Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s

Based on interviews with all parties and on extensive archival research into the files of the Atomic Energy Commission Justice Downwind tells the astonishing story of how the United States exploded atomic weapons on its own soil between the years 1951 and 1963 as part of a postwar military nuclear testing program. Concerned with the hazards of cancer and radioactive fallout 1 100 citizens living downwind of the Nevada Testing Site in an effort to expose the Atomic Energy Commissions negigence in implementing the testing sued the government for causing injury and wrongful death. Fearful that public outcry might shut down the program AEC officials during the 1950s downplayed any suggestion that the testing program might endanger the health of persons living downwind of the testing site. By 1978 scientific studies had demonstrated associations between the epidemic of childhood leukemia and other cancers in the region and radioactive fallout. Pressing their case in the courts and in Congress the downwind plaintiffs found themselves up against a government that remains even today reluctant to admit its responsibility. This new paperback edition includes updated information on the 10th Circuit Courts recent decision to overturn Judge Jenkinss ruling against the Federal Government in the Allen v. the United States case the dilemmas associated with risky technologies and new medical studies that have discovered links between leukemia and radioactive fallout.