Cold War's Death Toll Still Being Counted

From 1950 through 1963, thousands of ever-more powerful nuclear bombs exploded. You would think we would have noticed something like that, but the explosions were merely tests in "isolated" areas, like Nevada. No cities were blown away. Nobody died... until later.

In 2002, USA Today reported on an unreleased 1998 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report blaming fallout from worldwide nuclear bomb testing for at least 15,000 cancer-related deaths and more than 20,000 non-fatal cancers among U.S. residents born since 1951. Last week, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with HHS seeking to at last make public that long-withheld study.

While some members of Congress criticized the Department of Health and Human Services for delaying the release of the 1998 report, another study completed -- and released -- in 1997, showed how the 90 U.S. nuclear bomb tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) during the 1950s and 1960s spread radioactive iodine-131 fallout across the entire country. [Learn more...]

Also See:
Nuclear Spring
Broken Arrow to Faded Giant - Lost Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Weapons: Pay Up to Cleanup
The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty