Just some perspective - lots of us baby boomers were down-winders

[hedgehog]

People think only those within a 100 miles of the atomic bomb tests were exposed, but the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York had problems more than once with x-ray film clouding before it got to the end users. Students at Rensselaer Polytechnic across the Hudson from Albany measured fallout hot spots on brick buildings.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E5D6173AF93BA25757C0A9659C8B63

We probably have a lot of extra cancers, thyroid problems and who knows what else as a result. It's hard to separate out those effects from the problems caused by exposure to petro-chemicals and heavy metals, etc.

The point is, this is bad, but it's not the End of Days.

[plumbob]

1. 250 miles downwind from Trinity. Dead thyroid.

Any questions?

[hedgehog]

2. My thyroid is halfway gone, too. But we're both still here.

[plumbob]

16. Yep, mine's completely gone. Because I have a job with decent

benefits, I could go to a specialist who diagnosed it and prescribed the supplement.

Looking back, I now realize that my mother was dead at 52 with the same symptoms. Self-employed people never have had much access to real healthcare.

[kiva]

3. Grew up in a town that used mill tailings with traces of uranium

as fill dirt in many parts of town. The joke was that girls from Grand Junction were easy to find at night, because they glowed in the dark.

Generally healthy for a 50-something...crossing fingers.

[hlthe2b]

4. Many of us were exposed from military nuke testing from late 50's early 60s

Here is the fall out map from releases originating at the Nevada test site. Point is that even with these levels of radiation, most of us were relatively unaffected. My sympathy, empathy, and concern is with the Japanese. I think we'll be fine.

[hedgehog]

9. There are a lot of people who are really hurting tonight - but for

us to be panicking is to be like the people out in the heartland who sat around watching tv on 9/11 worrying about terrorists showing up in their town.

[KittyWampus]

5. Ever hear of the "Gamma Ray Forest" on Long Island? Brookhaven opened drums of radioactive material

in the middle of the pine barrens to see what would happen.

I had NO IDEA except one day a few years ago a local high school kid did a report about it and got on the radio for his story.

[Safetykitten]

6. Somehow this explains alot.

[hlthe2b]

7. I assume you were trying to make a "funny?"

It missed...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I remember when they'd broadcast the daily strontium-90 levels on the radio.

This was back in the late '50s and early '60s when they were still doing above-ground nuclear bomb testing out west. I was just a kid when this was going on, but I remember being kind of unnerved by the strontium-90 stuff.

[hedgehog]

10. My husband remembers being told not to play in the blue snow.

[hedgehog]

11. There is a story about John Kennedy being briefed about fallout

from one of the tests. He looked out at the rain and asked if there was fallout in that rain, and was told yes.

He spent the last year of his life backing us off the nuclear precipice, and stopped the tit for tat series of nuclear bomb tests we were running in competition with the Soviet Union.

For this alone, I honor him as one of our best Presidents.

[flamingdem]

12. That impacts bone, must have led to more bone marrow cancer nt

[hedgehog]

14. My sister lost her fiancee to Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - I think

he was one of the casualties of the Cold War.

[OmahaBlueDog]

13. I was just thinking the same thing

It must have been Autumn of '76 - the Chinese were still conducting above groung tests, and we lived in Maryland. There were warnings not to let children drink milk for the next week (IIRC) because of the Strontium - 90 levels.

[Critters2]

15. I live in Radium City

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/046.html

[Skidmore]

17. True for the children in the area I grew up in.

Lots of us had thyroid problems, including myself.