Downwinders
Downwinders were individuals and communities, in the United States, in the intermountain West between the Cascade and Rocky Mountain ranges primarily in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah but also in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho who were exposed to radioactive contamination or nuclear fallout from atmospheric or underground nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear accidents. Although, when the term first originated, it mainly referred to the affected peoples near the Nevada Test Site, but the label has since expanded to include people experiencing negative effects of radiation in places outside of the United States borders like the Marshall Islands.
More generally, the term can also include those communities and individuals who are exposed to ionizing radiation and other emissions due to the regular production and maintenance of coal ash, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, nuclear waste, and geothermal energy. In regions near U.S. nuclear sites, downwinders may be exposed to releases of radioactive materials into the environment that contaminate their groundwater systems, food chains, and the air they breathe. Some downwinders may have suffered acute exposure due to their involvement in uranium mining and nuclear experimentation.
Several severe adverse health effects, such as an increased incidence of cancers, thyroid diseases, CNS neoplasms, and possibly female reproductive cancers that could lead to congenital malformations, have been observed in Hanford, Washington, "downwind" communities exposed to nuclear fallout and radioactive contamination. The impact of nuclear contamination on an individual is generally estimated as the result of the dose of radiation received and the duration of exposure, using the linear no-threshold model. Sex, age, race, culture, occupation, class, location, and simultaneous exposure to additional environmental toxins are also significant, but often overlooked, factors that contribute to the health effects on a particular "downwind" community.
Recent research has expanded the reach of the experience of the Downwinders to include the fallout following the Nevada Test Site nuclear testing in the 1950s, including the generational impacts, the ongoing contamination, and the delays of federal government acknowledgment of liability. Studies by such authors as Sarah Alisabeth Fox and Philip L. Fradkin show how the oral histories from the communities of the Western United States provide information on the prevalence of Thyroid disease, Leukemia, and Autoimmune disease.More recently, the history of the fallout, as shown by various environmental histories, indicates that it continues to impact the politics of Nuclear testing and compensation programs well into the 21st century.
Nuclear testing
Between 1945 and 1980, the United States, the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, France and China exploded 504 nuclear devices in atmospheric tests at thirteen primary sites yielding the explosive equivalent of 440 megatons of TNT. Of these atmospheric tests, 330 were conducted by the United States. Accounting for all types of nuclear tests, official counts show that the United States has conducted 1,054 nuclear weapons tests to date, involving at least 1,151 nuclear devices, most of which occurred at Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands, with ten other tests taking place at various locations in the United States, including Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico. There have been an estimated 2,000 nuclear tests conducted worldwide; the number of nuclear tests conducted by the United States alone is currently more than the sum of nuclear testing done by all other known nuclear states combined.Historians have chronicled the fact that the earliest testing policy paradigms in the United States were predicated on the notion that areas of sparse population, such as the American West, could handle Nuclear testing, which assumption proved to be erroneous regarding Nuclear fallout dispersal. Blades and Siracusa establish that the government greatly underestimated atmospheric dispersal and radioactive plumes during the 1950s.
Other tests conducted elsewhere also led to increased exposure to the public. As J. Samuel Walker observes regarding Project Dribble in Mississippi, low-yield and underground tests were also capable of producing radiation and, consequently, health anxieties among the people.
Oral histories conducted by authors Fox and Fradkin tell of the settling of fallout on ranching, farming, and living areas in Nevada,Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and the province of New Mexico, often with little public notice. People remembered the ash-type fallout drifting over grazing lands, gardens, and water, which were to become pivotal to the anti-downdwinder movement.
These nuclear tests infused vast quantities of radioactive material into the world's atmosphere, resulting in widely dispersed radiation and its subsequent deposition as global fallout.
