On August 6, 1945, a stone-faced President Harry Truman appeared on television and told Americans about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
The attack on Hiroshima marked the first time nuclear power was used in war, but the atomic bomb was actually tested a month earlier in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico.
At least hundreds of New Mexicans were harmed by the test’s fallout. Radiation creeped into the grass their cows grazed, on the food they ate, and the water they drank.
A program compensating victims of government-caused nuclear contamination has been in place since 1990, but it never included downwinders in New Mexico, the site of the very first nuclear test.
This week, the Senate voted to broaden the bi-partisan legislation that could compensate people who have suffered health consequences of radiation testing. Now, the bill will go to a House vote.
Generations after the Trinity Nuclear Test, will downwinders in New Mexico finally get compensation?
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(Image credit: VALERIE MACON)
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