By Timothy J. Jorgensen, Georgetown University

In 1946, French fashion designer Jacques Heim released a woman’s swimsuit he called the “Atome” (French for “atom”) – a name selected to suggest its design would be as shocking to people that summer as the atomic bombings of Japan had been the summer before.

Not to be outdone, competitor Louis Réard raised the stakes, quickly releasing an even more skimpy swimsuit. The Vatican found Réard’s swimsuit more than shocking, declaring it to actually be “sinful.” So what did Réard consider an appropriate name for his creation? He called it the “Bikini” – a name meant to shock people even more than “Atome.” But why was this name so shocking?

In the summer of 1946, “Bikini” was all over the news. It’s the name of a small atoll – a circular group of coral islands – within the remote mid-Pacific island chain called the Marshall Islands. The United States had assumed control of the former Japanese territory after the end of World War II, just a few months earlier.

The United States soon came up with some very big plans for the little atoll of Bikini. After forcing the 167 residents to relocate to another atoll, they started to prepare Bikini as an atomic bomb test site. Two test bombings scheduled for that summer were intended to be very visible demonstrations of the United States’ newly acquired nuclear might. Media coverage of the happenings at Bikini was extensive, and public interest ran very high. Who could have foreseen that even now – 70 years later – the Marshall Islanders would still be suffering the aftershocks from the nuclear bomb testing on Bikini Atoll?

The big plan for tiny Bikini

These two sequential tests were intended to allow comparison of air-detonated versus underwater-detonated atomic bombs in terms of destructive power to warships. The very future of naval warfare in the advent of the atomic bomb was in the balance. Many assumed the tests would clearly show thatnaval ships were now obsolete, and that air forces represented the future of global warfare.

But when June 30 arrived, the airdrop bombing didn’t go as planned. The bomber missed his target by more than a third of a mile, so the bomb caused much less ship damage than anticipated.

The subsequent underwater bomb detonation didn’t go so well either. It unexpectedly produced a spray of highly radioactive water that extensively contaminated everything it landed on. Naval inspectors couldn’t even return to the area to assess ship damage because of the threat of deadly radiation doses from the bomb’s “fallout” – the radioactivity produced by the explosion. All future bomb testing was canceled until the military could evaluate what had gone wrong and come up with another testing strategy.

And even more bombings to follow

The United States did not, however, abandon little Bikini. It had even bigger plans with bigger bombs in mind. Ultimately, there would be 23 Bikini test bombings, spread over 12 years, comparing different bomb sizes, before the United States finally moved nuclear bomb testing toother locations, leaving Bikini to recover as best it could.

The most dramatic change in the testing at Bikini occurred in 1954, when the bomb designs switched from fission to fusion mechanisms. Fission bombs – the type dropped on Japan – explode when heavy elements like uranium split apart. Fusion bombs, in contrast, explode when light atoms like deuterium join together. Fusion bombs, often called “hydrogen” or “thermonuclear” bombs, can produce much larger explosions.

The United States military learned about the power of fusion energy the hard way, when they first tested a fusion bomb on Bikini. Based on the expected size of the explosion, a swath of the Pacific Ocean the size of Wisconsin was blockaded to protect ships from entering the fallout zone.

On March 1, 1954, the bomb detonated just as planned – but still there were a couple of problems. The bomb turned out to be 1,100 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb, rather than the expected 450 times. And the prevailing westerly winds turned out to be stronger than meteorologists had predicted. The result? Widespread fallout contamination to islands hundreds of miles downwind from the test site and, consequently, high radiation exposures to the Marshall Islanders who lived on them.

Dealing with the fallout, for decades

Three days after the detonation of the bomb, radioactive dust had settled on the ground of downwind islands to depths up to half an inch. Natives from badly contaminated islands were evacuated to Kwajalein – an upwind, uncontaminated atoll that was home to a large U.S. military base – where their health status was assessed.

Residents of the Rongelap Atoll – Bikini’s downwind neighbor – received particularly high radiation doses. They had burns on their skin and depressed blood counts. Islanders from other atolls did not receive doses high enough to induce such symptoms. However, as I explain in my book “Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation,” even those who didn’t have any radiation sickness at the time received doses high enough to put them at increased cancer risk, particularly for thyroid cancers and leukemia.

A Marshall Islands resident has his body levels of radioactivity checked in a U.S. government lab. –Argonne National Laboratory, CC BY

What happened to the Marshall Islanders next is a sad story of their constant relocation from island to island, trying to avoid the radioactivity that lingered for decades. Over the years following the testing, the Marshall Islanders living on the fallout-contaminated islands ended up breathing, absorbing, drinking and eating considerable amounts of radioactivity.

In the 1960s, cancers started to appear among the islanders. For almost 50 years, the United States government studied their health and provided medical care. But the government study ended in 1998, and the islanders were then expected to find their own medical care and submit their radiation-related health bills to a Nuclear Claims Tribunal, in order to collect compensation.

Marshall Islanders still waiting for justice

By 2009, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, funded by Congress and overseen by Marshall Islands judges to pay compensation for radiation-related health and property claims, exhausted its allocated funds with US$45.8 million in personal injury claims still owed the victims. At present, about half of the valid claimants have died waiting for their compensation. Congress shows no inclination to replenish the empty fund, so it’s unlikely the remaining survivors will ever see their money.

