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NCI to Study Effects of Trinity Test

lanl.gov via Public Domain

  The National Cancer Institute will come to New Mexico this spring to investigate how much radiation people were exposed to after the Trinity test in the southern part of the state nearly 70 years ago.

The CDC studied health hazards in the New Mexico and said state residents consumed radiation via water, milk, meat and produce grown here after July 16, 1945, when the U.S. Army detonated a nuclear weapon for the first time.

Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders’ Consortium grew up about 40 miles from where the bomb went off. “People living in those towns in and around the Trinity site were basically unknowing, unwilling, uncompensated, innocent participants in the world’s largest science project,” she said.

Cordova is a cancer survivor and says she has witnessed high rates of cancer in that region firsthand. She says people in the towns neighboring the Trinity site often don’t have health insurance and have a difficult time taking care of themselves when they get sick.

The Los Alamos Historical Society is sponsoring a tour of the Trinity testing site on April 5. 

Marisa Demarco began a career in radio at KUNM News in late 2013 and covered public health for much of her time at the station. During the pandemic, she is also the executive producer for Your NM Government and No More Normal, shows focused on the varied impacts of COVID-19 and community response, as well as racial and social justice. She joined Source New Mexico as editor-in-chief in 2021.
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