Word: ju
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Victims are not usually culprits, but Vincente Sotelo is both. Sotelo, 29, unwittingly caused what some U.S. scientists are calling the worst nuclear accident ever in North America. As a result, he and 200 other residents of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican town just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, are undergoing long-term tests for possible radiation poisoning, a condition that could result in genetic damage or cancer. Although Mexican authorities have been playing down the crisis, the people of Ciudad Juárez are the potential victims of exposure to dangerous levels of radiation...
...cancer are probably pretty good." The junkyard laborers are not the only ones at risk. The heavily contaminated truck that Sotelo had driven sat idle for two months on a narrow street in the town's crowded Bellavista neighborhood. (The vehicle was later removed to a compound near Juárez, and then to an isolated area 20 miles from the city.) "Children played on the truck," says Sotelo. "People would stand beside it, talking, and lean back...
...area of hazard grew even wider as radioactive scrap from the junkyard was transported to two Mexican foundries, one in Ciudad Juárez, the other 220 miles south in Chihuahua. According to José Antonio Rotonda of the Mexican Nuclear Commission, radioactive pellets that had adhered to scraps in the truck fell off en route to Chihuahua, and eight pockets of contamination have been discovered between the two cities...
...Ciudad Juárez foundry, the scrap was turned into table pedestals that were shipped across the border but later tracked down. U.S. officials say they are almost certain that all of the contaminated legs were returned to Mexico. In Chihuahua, the junkyard material was converted into steel reinforcing rods, and according to Mexican officials, about 500 tons of this hot steel were shipped to the U.S. The rods were used in the construction of at least two houses near Farmington, N. Mex., and the owners had to replace their radioactive foundations. An additional 3,500 tons of steel remained...
...letter, Alex wrote that Beirut, with its shanties and vivid street life, reminded him of Juárez, his border-town birthplace. The family left Juárez when Alex was five; but his mother remembers that as a baby there he would throw a fit whenever she washed his hair. That does not seem long ago to his parents. Says Jesus Muñoz: "He was still like...