Radioactive Clouds of Death over Utah: Downwinders’ Fallout Cancer Epidemic Updated

By Dr. Daniel W. Miles

RADIOACTIVE CLOUDS OF DEATH OVER UTAH

From 1950 to the 1958 moratorium on atmospheric testing, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated over 100 atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site. The inhabitants of St. George, Utah--the so-called downwinders--were repeatedly in the fly zone of these toxic, windblown clouds--so much so that St. George became known nationwide as Fallout City, USA.

In the fall of 1979, Stewart Udall, along with a team of lawyers, came to St. George to announce plans for a class-action lawsuit against the United States because the local people were struggling with tragedies inflicted by a cancer epidemic foisted on them by the Atomic Energy Commission. After interviewing 125 people during a four-day period, the Washington lawyer said that cancer rates in the area were three or four times greater than normal.

Many people in southwestern Utah believe that thousands of citizens throughout the West are still dying from radiation-exposure inflicted on them by fallout from the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s.

The author has spent decades investigating the Test Site issues. He was living in St. George, Utah during the atmospheric testing period in the 1950s. He knows the people. He has read every local paper from the period, counted the tombstones, tracked the anecdotes to ground and studied the dozens of scientific studies on the impact of fallout on the health of the local people. This book is the result of that investigation.

The author, Dr. Daniel W. Miles, Professor Emeritus, Dixie State College, received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1967. He taught upper division physics including radiation physics at Westminster College from 1968 to 1985 and continued his teaching career at Dixie State College. He is the author or coauthor of fortytwo publications in peer reviewed scientific journals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490710969

Dr. Daniel W. Miles

The author has spent decades on Test Site issues. He was living in St. George, Utah, during the atmospheric testing period in the 1950s. He knows the people. He has read every local paper from the period, counted the tombstones, tracked the anecdotes to ground, and studied the dozens of scientific studies on the impact of fallout on the health of the local people. The book recounts how an orgy of fallout hysteria took root in the area twenty years after the moratorium; how it was nourished and rose to political prominence with the aid of journalists, lawyers, and politicians, resulting in a class-action lawsuit against the government; and how it has continued to the present time. The 1997 National Cancer Institute radioiodine study showed that all Americans alive during the testing period are downwinders. The book is bound to be of great interest to all downwinders still concerned about the latent cancer-causing effects of radioactive fallout exposure. About 45 percent of the population of United States was under age twenty in 1950. The author, Dr. Daniel W. Miles, Professor Emeritus, Dixie State College, received his PhD from the University of Utah in 1967. He taught upper division physics, including radiation physics, at Westminster College from 1968 to 1985 and continued his teaching career at Dixie State College. He is the author or coauthor of forty-two publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Book preview

RADIOACTIVE

CLOUDS OF DEATH

OVER UTAH

DOWNWINDERS’ FALLOUT CANCER EPIDEMIC UPDATED

By

DR. DANIEL W. MILES 

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© Copyright 2013 Dr. Daniel W. Miles.

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ISBN: 978-1-4907-1097-6 (sc)

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Trafford rev. 08/10/2013

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Contents

1   Introduction

2   Fallout Clouds Over Utah And The World

3   Basic Facts About Ionizing Radiation

4   Short-Term Health Effects Linked To Radiation

5   Reports Of Short-Term Health Effects In Utah Downwinders

6   The Potential Impact Of Radiation On Cancer Rates

7   Excess Cancers Linked To Atomic Bomb Radiation

8   Reports Of Excess Cancers In Utah Downwinders

9   Reports Of Excess Cancers Revisited

10   Epidemiological Studies On Utah Downwinders:

11   Epidemiological Studies On Utah Downwinders:

12   Epidemiological Studies On Utah Downwinders:

13   Did Dirty Harry Kill John Wayne?

14   Updating The Fallout Controversy To 2011

15   Summary And Final Comments

1

INTRODUCTION

In the 1950s exploding atomic bombs produced mushroom clouds above the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The inhabitants of St. George, Utah—the so-called downwinders—were repeatedly in the fly zone of these toxic, wind-blown clouds, so much so that St. George became known nationwide as Fallout City, USA. The result of this fallout has been called An American Nuclear Tragedy,¹ with major emphasis on Utah. It was widely believed that the heavy hand of government censorship suppressed knowledge of the adverse health effects suffered by the Utah downwinders. Censorship worked, so the story goes, because of the my-country-wrong-or-right ignorance of the devout Mormons who absolutely could not question government officials.

In 1976 two media outlets in Salt Lake City—television station KUTV and the Deseret News—belatedly alerted downwinders to the possible adverse health effects of fallout by telling the Paul Cooper story. Cooper claimed his leukemia was caused by the fallout exposure he received during military maneuvers associated with shot Smoky at the NTS in 1957.

Fallout City downwinders soon found their voice in 1978, telling their stories to a crew filming the documentary titled Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang. Stories by downwinders told of fallout snow that burned their fingers, their faces, and other exposed body parts. Others told of family members afflicted with cancer.

