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?"

The FCC is supposed to prevent environmental harm from communications technology but often ignores its mandate

Ilustration by Klaus Kremmerz, ProPublica

Beyond regulating television and radio communications, The Federal Communications Commission has an often forgotten mandate, "to ensure that technology doesn't damage the environment," reports Peter Elkind of ProPublica. "When companies want to add new cell phone towers, build on protected land or launch satellites, the agency typically does little or nothing. . . . The agency's ecological role originated in the National Environmental Policy Act. The law requires federal agencies to assess whether projects they've authorized will cause harm."

The FCC "allows companies to decide for themselves whether their projects require environmental study. . . . . And if the companies break the rules, they're expected to report their own transgression. Few do." Elkind writes. The lax approach has had harmful and potentially disastrous outcomes. For instance, "A 120-foot cellphone tower intended for use by AT&T and T-Mobile [was built]. . . .The site, as the tower company later acknowledged, destroyed some of the nesting habitat of the Puerto Rican nightjar, a tiny endangered songbird. . . . Fewer than 2,000 are believed to be alive today. . . . In Silicon Valley, a space startup pursued plans to equip thousands of satellites to use mercury fuel in orbit."

The FCC has real-time effects on humans and wildlife, Elkind writes: "As it presides over a nationwide buildout for 5G service, which will require 800,000 new 'small cell' transmitters, those perched on street poles and rooftops, often near schools, apartments and homes. But even with this massive effort underway, as ProPublica previously reported, the FCC has refused to revise its radiation-exposure limits, which date back to the era of flip phones. In addition, the agency has cut back on the environmental reviews that it requires while also restricting local governments' control over wireless sites."

In areas where infrastructure projects have started or are planned, residents have pushed back, but considering the FCC's history, it's an uphill battle, Elkind reports: "Hundreds of conflicts have erupted across the country, triggered by citizens fearing risks to their health from wireless radiation, harm to their property values, damage to the environment and the destruction of treasured views. . . . Environmentalists are routinely infuriated by the FCC's stance. . . . In 2014, the FCC hired its first full-time environmental lawyer, Erica Rosenberg. Her mission was an afterthought at the agency." She told Elkind, "Everybody was set on deployment. These environmental laws just got in the way. . . . It was just the culture of the place. Nobody cared." She quit in 2021.

Was oil and gas radioactive waste dumped in Ky.? Officials say state lacks budget for new regulations

Environmental advocates fear that Kentucky has been a dumping ground for radioactive waste from an oil and natural gas boom in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, James Bruggers reports for The Courier-Journal of Louisville: "Kentucky does not require any radiation screening at landfills. Landfill operators count on haulers to honestly describe the wastes they bring for disposal." But representatives at a east-central Kentucky landfilly "say they were duped and not told that sludge from West Virginia was dangerously radioactive, as state officials believe." Illegal dumping was believed to have occurred in two Eastern Kentucky counties.

Kentucky's leading environmental lawyer, Tom FitzGerald, told Bruggers that a working group charged with making recommendations to modernize state oversight of oil and gas drilling needs to resume its deliberations.

Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Charles Snavely, a former coal company executive recently appointed by newly elected Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, "said that group will begin work again and is being charged with evaluating potential remedies for harmful substances," Bruggers reports. Snavely told him, “If our current rules and procedures require modification, we’ll make those modifications.” Snavely previously "expressed skepticism about any new oil and gas drilling regulations, noting the impact of pending budget cuts." He told the advsory Environmental Quality Commission, "My question is where is the money going to come from to do the regulating?" Bevin has called for a 9 percent budget cut to shore up state pensions.

Study finds radioactive contaminants in coal ash in Illinois, Appalachian and Powder River basins

A study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Kentucky published in Environmental Science & Technology found the presence of radioactive contaminants in coal ash in the Illinois, Appalachian and Powder River basins, reports Duke. "The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil and up to 10 times higher than in the parent coal itself because of the way combustion concentrates radioactivity." The study is the first to compare radioactivity in coal and coal ash, said researchers.

Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said, “Until now, metals and contaminants such as selenium and arsenic have been the major known contaminants of concern in coal ash. This study raises the possibility we should also be looking for radioactive elements, such as radium isotopes and lead-210, and including them in our monitoring efforts.” He said coal ash disposal sites are not currently monitored for radioactivity.

The Illinois basin exhibited the most levels of radioactivity, followed by the Appalachian and then the Powder River, which is in Wyoming and Montana, reports Duke. "The tests also showed that the ratio of radium to uranium in the parent coal was consistent with the ratio found in its residual coal ash." (Read more)

Scientists say water systems probably can't filter fracking chemicals; pattern of illness found

A group of scientists has determined that municipal water systems cannot filter chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of natural-gas wells, or "fracking." In a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the scientists said "It will be practically impossible" for drinking-water systems to protect against the chemicals, which include benzene, toxic metals, radioactive materials and surfactants and organic biocides.

