By Brian Garvey
Silent Fallout, a documentary film by Hideaki Ito and narrated by Alec Baldwin, interviews victims of nuclear testing who are suffering serious diseases linked to the by-products of those tests conducted in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. They have battled cancer. They have lost family members. They have been poisoned by and lied to by their government.
The United States government said that the testing was necessary to defend US citizens from the risk of nuclear war from its geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union. Instead the effects of nuclear testing killed and injured US citizens at unbelievable rates. Because of the repeated nuclear weapons testing in the Nevada desert and in the detonation of huge thermonuclear weapons in the distant Pacific Ocean, every human being on Earth has been radiated to some degree. Interviewed victims include civilians who lived downwind from atomic testing sites in the American Southwest as well as US and UK servicemen who were stationed close to the testing sites of massive hydrogen bombs in the South Pacific. Scientists have proven repeatedly that fallout from these nuclear tests caused higher rates of cancer.
Silent Fallout also details the efforts of a small group of physicians and activists in St. Louis, MO who worked to expose the effects of nuclear testing on the US population. Led by Dr. Louise Reiss, they devised an ingenious way to detect levels of Strontium-90, a radioactive and carcinogenic element produced in the fallout from the explosion of nuclear weapons, exposure to which leads to terrible diseases like leukemia and bone cancer. They developed a campaign to ask families across the country to donate their children’s baby teeth for testing.
After receiving donations of over 300,000 baby teeth, the doctors found that levels of Strontium-90 increased rapidly from the beginning of nuclear testing in 1951 to its end in 1970. Their finding showed that the teeth from children studied in 1963 had a rate of Strontium-90 50 times higher than children’s teeth in 1950 before widespread atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons began.
In response to the doctors’ findings President John F. Kennedy reached out directly to the director of the Baby Teeth Survey. In 1963 he signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) with the Soviet Union to outlaw atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. This treaty was expanded in 1996 during the Clinton Administration to include all nuclear explosions in any environment. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) also created a framework for verification including over 300 monitoring stations around the world to ensure compliance. Since 1996 only India, Pakistan, and North Korea have carried out explosive nuclear tests, 2 tests each by India and Pakistan and 6 by North Korea.
But the success of the CTBT is not guaranteed to continue indefinitely. There is a renewed threat of future nuclear testing. Currently the US is beginning to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. The project is predicted to cost at least $2 trillion over the next 30 years. And what will that buy us? By replacing the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons the threat of nuclear annihilation will likely be extended for at least 75 years, the expected lifespan of these new weapons. The creation of new nuclear weapons also comes with the temptation to test these new technologies, with all of the established dangers that come along with them.
Philosopher, mathematician, and nuclear disarmament activist Bertrand Russell (he of the famed Russell-Einstein manifesto against nuclear weapons) once said of the dangers of nuclear war, “You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.” If we build a new generation of nuclear weapons the human race will be signing up to walk the proverbial tightrope for an additional 75 years. Silent Fallout shows us that it’s not only the risk of falling that imperils the human race. Merely continuing to walk this path endangers people around the world, increasing their risk of cancer. The success of the Baby Tooth Survey shows that committed resistance, even by small groups of dedicated activists, can work. It shows that another way is possible.