Word: cancerous
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...there is agreement that radiation doses of more than 50 rems, a measure of the effect of radiation on the body, can sicken and even kill. It may do so by changing the chemical makeup of cells. A large enough dose can cause genetic defects and lead to cancer. Massive exposure in a brief period can result in radiation sickness and death within a short time...
...wastes piling up at the INEL site might affect nearby residents. "I don't think they're ever going to be honest." Boise State University Professor Michael Blain, who has studied the health impact of the Idaho repository on residents of Clark County near the site, contends that cancer deaths and breast malignancies there have run about twice the normal rate...
...revelations left local residents badly shaken. Some refer to one stretch near Hanford as "death mile," where they claim to have counted an unusually high number of cancer deaths. Others point to their "downwinder" neck scars as evidence of thyroid operations that they blame on radioactive-iodine releases from the weapons plant. Robert Perkes, a farmer near Mesa, his wife and three of his daughters all take medication for underactive thyroid glands. "They didn't tell us the things that were going on," Perkes complains. "They were letting it fall all over us. They used us as guinea pigs...
...Bailie, who was born near Hanford in 1947 and is running for the Washington State legislature, feels the same bitterness. Bailie's father had surgery for colon cancer at 39, his mother had skin cancer, his two sisters have had their lower colons removed. "I have a big hole in my chest, and I'm sterile, and I have only 90% of my lung capacity," he says. Bailie lays his family's misfortunes, rightly or wrongly, on Hanford's doorstep. "Their business is to make bombs," he says. "Mine is to farm. I don't care what they do there...
...only was the facility fabricating uranium rods for nuclear-reactor fuel cores and components for warheads, but one of its even scarier outputs was radioactive pollution. Marvin Clawson, 59, who lives near the plant, blames its operators for the fact that his wife Doris has had surgery for cancer three times and her mother, Amy Butterfield, 86, six times. Declares Clawson: "We've been deceived and lied to." Adds Mrs. Clawson: "We ask for the truth -- and we know damned well we're not going...