Reply #51: Re: Three Mile Island (1979) & cancer deaths 25 years later

[Divernan]

I went to work in Harrisburg, PA some 20+ years after TMI, and most of the people I worked with were lifelong residents of the area. Whenever I raised the subject of what kind of radiation people had been exposed to, I seemed to trigger a forcibly cheerful, head in the sand denial, i.e, oh, no - they'd never had any kind of exposure and neither did anyone they knew. The winds magically carried all the danger off in some other direction than to wherever they lived. Or so they were told.

Fast forward 8 to 10 years later, and 5 people from my relatively small circle of co-workers died of aggressive cancers. I have worked on asbestosis and silicosis class action lawsuits, and taken death bed depositions of plaintiffs. I know that some of the deadliest cancers can take decades to evidence themselves. Maybe that cluster of deaths was a coincidence. But I really doubt that people were told the truth about their exposure to radiation at TMI. Just as the government lied about air and water quality at Ground Zero, and the Gulf of Mexico, I think the likelihood is they lied their asses off about TMI. And I know that some very good people died painful deaths.
http://www.cqs.com/enuclear.htm
Nuclear Generation Sites - New England

These are sites of nuclear power plants or other large scale producers of long-lived radioactive waste. Generally speaking, most or all of them have had radiation leaks, and the areas around the plants have been contaminated with strontium-90, cesium-137, and other radioactive isotopes. Before the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear accident in 1979, the federal government performed regular strontium-90 testing of milk from cows in the areas around nuclear facilities. This testing yielded a consistent pattern of increased strontium-90, when compared with milk from areas without nuclear facilities. That testing was abruptly stopped after the TMI accident, with no explanation. (Note that dairy cattle from the area around TMI supply milk to one of the world's largest chocolate manufacturers - Hershey Foods).