I urge you to support this effort by Nuclear Information & Resource Service (www.nirs.org), which provides solid information and advocacy to protect the world from nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
I received their e-mail on September 23, 2020. It needs urgent action to protect people who were “downwind” from nuclear weapons testing and are suffering medically from that. Here is most of their message:
The clock is ticking: If the US House Judiciary Committee doesn’t hold a hearing now and a vote on the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019, the people downwind of the very first US nuclear test will probably never get compensation. Take action now.
Those communities are still living with the fallout from Trinity, the first atomic bomb test, and over 200 similar nuclear weapons tests—and they have never been recognized or compensated for their decades of pain and suffering. Many uranium workers have also been shut out.
In 1990, Congress passed a law meant to compensate victims of atomic bomb testing, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough and will expire in 2022. A bill in the House of Representatives—H.R.3783, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019—would expand compensation more fully to more of those affected by the tests.
But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, hasn’t even scheduled a hearing for the bill yet. The communities that live downwind from nuclear test sites (“Downwinders”) really need our help right now.
Whether you’ve already written your member of Congress about this or not, they need to hear urgently from you now. Tell your member of Congress to ask Jerrold Nadler and Rep. Jim Jordan (the committee’s Republican ranking member) to schedule a hearing for this bill.