Exposure
Aboveground nuclear explosions produce a characteristic mushroom cloud, which moves downwind as it reaches its stabilization height. Dispersion of the radioactive elements causes vertical and lateral cloud movement, spreading radioactive materials over adjacent regions. While the large particles settle nearby the site of the detonation, smaller particles and gases may be dispersed around the world. Additionally, some explosions injected radioactive material into the stratosphere, more than 10 kilometers above ground level, meaning it may float there for years before being subsequently deposited uniformly around the earth. Global fallout is the result, which exposes everything to an elevated level of man-made background radiation. While "downwinders" refers to those who live and work closest to the explosion site and are thus most acutely affected, there is a global effect of increased health risks due to ionizing radiation in the atmosphere.Health effects
The earliest concerns raised about the health effects of exposure to nuclear fallout had to do with fears of genetic alterations that may occur among the offspring of those most exposed. However, the observed inheritable effects of radiation exposure by groups with histories of acute risk are considered minimal compared with the significant increase in thyroid cancer, leukemia and certain solid tumors that have developed within a decade or more after exposure. As studies of biological samples have been undertaken, it has become increasingly clear that specific radionuclides in fallout are implicated in fallout-related cancers and other late effects.Ionizing radiation contained in fallout from nuclear testing is especially damaging to dividing cells. For this reason, fetuses and infants are especially vulnerable to injury. Such cellular damage may later manifest as leukemia and other cancers in children. In 1958, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reported on fetal and infant deaths caused by radiation.
In 1980, American popular weekly magazine People reported that from about 220 cast and crew who filmed in a 1956 movie, The Conqueror, on location near St. George, Utah, ninety-one had come down with cancer, and 50 had died of cancer. Of these, forty-six had died of cancer by 1980. Among the cancer deaths were John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Susan Hayward, the stars of the film. However, the lifetime odds of developing cancer for men in the U.S. population are 43 percent and the odds of dying of cancer are 23 percent. This places the cancer mortality rate for the 220 primary cast and crew quite near the expected average, but it needs to be noted that this statistic does not include the Native American Paiute extras in the film.
Current status
After adopting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, the U.S. and several other nuclear states pledged to stop nuclear testing. The United States Senate has not yet ratified the treaty, although it stopped testing in 1992. The final US test series was Operation Julin, in September 1992. Three countries have tested nuclear weapons since the CTBT opened for signature in 1996. India and Pakistan both carried out two sets of tests in 1998. North Korea carried out six announced tests, one each in 2006, 2009, 2013, two in 2016 and one in 2017.In 2011, the US Senate designated January 27 as a National Day of Remembrance for Americans who, during the Cold War, worked and lived downwind from nuclear testing sites.
For many years, Senator Ben Ray Luján and other members of Congress have attempted to get compensation for those affected by the Trinity test. In 2023, after the film Oppenheimer brought renewed attention to the test, the United States Senate approved the New Mexico downwinders' inclusion in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act amendment. To become law, the bill would also need to be passed by the United States House of Representatives. As of June 7th 2024, Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has expired. The United States Department of Justice announced that it would cease to accept claims postmarked after June 10th, 2024; However, a radio station in Arizona named KJZZ reported that the health screening services provided under RECA would remain active "for the time being," according to a statement from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Specific test sites
New Mexico
On July 16, 1945, the United States military conducted the world's first test of an atom bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Code-named Trinity, this explosion also created the world's first victims of an atom bomb: residents of New Mexico.Years before the test, scientists warned of the risks for civilians of atomic testing. In their memorandum of March 1940, Manhattan Project physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls warned: "Owing to the spread of radioactive substances with the wind, the bomb could probably not be used without killing large numbers of civilians, and this may make it unsuitable as a weapon for use by this country." At the very least, they suggested that "t would be very important to have an organization which determines the exact extent of the danger area, by means of ionization measurements, so that people can be warned from entering it." Federal officials for the most part ignored these warnings but a last-minute small team to monitor some of the radiation was assembled. "New Mexico residents were neither warned before the 1945 Trinity blast, informed of health hazards afterward, nor evacuated before, during, or after the test."