Reply #11: very shaky information, scientifically speaking, but here's some info:

[treepig]

Fallout likely caused 15,000 deaths

By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY


AP file
Soldiers watch a nuclear bomb test in Nevada in 1952.



WASHINGTON — Radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests across the globe probably caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in U.S. residents born after 1951, according to data from an unreleased federal study. The study, coupled with findings from previous government investigations, suggests that 20,000 non-fatal cancers — and possibly many more — also can be tied to fallout from aboveground weapons tests. The study shows that far more fallout than previously known reached the USA from nuclear tests in the former Soviet Union and on several Pacific islands used for U.S. and British exercises. It also finds that fallout from scores of U.S. trials at the Nevada Test Site spread substantial amounts of radioactivity across broad swaths of the country. When fallout from all tests, domestic and foreign, is taken together, no U.S. resident born after 1951 escaped exposure, the study says.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/28/usat-nuke.htm