Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalSome excellent reporting on what has happened to the U.S. Sailors who responded to Fukushima
Is America Abandoning its Bravest Heroes Yet Again?
By Karen Charman on Apr 21, 2014
- See more at: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/04/21/america-abandoning-bravest-heroes-yet/#sthash.muAkuQsQ.dpuf
This is in depth reporting covering how the military failed to prevent and is failing to acknowledge extremely serious health issues of sailors who were stationed on the Ronald Reagan, a U.S. Aircraft Carrier sailing off the coast of Japan. Here is part of one of the many stories this piece covers in depth, along with reporting on the larger historic context of U.S. government responses to radiation exposure:
"From Fitness Instructor to Near Invalid
When the earthquake hit, Mike Sebourn was the senior chief mechanic in the helicopter squadron at the Navy’s Atsugi air base in Japan. At the time, he was also a fitness instructor, strong and healthy. But a few weeks after the disaster, he began having nosebleeds and migraines. They went away, but four months later, he discovered he could lift only 60 percent of what he could lift previously.
Sebourn had been in charge of decontaminating helicopters that were coming back after flying relief missions through radioactive plumes. The Navy didn’t prepare him for the job, he told WhoWhatWhy. What normally would have been a two-year course in radiation remediation was distilled down to two days. The course contained no discussion on the health risks involved; however, they were assured that their exposures would be monitored and noted in their military files...
...After the relief missions ended, Sebourn said, he didn’t use much protective gear at all because radiation readings they got off the skin of the aircraft weren’t high enough to warrant it. However, he now believes he continued to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, mainly from hot components inside the aircraft. Sebourn, 39, now suffers from extreme loss of muscle mass and deterioration in the strength of his muscles on the right side of his body..."
If a big part of the Democratic base were as crazy as a big part of the Republican base...
...there would be a flurry of new conspiracy theories being discussed on progressive web sites like this about how the gun industry and the NRA (same thing, I know) were somehow behind the recent mass stabbings to undercut (bad pun, I know) support for "common sense gun safety measures". Even simply typing that sentence seems completely ludicrous to me, but hack commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck make millions by spinning equivalent right wing trash talk. Supposedly main stream media willfully turns a blind eye to any objective comparison of the Left and the Right in this country, while continuing to stack the Sunday talk shows with Republican "leaders".
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