Some Unintended Fallout from Defense Policy : Measuring the Effect of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing on American Mortality Patterns

During the Cold War the United States detonated hundreds of atomic weapons at the Nevada Test Site. Many of these nuclear tests were conducted above ground and released tremendous amounts of radioactive pollution into the environment. This paper combines a new dataset measuring annual county level fallout patterns for the continental U.S. with vital statistics records. This paper finds that fallout from nuclear testing led to persistent and substantial increases in overall mortality for large portions of the country. The cumulative death toll attributable to nuclear testing is seven to fourteen times larger than previous estimates. JEL Codes: I10; N32; Q50 ∗Meyers, Keith. 1000 E Water Street #5, Tucson, AZ 85719; Economics Dept. Fax: 520.621. 8450, Phone: 937-570-0782; Email: meyersk@email.arizona. edu. Manuscript word count: 8,440. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number SES 1658749. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Thanks to Price Fishback, Derek Lemoine, Ashley Langer, Joesph Ferrie, Jessamyn Schaller, Gary Solon, and Cihan Artunc for feedback, data and support. Additional thanks to Andre Bouville, Steven Simon and the National Cancer Institute for their help providing fallout deposition records. 1 Pollution is often the byproduct of human activity and imposes significant costs upon the public. In many settings, the government attempts to address the external costs associated with polluting activities, but there are cases where government policy is the direct cause of harmful pollution. During the Cold War the United States detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons just northwest of Las Vegas at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Prior to 1963 many of these tests were conducted above ground and released tremendous quantities of radioactive material into the environment. When a bomb was detonated, it would vaporize and irradiate thousands of tons of material. The mushroom cloud would send much of this debris high into the atmosphere where high altitude winds would carry this pollution hundreds to thousands of miles from the test site. One estimate places the total atmospheric release of radioactive material from the NTS as over 12 Billion Curies for the years 1951 to 1963. In comparison, Chernobyl released an estimated 81 Million Curies of radioactive material (LeBaron, 1998). These nuclear tests exposed millions of Americans to harmful radioactive material and many people are still living with the consequences of this pollution today. This paper measures the effect of domestic atmospheric nuclear testing on the crude death rate for the entire continental United States. I present evidence that nuclear testing had broad and adverse effects on human capital in the extreme. The current medical and scientific literature studying the health effects of nuclear testing has focused primarily upon small samples of populations who lived in the regions surrounding the Nevada Test Site.1 These studies examine the health effects of fallout exposure in downwind populations and then extrapolate out the potential health consequences for the nation from these results. Simon and Bouville (2015) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) note that there is great uncertainly underlying these estimates. They estimate that fallout from domestic nuclear testing caused 49,000 thyroid The region surrounding the Nevada Test Site is termed Downwind in the literature and this area consists of the few counties in AZ, NV, and UT surrounding the test sight.