Then in the fall of 1978 Stewart Udall and a team of lawyers reported that downwinders’ cancer rates had reached epidemic levels. According to Philip L. Fradkin, in Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy,

Udall was quoted often in local newspapers that fall. After interviewing 125 people during a four-day period in October 1978, the Washington lawyer said the enormity of the situation was shocking, cancer rates were three or four times greater than normal.²

At a press conference held to announce plans for a class-action lawsuit against the United States, Udall was quoted saying he was stunned by the abnormally high number of suspected fallout cancer victims. Udall would later write: The sturdy Mormon families [are] struggling with tragedies inflicted by a cancer epidemic foisted on them by the Atomic Energy Commission.³

Udall and Associates eventually composed a list of 1,192 plaintiffs consisting of heirs of deceased cancer victims or individuals still surviving with cancer. The list of cancer victims totaled 262 actual cases drawn from many counties in Utah (and some outside Utah), including 144 deceased cancer victims and 118 surviving cancer victims. Two dozen of these plaintiffs were picked for the Allen et al. v. United States trial beginning on September 20, 1982, in the Federal District Court in Salt Lake City.

The national publications and networks picked up the downwinders’ story. Several major fallout-cancer stories appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times. Articles also appeared in Time, Newsweek, Family Circle, Life, Parade, People and other magazines. The following quote is from People magazine: Reputable scientist now suspect that the test caused a phenomenally high rate of cancer and thyroid disease among residents of St. George.⁴

In 1979 Salt Lake TV station KUTV aired Clouds of Doubt, an award-winning documentary on the downwinders. Later in 1981 the station produced another documentary called Downwinders.

Irma Thomas, one of St. George’s leading citizens, became known nationwide. Her story of a St. George neighborhood racked with cancer was told in at least three major newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Television networks also covered her story. Irma appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show and Ted Koppel Live.

A number of popular books appeared about downwinders suffering all sorts of health problems—cancer, birthing a defective child, having a miscarriage and so on. These books laying bare the details of a government cover-up were rushed into print.

The books contained many statements like the following from Killing Our Own:

Cancer had never been a noticeable problem before [in southwestern Utah]. But, as the 1950s wore on, and for decades afterward, the ravaging effects came like a pestilence in serial form: leukemia, usually the quickest to result from radiation exposure, came first; numerous types of cancer… tended to arrive later.⁵

On the back cover of The Day We Bombed Utah:

In May 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission conducted a safe nuclear test called Dirty Harry near St. George, Utah… Within a few years, a plague of cancer and birth defects had ripped through the area—a plague that may have caused the cancer-related deaths of John Wayne and over 100 other cast and crew members of The Conqueror.⁶

After the Allen trial ended in 1984, thirteen years passed with diminished public concern nationwide about the health effects resulting from exposure to fallout. Then the release of the National Cancer Institute’s 1997 report on nationwide exposure to radioactive iodine from the NTS led to renewed interest in fallout-caused cancers especially in Idaho and Montana but also across continental United States. All Americans living in the 1950s became aware that they too are downwinders.

Other events provided additional local stimuli for renewed interest in downwinders’ stories. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of Eastern and Midwestern interests, proposed to store nuclear waste temporarily in western Utah. Another company, now known as Energy Solutions, wanted to bring in radioactive waste from overseas. At a number of town meetings in southern Utah sponsored by The National Research Council, charged with reviewing the guidelines for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, many downwinders showed up to tell heart-wrenching stories of fallout-induced cancers. A few years later our government proposed conducting a non-nuclear explosion called Divine Strake at the NTS that would stir up residual fallout particles.

Meanwhile, companion bills in the House and Senate were introduced in April of 2011 to expand RECA to all counties in seven western states and to increase the compensation to $150.000. More recently rumors that radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear reactor may be dangerous to people in the United States caused a run on potassium iodide at drug stores in St. George. All of these stimuli caused Utah media to periodically feature downwinders’ stories—three pages worth in a recent issue of the Deseret News and nearly seven pages worth in a recent issue of The Spectrum, a southwestern Utah daily.

The Utah nuclear tragedy is comprehensively re-evaluated herein by focusing on what is now known about both the short-term and long-term health effects of radioactive fallout exposure to Utah downwinders, and on the history of the controversy surrounding the claims that mushroom clouds over Utah seriously impacted the health of the residents of southwestern Utah. The controversy is considered from the perspectives of the downwinders, the government, radiation protection scientists, and writers of six popular books.

Some people find the discussion of fallout-induced cancer deaths almost irreverent. The author can sympathize with this point of view. The discussion is not pleasant. On the other hand, the public needs to know precisely the risks involved in radiation exposure. Today, with heightened fears about radiation leaks from damaged nuclear power plants in Japan and the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, the discussion of fallout-induced cancers provides valuable basic information about what is known about exposure to radiation and its health risks. A balanced perception of the health risks of ionizing radiation is of great societal importance to issues as varied as radiological terrorism, the future of nuclear power, nuclear waste storage, occupational radiation exposure, the clean-up of nuclear waste sites, medical x-rays (whole-body scanning by computed tomography results in much higher organ doses of radiation than conventional single-film x-rays), manned space exploration, and frequent-flyer risks.

