Oppenheimer film becomes toehold for residents downwind from test site to be added to federal compensation program

The 1945 explosion at the Trinity test site in New Mexico
(Associated Press photo via The Washington Post)

The summer movie blockbuster Oppenheimer doesn't mention the first atomic bomb's profound health effects on residents, animals and soil close to and downwind from the test site in southern New Mexico. Residents known as "downwinders" are using the film to boost their last-ditch efforts for coverage by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, a which "compensates people sickened by presumed exposure to radiation from aboveground nuclear tests," report Karin Brulliard and Samuel Gilbert of The Washington Post. "The Senate wants to compensate them, but the House is reluctant."

The Trinity site sits bout 60 miles northwest of Tularosa, N.M., pop. 2,600. "It was chosen in part for its supposed isolation. Nearly half a million people lived within a 150-mile radius," Brulliard and Gilbert write. "Manhattan Project leaders knew a nuclear test would put them at risk, but with the nation at war, secrecy was the priority. Evacuation plans were never acted upon. The military concocted a cover story: The boom was an explosion of an ammunition magazine. . . . Surviving downwinders and their relatives say, there is a legacy of serious health consequences that have gone unacknowledged for 78 years."

Downwinders have formed consortiums to advocate for compensation. "Locals hope that the Hollywood glow may elevate their long quest to be added," the Post reports. The Manhattan Project had numerous test sites, and RECA has paid more than $2.5 billion to some downwinders and "on-site participants," but New Mexico residents have never been included. New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R) of Idaho "have pressed for years to expand RECA to include people who lived in their and other states during test periods. The Senate took up the amendment for the first time and passed it. Approval by the House remains uncertain, with some members contending the cost is too high. The program will expire next May without further action."

Fallout from the testing's massive blast "fell for days, on areas where people grew their own food, drank rainwater collected in cisterns and cooled off in irrigation canals that made the arid region fertile," the Post adds. According to a new study, "The fallout floated to 46 states, Mexico and Canada within 10 days. In 28 of 33 New Mexico counties, it estimates the accumulation of radioactive material was higher than required under the federal compensation program."

"RECA does not require claimants to establish causation, only to show that they or a relative had a qualifying disease after working or living in certain locations during specific time frames," the Post reports. "Bernice Gutierrez, who was born eight days after the test, and lived in Carrizozo, directly east of the Trinity site said she, her eldest son and daughter and 20 other family members have battled cancer." Gutierrez asked: "What has made us different than the other people given compensation?"