At MSNBC - showed up as a link on my MSN Messenger screen:

15,000 deaths to nuclear tests?

Quoting in part:

Details from a progress report on fallout from nuclear weapons tests — including a rough estimate tying them to 15,000 cancer deaths in the United States — have fueled the debate over what, if anything, the U.S. government should do. Some health experts emphasized that the relative risk of cancer from fallout is low. Other activists said that regardless of how many or how few the surviving cancer victims are, they should be helped.



The estimates on radiation dispersal were based on computer models of variables like weather patterns and population trends.

The progress report makes clear that the study is not meant to be a conclusive finding but a preliminary look at the feasibility of in-depth research.

Some health experts emphasized that the study should be viewed in terms of other risks to society.

“This sort of numerical reporting should be further quantified by comparing the calculated 15,000 caused deaths to the mortality figures for these diseases over the last 50 years,” said Rob Gunter, a health physicist with CHP Consultants. “Once this is done, readers will have a basis upon which to judge the relative risk from fallout, i.e. were they more likely to have been struck by lightning.”

Others have made the point that it could be argued that U.S. nuclear weapons testing saved lives by serving as a deterrent to the Soviet Union.



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Yes, it could be argued... weakly, and with loud sardonic laughter directed at anyone lame enough to take that stand forty years after the successful negotiation of the Test Ban Treaty - undertaken during what may have been the height of nuclear saber-rattling, when the neologism "brinksmanship" was first coined. [Rhetorical Question: if it wasn't so damned dangerous, why was the treaty so easy to reach?]

I was born in 1951; I remember from my childhood in those wonderful bygone days of the nuclear umbrella and Atoms for Peace, occasional health warnings about Strontium 90 in the milk supply - not merely commercial cows' milk, but mothers' breast milk...

I have no doubt that the long-term effects of fallout accumulation have been both underestimated and deliberately underplayed. Radiation effects (direct as well as secondary) have been controversial since the first test at Los Alamos. The largest part of that problem has been, and thankfully continues to be, a paucity of data sources. In the long run, we are better off lacking examples from which to learn.

I also agree that the results of the study quoted in this article need to be integrated with other cancer risk figures. I think (if money could be made available) a physical study of background radiation levels and a geochemical search for tell-tale isotopes ought to be done, too...

Meanwhile, I'm glad to see that the issue itself has not gone the way of Conelrad, fallout shelter signs on public buildings, and duck-and-cover drills in the schools.

Fox