Fallout: Part V of V Local group helps downwinders as legislators push for compensation

By Linda Stelp Miner Staff Writer

Helen Graves remembers watching the sky toward Las Vegas light up after nuclear bombs were detonated at the Nevada Test Site.

"All the neighborhood children watched the colorful clouds in the skies," she said of the radioactive clouds. "It was something you didn't know anything about.

"But in the 1970s it seemed like a lot of children were getting leukemia. Betty Grounds son, Dick, was one of them," Graves, a Kingman resident, added.

"For years, on Spring Street (in Kingman) it seemed like every other house within two blocks had someone with some form of cancer."

Radiation fallout is a cancer-causing agent, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute.

Graves and her neighbors are downwinders - people who lived in areas contaminated by fallout from the Nevada Test Site for at least two years between Jan. 21, 1951, and Oct. 31, 1958, or during July 1962, the periods of atmospheric (above-ground) nuclear testing.

The Nevada Test Site is northwest of Las Vegas about 170 miles from Kingman.

Frank Porter, who was the Mohave County sheriff at the time, was invited to the Nevada test site to watch the atomic testing, Graves said.

"He was given a badge to wear while he watched the bombs being detonated and turned the badge in when he left," she recounted. "After he went home they called him to tell him the badge he had been wearing was still 'red hot.'

Porter contracted leukemia a year later and within a couple of years died of the disease, Graves said.

Nuclear testing was banned in 1963, but for Graves, 75, a lifetime Mohave County resident, the ban came too late.

Graves developed thyroid cancer, the most prevalent of the cancers that can develop after radiation exposure.

Graves survived her bout with cancer and vowed to help others with the disease.

Active in the Kingman Cancer Care Unit, a non-profit group that helps Kingman cancer patients, she is the driving force behind the organization's largest fund-raiser, the Kingman Cancer Care Unit Arts and Craft Fair.

"Without the fund-raisers we wouldn't be able to help anyone," she said. "We spend between $3,000 and $4,000 a month helping patients who live in our community. Some are friends and neighbors, people we all know."

Graves said pharmacy bills alone can run $2,000 to $3,000 a month and transportation for patients who live in outlying areas and need to come into town for radiation or chemotherapy treatments can be another $1,000.

Unit volunteers help with transportation and provide patients with wheelchairs, walkers and personal items such as wigs and prosthesis, and offer emergency assistance when needed.

Graves said there seems to be an unusually high number of cancer patients in Kingman, and although many downwinders who developed cancer as a result of exposure to radiation have died, many are still battling different forms of the disease.

It was not until 1990 when Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that the government addressed the ill effects of exposure to the radiation including leukemia, lung cancer, multiple myeloma, lymphomas and cancers of the thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gall bladder, salivary gland, urinary bladder, brain, colon, ovary and liver.

However, Mohave County - which has a higher rate of cancer deaths per 100,000 residents than Coconino, Apache or Yavapai counties - is not included in the compensation act, while these and counties much further away from the Nevada Test Site, such as Gila County, are included.

What this means is that even if downwinders from Mohave County file claims and meet all other criteria, they are not eligible to receive the $50,000 compensation offered downwinders in designated areas.

Charles Miller, who works for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program through the U. S. Department of Justice civil division, said it is not up to the Justice Department to decide which counties are covered under the act.

"It is up to legislators in each state to get the counties recognized," he said.

Joe Hart, a life-long Kingman resident and a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, said it is unfortunate that Mohave County has not had proper representation about the issue.

Hart said the thinking had been that prevailing winds blew into Mohave County from the southwest and therefore would not carry radiation fallout into the county.

"However, the rest of the time the wind comes from the northwest, bringing the radiation fallout with it," he said.

Hart said it is a shame that in the past representatives from other counties seemed to have more interest in getting downwinder legislation passed than representatives from Mohave County.

Hart, a downwinder who had skin cancer, said he is working with U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., to correct the situation.

"It is unbelievable to think that something that happened in Clark County did not affect Mohave County. If anything, it would affect (this county) the most," said Hart, who also owns radio station in Kingman.

Franks, whose 2nd District includes Mohave County, said he and his staff are collecting data to present Congress next year.

"We are well aware of the issue and we intend to get it passed," Franks said. "If someone has a bill that is germane, we can attach it. It is justified."

Franks said Mohave County's inclusion for compensation has a better chance of passage if it is attached to another bill about health or safety issues.

He said he also might try to push it through the strategic forces committee, one of three committees he serves on.

"We hope to make a justifiable case that people are affected by this," he said.

He needs to present Congress with "clear and accurate data" linking cancer victims and radiation fallout.

"We will then have a case that I believe will carry the day," he said. "I want to do the right thing for this district and for downwinders. If we do, it will cast a ray of hope to all who have suffered."

Karen Medlin, a 25-year-old first-grade teacher, has suffered.

Medlin's mother Lee Black was just 55 when she died two years ago after contracting multiple myeloma, a type of cancer that affects the plasma of white blood cells. The disease is on a list of cancers that can be caused by exposure to radiation fallout.

Medlin's uncle, Allen Prentice, was also in his early 50s when he died of lung cancer in 1996, even though he did not smoke and was otherwise healthy, she said.

Both siblings, who were born and raised in Kingman, were downwinders.

"It is unfortunate that so many people have been affected, and continue to be affected by the nuclear testing that took place not far from here," she said. "They, like me, have to live now without their loved ones."


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