a comment

Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

By Pamela Fayerman, Vancouver SunApril 22, 2009

VANCOUVER — Health consumers are largely naive about radiation and other risks that come with full-body and other screening tests marketed by private clinics, a University of Victoria health policy researcher says.

Alan Cassels, co-author of a recent report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said people seem to think early detection of any disease is safe and always a good thing if it is under the guise of so-called preventive medicine.

“But offering for sale [for up to $2,500] heart, lung or full-body scans to healthy people with no symptoms is questionable, controversial, unregulated and not even recommended by professional associations of radiologists,” he said…………………………………

A recent article in The Medical Post, a publication primarily for doctors, stated that one CT of the heart was equivalent to about 600 chest X-rays.

Radiation dose from imaging equipment is measured in millisieverts (mSv). A CT of the heart exposes an individual to an estimated radiation dose of 12 mSv. It’s been estimated that a person living in Vancouver has a background radiation of about 2.5 mSv in a year.

In the journal Radiology this month, Boston researchers reported that patients who have many CT scans in their lifetime may be at increased risk for cancer from the accumulated exposure to radiation…………..

……………..The American Heart Association recently stated that radiation exposure has increased by more than 700 per cent in the past 20 years, much of it due to CT scans.

Unnecessary scans pose health risk, UVic study shows

April 23, 2009 Posted by | 2 WORLD, environment | , , , | Leave a comment

Brantford Expositor – Ontario, CA

The ethics of energy
THE EXPOSITOR By KELLYGASCOIGNE (Canada) 2 Dec 08 “…………………The ethics behind a government’s energy policy can mean a huge change in the impact we are having on the environment and the economy………………………….Nuclear energy produces a large amount of electricity but, at every stage of production, has huge risks. The mining of radioactive materials to power nuclear plants causes waste products to pollute nearby communities. If problems strike — terrorism, natural disaster, a plant malfunction — nuclear power is very dangerous. Look at the effects of Chernobyl.

Even if a nuclear plant functions perfectly during its 30 to 40 year life-span, the radioactive materials being processed must be disposed of as radioactive waste. Eventually, the plant itself becomes radioactive waste. So although nuclear power provides a huge amount of energy while a plant is running, it is prohibitively expensive to build and then dispose of and is environmentally dangerous. Economically nuclear power is very costly……………we are still paying for the debt created by Ontario’s nuclear power plants built years ago. Check out your electricity bill. The “debt retirement charge” on your bill, refers to our repayment of the $35-million overrun……………………… the current plan for the Ontario government is to commit $40 billion to new and expanded nuclear plants.

What would our province’s energy mix look like if instead that $40 billion was spent on alternative, “green” energy production and on conservation? This ethical decision seems clear. For our health now and for many future generations to come alternative energy sources need to be taken seriously.

When the Ontario government is considering buy-outs to help Ontario’s manufacturing sector, maybe ethics should be a part of their decision making and the jobs created should be green jobs. Short-sighted planning is not ethical leadership.

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Brantford Expositor – Ontario, CA

December 1, 2008 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , | Leave a comment

Panel debates bombing Iran nuclear sites

Panel debates bombing Iran nuclear sites
FinalCall.com News By Ali GharibUpdated Dec 1, 2008, – WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) – At this year’s National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations meeting, much of the focus was on the Arab Middle East’s ethnic Persian neighbor to the east: Iran.

A question-and-answer session of a panel on Iraq and Iran in late October was a microcosm of the chatter around Washington all year long about the ebbing and flowing likelihood of a potential U.S. bombing run against alleged secret Iranian nuclear sites.

No one on the panel—a collection of a statesman, military brass, and experts—thought an attack on Iran was imminent, or even would likely happen in a longer view, but that did not stop the debate about the merits and drawbacks of a U.S. strike.

Panel debates bombing Iran nuclear sites

December 1, 2008 Posted by | weapons and war | , , , | Leave a comment

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