Facing a wave of calls from concerned citizens, officials in Idaho, Montana and other affected states scrambled to review local cancer registries. But like the national cancer data, the records offer no evidence of the fallout's health effect. This has just raised my questioning of why people here are getting sick. People 'should have been told Today's Senate hearing reflects the public angst sparked by the fallout study. In addition to considering options for federal action, such as follow-up studies and subsidized medical checkups for potential fallout victims, lawmakers also will ask why the study, ordered by Congress in 1982, took so long.
Many critics note that researchers had data several years ago that identified at-risk populations.
But it wasn't released. People who were at risk should have been told. The fallout study Ands that everyone in the country got at least some iodine 131 exposure from the 100 above-ground atomic bomb tests the government staged from 1951 to 1962. Most high-dose counties were in Rocky Mountain states and the Farm Belt, but people got significant doses as far away as the East Coast. The iodine 131 got to humans mainly via milk from cows and goats that ate tainted greenery.