April 26, 1953
If you were in Troy then you may be dead, or have had some form of cancer.
Physicists experimenting with radioactivity at RPI noticed a sudden surge in their background radiation counts. The surge was radioactive fallout from nuclear tests in Nevada that had blown across the country and were brought to earth by heavy rain.
A cloud of radioactivity came pouring down on residents in Troy and Albany soon after a 43-kiloton Atomic Bomb named Simon detonated atop a 300-foot tower in Nevada. Unfortunately, the blast and thermal waves rolled over military personnel engaged in effects testing as well as members of Congress and others as its yield exceeded their projections.
By 1953 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was regularly hosting politicians, business leaders, and reporters to witness tests. As concern over fallout increased, they also extended invitations to community leaders and select residents of downwind communities. But there was never a great amount of information provided.
Instead, the AEC disseminated carefully created images of exploding bombs in the leading magazines of the day. A way to sanitize what was happening.
As Simon drifted across 2000 miles to the East offsite radiological monitors were hastily sent to scattered locales, but the highest levels of radioactivity were detected 36 hours later in Albany and Troy due to a heavy rain that day. Samples of tap water in Albany illustrated a level of radiation activity 2,630 higher than normal.
An aircraft flying at 500 feet above the terrain on May 1, 1953 surveyed the Troy area. The reports of the Simon fallout were classified Secret. It seems quite probable that the extent of the contamination was considerable and also likely that contamination levels elsewhere exceeded those found in Troy.
Dr. Ralph Lapp, one of the first scientists concerned with the hazards of peacetime nuclear testing, exposed this heavy local fallout.
Examinations of the childhood leukemia pattern here showed that leukemia doubled over a period of some eight years after the fallout and then decreased. “It was the first time a documented case in which fallout appeared to produce serious effects at a rate consistent with what was expected from the study of children exposed to prenatal X-rays.”
Lapp had predicted that the level of iodine-131 contamination in milk could have exposed drinkers under 2 receiving a dose of about 30 rad. A normal exposure daily is 600 millirems or 0.6 rad.
The major health risks associated with exposure to iodine-131 (I-131) involve the thyroid gland, which
concentrates this radionuclide.
According to one study, “Further examination of the leukemia rate for the entire State of New York revealed a pattern of increase and decrease following the sequence of individual test series in Nevada between 1951 and 1958, with a characteristic time delay of about five years after each detonation.
“The rise and fall were particularly marked in the age group from five to fourteen years, the group most indicative of radiation-produced cases.”
The evidence also showed after the fallout a halt in the normal decline of the rate of stillbirths.
“For the previous fifteen years, from 1935 to 1950, the stillbirth rate had shown a regular and progressive decline. Within a year after testing began in Nevada in 1951, the rate began to deviate upward. Between 1957 and 1963 the fetal death rate, instead of steadily declining as it had from 1935 to 1950, leveled off completely at around twenty-three per thousand live births.
“In 1964, the fetal death rate rose to 27.3 per thousand, the first such leap since records had been kept in New York State. In 1965 and 1966, it declined slightly, as a gradual reduction of fallout in milk and food took place throughout the US. In contrast to New York, the fetal death rate for California — upwind of the Nevada test site, and therefore not affected by it — continued its steady decline, in line with the 1935-1950 figures from which New York so sharply deviated.
“Still, the rate of decrease began to slow down in California also — two to three years after the onset of hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific in 1954.”
It soon became common knowledge by Troy moms that when there was an A-Bomb testing grab their kids in the playground and bring them home. My mother did it. Later in 1957 the Troy Adult Education Program gave classes on how to survive an H-Bombs. I remember the “Duck and Cover” drills of us hiding under the desk.
Today we all realize how stupid that was. It wasn’t going to save us, but I figured it was a way for the government to count the piles of ashes under desks to get a good death count.
Ah, the good old days when we believed everything the government told us!