Reply #9: Most deaths that are linked to exposure are written off

[abqmufc]

I worked with Navajo (impacted by mining and milling of uranium) and the Tribes in the Northwest (who were impacted by Hanford).

i quote from "The High Cost of Uranium" a very concise and short article covering some of the impacts felt by Navajo people (and to a lesser extent the people living in Gallup, Grants, Los Alamos (the town which is near the lab) and Albuquerque, NM.

" In February 1978, however, the Department of Energy released a Nuclear Waste Management Task Force report that said that people living near the tailings ran twice the risk of lung cancer of the general population. The Navajo Times carried reports of a Public Health Service study asserting that one in six uranium miners had died, or would die prematurely, of lung cancer. For some, the news came too late. Esther Keeswood, a member of the Coalition for Navajo Liberation from Shiprock, N.M., a reservation city near tailings piles, said in 1978 that the Coalition for Navajo Liberation had documented the deaths of at least fifty residents (including uranium miners) from lung cancer and related diseases.
The Kerr-McGee Company, the first corporation to mine uranium on Navajo Nation lands (beginning in 1948) found the reservation location extremely lucrative. There were no taxes at the time, no health, safety or pollution regulations, and few other jobs for the many Navajos recently home from service in World War II. Labor was cheap. The first uranium miners in the area, almost all of them Navajos, remember being sent into shallow tunnels within minutes after blasting. They loaded the radioactive ore into wheelbarrows and emerged from the mines spitting black mucus from the dust, and coughing so hard it gave many of them headaches according to Tom Barry, energy writer for The Navajo Times, who interviewed the miners. Such mining practices exposed the Navajos who worked for Kerr-McGee to between 100 and 1,000 times the limit later considered safe for exposure to radon gas. Officials for the Public Health Service have estimated these levels of exposure; no one was monitoring the Navajo miners' health in the late 1940s. "

SOURCE:http://www.ratical.com/radiation/UraniumInNavLand.html

Another great source of info (but lengthy, an entire book on the subject) is: If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans by Peter Eichstaedt. I used this book as the basis of my graduate research on the subject matter.
It is available on most popular websites that sell books, you can find a short bio on it their.

Both sources point out that b/c of cultural lifestyle, such lack of birth certificate, marriage certificate, or death certificate, those impacted by the uranium mining did not receive federal compensation, nor where there health impacts (including death) counted by the federal government in any official numbers. In short firmly believe that 100,000s have died from the nuclear legacy in this country but are not accounted for.

We also see in data that many deaths and health impacts due to the nuclear industry are not attributed to the expoure. For example a worker at Hanford exposed to radiation and died from cancer was not always attributed to the exposure even though they had thyroid cancer (the main cancer found in those exposed). If the worker smoked cigarettes that was often given as the reason for death. The government found any reason not to link death and health impacts to exposure.

Please understanding, I by no means want a pissing contest over which is worse - coal or nuclear. I've worked on national and international policies for both (as they impact Native American communities) and neither is good. Both need to be removed from the table of viable options for energy. I personally don't look at death as the bottom line. There are much more health impacts we see from those working in the nuclear industry due to exposure than death. The same can be said for the coal industry. I look at all negative human and non human health impacts when I base risk for either and conclude both are bad.

Thanks.