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From the paper's conclusion: "The empirical results of this paper suggest that nuclear testing contributed to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the
by michaelbuckbee 9y ago
From the paper's conclusion:
"The empirical results of this paper suggest that nuclear testing contributed to hundreds
of thousands of premature deaths in the United States between 1951 and 1972. The social
costs of these deaths range between $473 billion to over $6.1 trillion dollars in 2016$. These
losses dwarf the $2 billion in payments the Federal Government has made to domestic victims
of nuclear testing through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and are substantial
relative to the financial cost of the United States’ nuclear weapons program. It is likely that
the values of both the testing moratorium enacted in 1958 and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty are understated. These political compromises likely saved hundreds of thousands of
additional lives at a minimum."
- kowdermeister 9y agoWow, 25,804 claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Exposure_Compensation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Exposure_Compensatio...
- downandout 9y agoThe number of claims was likely mitigated by the narrow eligibility crtieria. My father grew up in Ely, NV during this period. He wound up dying of kidney cancer, which first showed up when he was quite young (resulting in removal of a kidney) and then later returned to kill him. Kidney cancer (renal cell) was included in the fund, but only for people that worked as uranium miners. As a result, our family was denied compensation, even though his presence there was the likely cause of the cancer.
- bhouston 9y agoHhow premature? How many years lost of life?
- agumonkey 9y agolook at page 17
- pjvandehaar 9y agoThe paper doesn't explore life-years, but perhaps it would be possible to look at the distribution of ages at death?
- jacquesm 9y agoNice contrast to the VW scandal. And that is just the US. Wonder how many people will go to jail for this one.