General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: America in 'huge trouble,' says nuclear expert [View all]NickB79
(19,233 posts)You can't seriously argue that hundreds of millions to a billion additional deaths have resulted from the open-air testing of nuclear weapons in the past 60 years (unless you are trying to argue that ALL cancers are the result of nuclear contamination). Such a spike in global cancer deaths would have been impossible to ignore from a statistical standpoint; it would have had cancer researchers screaming bloody murder from one end of the globe to the other. Instead, the cancer rate has shown a rather bumpy curve, with a slow increase through much of the 20th century that can be largely accredited to longer lifespans and the widespread adoption of smoking. In the past decade, the US has seen a steady DROP in the rate of cancer cases, which has now been largely attributed to a largescale decline in smoking.
Plutonium is indeed deadly when administered in the proper dosage and in the proper form, but so far the empirical evidence from decades of nuclear bomb testing has not shown that even adding pounds and pounds of it to the atmosphere in vaporized form is enough to cause widespread cancer and death from low-level exposure.