But if the Marshall Islanders cannot get financial compensation, perhaps they can still win a moral victory. They hope to force the United States and eight other nuclear weapons states into keeping another broken promise, this one made via the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

This international agreement between 191 sovereign nations entered into force in 1970 and was renewed indefinitely in 1995. It aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and work toward disarmament.

In 2014, the Marshall Islands claimed that the nine nuclear-armed nations – China, Britain, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States – have not fulfilled their treaty obligations. The Marshall Islanders are seeking legal action in the United Nations International Court of Justice in The Hague. They’ve asked the court to require these countries to take substantive action toward nuclear disarmament. Despite the fact that India, North Korea, Israel and Pakistan are not among the 191 nations that are signatories of the treaty, the Marshall Islands’ suit still contends that these four nations “have the obligation under customary international law to pursue [disarmament] negotiations in good faith.”

The process is currently stalled due to jurisdictional squabbling. Regardless, experts in international law say the prospects for success through this David versus Goliath approach are slim.

But even if they don’t win in the courtroom, the Marshall Islands might shame these nations in the court of public opinion and draw new attention to the dire human consequences of nuclear weapons. That in itself can be counted as a small victory, for a people who have seldom been on the winning side of anything. Time will tell how this all turns out, but after 70 years since the first bomb test, the Marshall Islanders are well accustomed to waiting.

Timothy J. Jorgensen, Director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate Program and Associate Professor of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

(activistpost.com)

According to a new report, some 18 million Americans “live in communities where the water systems are in violation of the law.”

Flint apparently marked the tip of a nefarious iceberg, and lead isn’t the only contaminant polluting drinking water for millions in the United States.

“Imagine a cop sitting, watching people run stop signs, and speed at 90 miles per hour in small communities and still doing absolutely nothing about it — knowing the people who are violating the law. And doing nothing,” illustrated Erik Olsen, health program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which analyzed EPA data for the report. “That’s unfortunately what we have now.”

According to the NRDC’s scathing report, “What’s In Your Water? Flint and Beyond,” lead contamination in Flint — the subject of national outrage and scandal — is “not anomalous.”

In fact, 5,363 water systems in the U.S. in 2015 violated the federal Lead and Copper Rule — putting around 18 million people at risk of consuming those contaminants — and virtually none of those responsible faced any penalties, much less criminal charges.

“For more than a year, government officials callously downplayed or ignored Flint’s toxic water and the majority-black community’s cries for help,” the report asserts. “Federal EPA, state, and state-appointed local environmental officials belittled and refused to listen to Flint residents and their advocates.”

Startlingly, Flint was not listed among the communities with lead-tainted water despite ongoing contention, scandal, and controversy, a responsibility of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality — itself directly involved in the scandal.

In addition to an acerbic critique of the Flint water crisis — blamed partially on inadequate guidelines and regulatory rules — the NRDC study found over 1,000 community water utilities exceeded ‘actionable’ lead levels set forth by the EPA. According to the report:

These violations included failures to properly test the water for lead or conditions that could result in lead contamination, failures to report contamination to state officials or the public, and failures to treat the water appropriately to reduce corrosion.

Some 3.9 million people were subjected to the water with levels above 15 parts per billion (ppb) — at least 10 percent of homes tested — in 1,110 community supplies.

Rather alarmingly, the true extent of the contamination of water supplies in the U.S. might not be fully understood. According to the NRDC, underreporting — an issue known to the EPA — is endemic for several reasons.

Improper monitoring, “using testing methods or strategies that avoid detecting contamination,” prevents violations from being accurately recorded or reported, while incorrect documentation and simple failures in reporting violations to the EPA for its database are all common.

As in the case of Flint, these failings around the country “may hide serious health threats.” The report continues:

NRDC has documented underreporting problems in the EPA’s drinking water database for 25 years; the EPA itself admits that ‘audits and assessments have shown that violation data are substantially incomplete.

Despite the astronomical number of violations — and public at risk because of them — lack of enforcement and penalty run rampant.

[A]ccording to the EPA’s data, states and the EPA took formal enforcement action against just 11.2 percent of the over 8,000 violations that occurred in 2015 — leaving 88.8 percent free from any formal enforcement action. Formal enforcement actions were taken against less than one in five health-based violations (17.6 percent). Furthermore, penalties were sought or assessed for only a tiny fraction (3 percent) of violations.

To resolve or alleviate the issue of widespread contamination, NRDC recommends “significant investment” in water infrastructure nationwide, including the replacement of over 6 million lead service lines, replacing aging or decaying portions of distribution systems, and improvements at treatment plants.

Further recommendations include necessary clarification and updating of regulations and rules surrounding acceptable levels of various contaminants, including the go-to but oft-violated EPA Lead and Copper Rule.

While Flint marked a departure from the norm, or an outright shift in roles, with dedicated citizens and scientists committed to exposing lead contamination, the report notes, but,

We cannot expect such an unlikely set of watchdogs to emerge in the face of every lead crisis.

Indeed, NRDC cautioned, “As long as we have this culture of hiding violations and attacking staff members who do their jobs, more Flints can be expected.”