Political leaders, radiation victims rally to expand compensation

Sep. 20—They came from New Mexico, Missouri, Arizona, Utah and Guam, speaking in a unified voice on the need to compensate those who suffered radiation exposure in the country's nuclear weapons program.

They told stories, some deeply personal, about how radiation harmed them or their family members, whether it was from nuclear testing, uranium mining and processing, or ingesting food and water tainted by radioactive contaminants.

They stood Wednesday in front of the nation's Capitol with U.S. senators, including New Mexico's Ben Ray Luján, who sponsored a bipartisan measure to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

The Senate voted 61-37 in July to add the measure as an amendment to this year's military spending bill — a rare legislative feat in today's highly polarized political climate — and now it lies in the hands of the Republican-controlled House.

Although the gathering at the news conference was billed more as a recognition of the unprecedented progress made on expanding RECA than pushing House members to approve the amendment, some speakers made an impassioned callout to congressional leaders.

Utah writer Mary Dickson, a downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, said at the end of the film Oppenheimer, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer tells Albert Einstein he believed the atomic bomb destroyed the world.

"Well, I'll tell you, he destroyed our world," Dickson said. "We are the legacy of that bomb — and that was the first bomb exploded on our soil. I hope Congress does the right thing at last, and stands on the right side of history."

Luján, a Democrat, sponsored the measure with Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt from Missouri and Mike Crapo from Idaho.

Only parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah now qualify for RECA. The amendment would cover the ineligible areas of those states as well as New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Guam.

Luján said he teamed up with Hawley, who was seeking compensation for people who suffered severe health effects from the federal government's shoddy handling of uranium waste in North St. Louis County.

Uranium waste was stored in the open or in deteriorating metal drums at two different sites, contaminating Coldwater Creek, a waterway that often flooded residents' basements and was a favorite playing spot for children. Radioactive waste was also discarded at a defunct processing plant, a landfill and quarry.

The two senators decided a bipartisan effort was the best chance to help uncompensated victims who have been treated like Cold War collateral damage.

"It surprised a lot of folks that a Democrat from New Mexico would work with a Republican colleague out of Missouri," Luján said. "But it's one of those examples in how this place can work."

Luján credits Hawley for mustering the Republican votes needed to reach the 60-vote threshold required for the amendment to pass.

Hawley had harsh words for government agencies that denied the dangers of the St. Louis area's contamination, even though records show they knew about them by the 1950s.

The affected neighborhoods have the highest rate of breast cancer and childhood brain tumors in the country, and yet some officials have acted as though it's a coincidence, he said.

"If the government is going to expose its own citizens to radioactive material ... for decades, the government oughta pay the bills for the men and women who have gotten sick because of it; they oughta pay for survivor benefits of those who have been lost," Hawley said. "We're not here today to ask for a handout. For many of them, the work they did was mission critical for this country."

Luján talked about how communities downwind from where the first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site in Southern New Mexico were never warned but learned about it when they saw a bright light in the sky or found radioactive dust coating clothes on outdoor lines.

"No one has helped them," Luján said.

An estimated 1,054 nuclear tests were conducted in the U.S., including 215 above ground, before the 1992 ban on explosive tests, according to federal data.

Uranium miners also were casualties, Luján said. They would go home after work with their clothing coated with uranium dirt and spread the radioactive material to their households, he added.

The amendment would compensate those who were exposed to uranium while mining, processing or transporting it after 1971.

Navajo activist Phil Harrison, a former uranium miner, talked of how Indigenous men worked in caverns, extracting radioactive material, with no safeguards or protective gear or even basic information about the hazards.

"The Navajo miners, they didn't know what they were doing — they were uneducated, couldn't read or write," Harrison said. "They were given a shovel simply to feed their families. My father did that. He didn't know that he was being contaminated — contaminating his family, my siblings. People were being hurt."

Harrison said he drank contaminated water while working in the mines because he was never told not to do it. He later suffered kidney failure that required dialysis.

Missouri activist Dawn Chapman, who heads Just Moms STL, said people who have suffered radiation poisoning for various reasons in communities across the country were once scattered and separate but are now unified.

With unity comes greater strength to fight for justice, Chapman said.

"We have been isolated and separated and that is not happening anymore," she said. "We're asking for an extension of a program that's already in existence. We're asking for people to be included who, frankly, this program was created for. Why in the world they were left out it, I have no idea."