Brian Nearing of the Albany Times Union reports that 59 experts from 18 states and seven other countries signed the letter. The state has proposed to ban fracking near watersheds that provide drinking water to New York City and Syracuse, but other watersheds would not have such protection. Cornell University ecology professor and letter signer Robert Howarth told Nearing that if the risk for watersheds providing water to New York City was too high, so was the risk for any watershed in the state. The NYC watershed, in the Catskill Mountains, is especially pristine.

In the wake of the letter's release, Abraham Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz of ProPublica completed a review of government environmental reports, private lawsuits and interviews with many residents, physicians and toxicologists in four big gas-drilling states and found that cases of respiratory infections, headaches, neurological impairment, nausea and skin rashes, all believed to be caused by some aspect of fracking, have been occuring for the last decade in Colorado and Wyoming. Similar cases are just beginning to pop up in Pennsylvania, where drilling of the Marcellus Shale has recently increased. However, Lustgarten and Kusnetz write that the extent and cause of the problems is unknown, as neither states nor the federal government have tracked reports of such illnesses or investigated how drilling can affect human health. They also looked at Texas. (Read more)

Geologists, environmentalists disagree on proposal to mine big uranium deposit in Virginia

A proposal for uranium mining in rural Virginia is being revived with support from the Virginia and West Virginia members of the American Institute of Professional Geologists. Virginia Uranium is hoping to mine Coles Hill, the 119-million-pound deposit "about 100 miles east of Pendleton County, W. Va," The Associated Press reports.

The president of the Virginias section of AIPG, Micale Lawless, told AP, "Members overwhelmingly support the Virgina mining as a way to diversify the nation's energy policy and ease reliance on foreign energy." (Read more)

But uranium mining is opposed by some environmental groups, like Keep the Ban, which distributed maps showing other uranium deposits that could be tapped if the ban is lifted. "It's a bigger can of worms than I think people recognize," the group's Nathan Loft told Liz Essley of The Washington Examiner.

Patrick Wales, the company's project manager, told Essley, "We've got 119 million pounds of uranium we can't do anything with, so that's enough for us. I think it's unfortunate that we have these environmental organizations that are pursuing their agenda that is not based on facts and not based on science." (Read more)

Is your hospital a hotspot for doubling up on CT scans? NYT interactive map makes it easy to see

The hotter the color on this map, the more likely the local hospital is to be doubling up on computerized tomography (CT) scans, part of a phenomenon costing Medicare an extra $25 million a year and exposing patients to radiation without it being medically necessary, according to an analysis of data by The New York Times. Typically, one scan will use iodine to check blood flow and one will not. "Radiologists say one scan or the other is needed depending on the patient’s condition, but rarely both," Walt Bogdanich and Jo Craven McGinty report.

Nationally, 5.4 percent of outpatients on Medicare got two scans in one day during 2008. At major teaching hospitals the rate was usually less than 1 percent, but at more than 200 hospitals the average was more than 30 percent. Those over 25 percent are marked by red dots on the map, those between 15 and 25 percent with yellow dots, and those below 15 percent with blue. Data for 2009, which are very similar, are to be released next month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Click on map to get interactive version with data for individual hospitals)

"Double scans expose patients to extra radiation while heaping millions of dollars in extra costs on an already overburdened Medicare program," the Times points out. "A single CT scan of the chest is equal to about 350 standard chest X-rays, so two scans are twice that amount. . . . Officials at hospitals with high scan rates said radiologists ordered the extra chest scan figuring that more information is better. In rare instances, the two scans might help a doctor distinguish between tangled blood vessels and a tumor," according to Dr. Michael J. Pentecost, a radiologist who reviews claims for CT scans.

The phenomenon appears more prevalent at rural hospitals. "Dr. Harold Smitson, who helps to oversee radiology at two East Texas Medical Center hospitals with high double-scan rates, told the Times, “These are small and rural hospitals, without a complete range of medical services, which are mandated to evaluate patients quickly and efficiently to determine the need for transfer to a higher level of care. ... “Combining these tests expedites the diagnosis and the care to the patient.” (Read more)

East Texas was one of the rural hotspots; ETMC Fairfield's double-scan rate was 88 percent, one of the highest in the nation. Another rural hotspot was in Tennessee and adjoining areas of Virginia and Kentucky. The highest in the region was Livingston Regional Hospital, at 87 percent.