By Laura Italiano and Kerry Murtha
Navy sailor Lindsay Cooper knew something was wrong when billows of metallic-tasting snow began drifting over USS Ronald Reagan.
“I was standing on the flight deck, and we felt this warm gust of air, and, suddenly, it was snowing,” Cooper recalled of the day in March 2011 when she and scores of crewmates watched a sudden storm blow toward them from the tsunami-torn coast of Fukushima, Japan.
The tall 24-year-old with a winning smile didn’t know it then, but the snow was caused by the freezing Pacific air mixing with a plume of radioactive steam from the city’s shattered nuclear reactor.
Now, nearly three years after their deployment on a humanitarian mission to Japan’s ravaged coast, Cooper and scores of her fellow crew members on the aircraft carrier and a half-dozen other support ships are battling cancers, thyroid disease, uterine bleeding and other ailments.
“We joked about it: ‘Hey, it’s radioactive snow!’ ” Cooper recalled. “I took pictures and video.”
But now “my thyroid is so out of whack that I can lose 60 to 70 pounds in one month and then gain it back the next,” said Cooper, fighting tears. “My menstrual cycle lasts for six months at a time, and I cannot get pregnant. It’s ruined me.”
The fallout of those four days spent off the Fukushima coast has been tragic to many of the 5,000 sailors who were there.
At least 70 have been stricken with some form of radiation sickness, and of those, “at least half . . . are suffering from some form of cancer,” their lawyer, Paul Garner, told The Post Saturday.
“We’re seeing leukemia, testicular cancer and unremitting gynecological bleeding requiring transfusions and other intervention,” said Garner, who is representing 51 crew members suing the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Daiichi energy plant.
Read the rest here.
Not at all. http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686
ReplyDeleteAnd frankly if they are suing, the US government seems to be better target as they seemed to have sent 5000 sailors in a dangerous area with any gear or even idea of what to actually do once they got there.
Let them name their commander in chief.
DeleteThat's what happens when the Navy's mission changes from a force of "defense" to a force for "good"..
ReplyDelete.
Stupid but sad.
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Sue the Politician that ordered them there.
I talked about this today with my family after church. Just giving the basic outline- they were on a "humanitarian" mission, got sick and are dying- brought the conversation to a halt. They were all appalled and disgusted. My cousin said "why aren't they suing the US Government for putting them in danger?" and I just sat silently while they talked about how it was criminal that their own government didn't warn them.
ReplyDeleteJust slowly introducing libertarian concepts over time works.
I feel for the people on that ship. I feel for their families. I hope they sue the USGOV for a billion dollars.
Where are those nuclear scientists and engineers now? The ones who criticized this blog for showing concern when Fukushima was in meltdown? Are they ready to admit they were wrong?
ReplyDeleteI remember just a month or so after Fukushima my wife told me a friend of hers had a son stationed on a aircraft carrier just a few miles offshore from Fukushima. My first thought back then was"These guys are in trouble." Sad.
ReplyDelete