Life after nuclear fallout

BOISE – When Kathy Smith was a 39-year-old mother, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer that left her too sick to hold her two children and kept her from having any more.

“I put this in the back of my mind for years,” Smith, now 59, said Saturday, as she waited in line with nearly 300 others for a hearing on how Southern Idaho residents were affected by nuclear weapons tests in Nevada in the 1950s. “Then this all came up, and I really got mad.”

One after another, Idahoans told National Academy of Sciences officials that they never knew about the radioactive fallout that rained down on their communities, poisoning people, grass and crops, and concentrating in the fresh milk that many fed their children to ensure they’d grow up with strong teeth and bones.

“I want to apologize – I was one of the ones who sold raw milk to all the neighbor kids,” said Gary Miller, a 61-year-old Payette native who grew up on a farm. “If radiation was from the garden, then Mom canned a lot of it to feed us. If it was from the cows, then we passed it along to the neighbors.”

Six of the eight members of Miller’s family have been diagnosed with cancer, including his youngest sister, who died of thyroid cancer in 1985.

Sheri Garman told the daylong hearing in Boise State University’s Taco Bell Arena, “Like many people here today, I’m fighting terminal cancer that could have been avoided. Remember, I was exposed for the national security of the United States.”

Garman was a baby when she received an estimated 75 rads of radiation – the equivalent of 10,000 chest X-rays – on a single day in June 1952.

“I have had not one but two of those cancers” linked to radiation exposure, she said. “Simply stated, if I meet the statistics, I will die before this time next year.”

Garman’s appeal to her local state legislator and childhood friend Kathy Skippen launched the new attention that has brought hundreds of Idaho downwinders forward to tell their stories.

“Now we have a chance to prove to my daughter that our government appreciates and recognizes the sacrifice,” she said.

All four members of Idaho’s congressional delegation were in the audience, as was Gov. Dirk Kempthorne.

“People deserve to know what impact our government actions have had upon our health,” Kempthorne told the crowd.

But some were angry that Idahoans haven’t been included in a federal compensation program that makes $50,000 “compassionate payments” to residents of 21 affected counties in three states who contracted certain types of cancer. Specifically, some have been angry at Kempthorne and Sen. Larry Craig for not following through on 1997 promises to include Idahoans in the program.

“I’d like to express my disgust with the governor and Idaho’s congressional representatives,” said Jerry Harris, who was born in Emmett in 1941 and now lives in Oregon. Harris, whose wife, son and sister got cancer, said those officials should have included Idahoans in the payments and the government should “admit the wrongdoing.”

“I remember when I was young, seeing the frosty stuff on the grass, the strange clouds entering the valley,” Harris said.

That dust that fell on the area’s fields, crops and cars during the bomb tests was radioactive fallout, but no one was warned.

“Had the testing been performed by a private company, people would be in jail and lawsuits would be flying,” Harris said. “We need to tell the story so that this travesty will not be repeated.”

The hearing Saturday was added to the academy’s schedule after an outcry from Idaho downwinders, the governor and the congressional delegation. The academy is preparing a report to Congress on whether the compensation program should be expanded, but it originally scheduled hearings only in Utah and Arizona.

On Saturday, Isaf Al-Nabulsi, director of the study, told the crowd, “We are here today to listen.” She said she’d received more than 500 letters and e-mails from Idahoans about the issue.

Evan Douple, director of the academy’s Board on Radiation Effects Research, said studies show that the fallout from the Cold War-era nuclear tests “didn’t occur just in a few counties in Utah.”

“It was carried throughout the United States, and fell down or was brought down by rainfall,” he said. “We are sympathetic to your concerns. We are here to gather as much information as we can.”

The academy originally had scheduled 72 Idahoans who signed up in advance to speak, but when the schedule moved along quickly Saturday, additional speakers were added, including many who were on a waiting list.

Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, who alternately sat in the blue and orange basketball stadium chairs and stood at the side, listening intently, said, “It’s heart-wrenching. … I think it will make a big difference.”

Said Crapo, “There was fallout here. The anecdotal evidence about it is something that should have a big impact.”

Idaho Rep. Butch Otter sat in the front row, scribbling notes with a black felt-tip pen. “I took down the name of every county that had been named – there were 32 counties mentioned,” he said. “It looks to me like we need to expand the list.”

Janet Tomita said it was at the high school class reunions that Salmon residents hold every five years that Lemhi County residents started noticing oddly high rates of cancer and other diseases among their classmates. She began keeping track, and sick friends started calling and writing to her.

“Their desperation has stayed with me, and I knew in my heart that something had gone terribly wrong in Lemhi County,” Tomita told the academy officials. “How could so many be sick so soon in life, from such a small community?”

George Cox, who lost his wife to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1994, struggled, like many, with emotion as he testified. “Why suddenly did a perfectly healthy lady who didn’t smoke or drink … suddenly become ill?” he asked.

Said Christine Welch-Galvin, “The sad part of it is that every family I know in Gem County has been touched by cancer.”

Wannetta Cooke said, “Idahoans should receive the same compensation as people in other states.”

She looked over at Kempthorne and Craig, who sat in shirt-sleeves on folding chairs, and Crapo and Otter, who sat in the stands nearby.

“I hope they’re listening today,” she said. “It looks like they are.”