One critic of everything nuclear claims: Fear of radiation, scientific experts continually suggest, is completely unfounded.⁷ The author has failed to find a single scientific experts making such a ridiculous statement. All experts agree that high doses of radiation can be quickly lethal, as tragically demonstrated at Hiroshima. A few years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki excess leukemia cases clearly linked to radiation exposure were found. Until there is proof of a safe level of radiation exposure, however small that level might be, everybody should avoid unnecessary exposure to ionizing radiation.

The author is a downwinder, raised in St. George. The author was 16 during the 1953 testing period exposing St. George residents to nearly 90% of their total radiation exposure from all the atmospheric testing at the NTS. While teaching physics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, the author routinely told his students that nuclear weapons testing at the NTS caused a cancer epidemic in southern Utah. One student, however, challenged him to provide scientific proof of a cancer epidemic in southern Utah. The author decided to do what a true scientist should do: become a genuine, disinterested inquirer. The author proceeded to consider all available data, both scientific and anecdotal, whether or not the data went against his biases and preconceptions at the onset of the investigation. This book is the result of that investigation.

Notes

1. Phillip. L. Fradkin, Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989).

2. Ibid., 38.

3. Stewart L. Udall, The Myth of August (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994) 222.

4. Paula Newman, A Flinty Grandmother Battles for the Victims of Utah’s Nuclear Tragedy, People, October 1, 1979.

5. Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own:The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1982), 58.

6. John. D. Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah: America’s Most Lethal Secret (New York: New American Library, 1984).

7. John Bradley, Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 2000), xvii.

2

FALLOUT CLOUDS OVER UTAH

AND THE WORLD

The world’s first atomic bomb, Trinity, was tested in New Mexico July 16, 1945. The detonation took place about 100 feet above the desert sand. The awesome ball of fire squatted briefly on the desert sand, then rose swiftly above the earth; as it did so, a semi-vacuum was created sucking up into the churning inferno of hot gases 100 tons or more of vaporized soil. In about 20 seconds the fireball cooled sufficiently to allow the soil components to precipitate out in the form of fine solidified soil particles coated with radioactive atoms created by splitting the uranium atoms into smaller atomic species. In six to eight minutes the dust cloud cooled to air temperature at about 10,000 feet.

After a nuclear explosion the radioactive atomic species attach themselves to the solidified soil particles that eventually fall to earth as radioactive fallout exposing people downwind to radiation. People downwind are also exposed to gamma rays emitted by particles in the cloud, as it passes overhead. The gamma-ray dose depended on how dilute the cloud is, how high it is above ground level, and how fast it moved downwind.

Close to the shot tower (ground zero) the fallout was visible—visible to several ranchers, who reported that a thin film of fallout dust was visible for several days after the blast. The closest ranch to the blast was about twelve miles north of ground zero.

A few days later the fallout cloud passed over Rochester, New York. Film inspectors at Eastman-Kodak found hundreds of splotches on the green 14-by-17-inch film sheets used for industrial X-rays. Kodak’s radiation specialists soon found that the splotches were caused by fallout from Trinity. The Trinity blast produced more fallout downwind than any atomic bomb detonated at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) because it was detonated so close to the ground. Following the Trinity test atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1945.

Between 1946 and 1951 the United States tested five atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll and Enewetok Atoll located in the Marshall Islands. Logistic problems associated with the remote South Pacific sites led to the development of the NTS to test relatively low-yield devices designed to test various design concepts. Between 1951 and 1962 about 100 tests were conducted at the NTS—tests yielding explosive energy equal to as much as 74,000 tons (74 kilotons) of TNT to as little as 0.2 tons of TNT.

Meanwhile, during the 1950s the much more powerful hydrogen bombs were being tested near several small islands in the Pacific Ocean. From 1952 to 1958 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) conducted hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands at Bikini and Enewetok. On March 1, 1954, Bravo was detonated from a barge on Bikini. The explosive power of Bravo was equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT—about a 1000 times greater than the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The ball of fire as it roared into the sky sucked up thousands of tons of sand, coral reef material, and water. An hour after the blast, a soft rain of whitish ash was falling fifty miles downwind. As a consequence of the blast, whitish coral reef material covered a Japanese tuna trawler, the Lucky Dragon. Years later a reconstruction of the events showed that the fishermen received near lethal doses of radiation.¹ Over 200 Marshall islanders within 100 miles of the Bravo test also received severe over-exposure.

Panic over fallout from Bravo first broke out in Japan with the return of the Lucky Dragon on March 14, 1954. The Lucky Dragon crew was first afflicted with nausea, fever, and bleeding gums. Later they suffered ulceration of the skin and temporary hair loss. Japanese newspapers carried huge headlines announcing that the 23 seamen had been stricken by the American atomic test. The tuna catch of the