Iraq war leukemia rates worse than after Hiroshima bombing

[womanofthehills]

33. Also, for 40 yrs Navajo men, women & children worked in NM uranium mines

“The U.S. government contracted private mining companies to blast four million tons of ore out of Navajo land with little environmental, health, or safety oversight.

For almost 40 years, Navajo women, men, and children worked in the uranium mines. Families, livestock, and crops used contaminated well water. Families built their houses out of radioactive materials, and children swam in open-pit mines filled with radioactive rainwater.
When mining operations ceased, the companies just walked away without sealing the mines or cleaning up the radioactive waste.

Most families here have lost a loved one to uranium-related cancer.
Today, 85 percent of all Navajo people are living in uranium-contaminated homes. Lethal and aggressive subtypes of cancer like myeloma and stomach, kidney, liver, gallbladder, and cervical cancer have become all too common. Yet, there is not one oncologist on the 27,000-square-mile reservation where 175,000 Navajo people live.” https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/uranium-linked-cancer-navajo-nation

30 yrs ago, I worked at an Albuquerque Childrens ortho rehab Hospital - Carrie Tingley. We had Navajo kids flown in sometimes with no parents. Some kids would stay for months at a time at the hospital & come back regularly. I was very close with a 12 yr old Navajo girl, Beverly, who had one leg amputated from bone cancer & would stay for long periods of time. All the docs were in agreement- uranium tailings gave her bone cancer. Her mother had died earlier of cancer so she lived on the reservation with her grandmother who could not accompany her.