"'Both my great grandfathers had cancer, my two grandmothers had cancer, my father had three different cancers, my sister has cancer,' Tina Cordova says mournfully as she flicks through an old family photo album in her living room."
January 27th is the National Day of Remembrance for America’s Downwinders in the USA. These are people who lived downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test site, and were exposed to radioactive fallout. Much of that fallout remains radioactive and is now embedded into the ecosystem.
The US government has paid a token compensation to a minuscule portion of this community through #RECA.
The Senate approved to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The amendment brings eligibility for compensation to downwinders and post-1971 uranium miners.
In the summer of 2019 I covered an event in #Shiprock where over 400 former #uranium miners or deceased miners’ families came out to testify on why expansion was needed.