Description
For more than four decades beginning in 1944, the Hanford nuclear weapons facility in southeastern Washington State secretly blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest with low-dose ionizing radiation, the byproduct of plutonium production. For those who lived in the vicinity, many of them families of Hanford workers, the consequences soon became apparent as rates of illness and death steadily climbed - despite repeated assurances from the Atomic Energy Commission that the facility posed no threat. Trisha T. Pritikin, who has battled a lifetime of debilitating illness to become a lawyer and advocate for her fellow 'downwinders,' tells the devastating story of those who were harmed in Hanford's wake and, seeking answers and justice, were subjected to yet more suffering.
At the center of The Hanford Plaintiffs are the oral histories of twenty-four people who joined In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation, the class-action suit that sought recognition of, and recompense for, the grievous injury knowingly caused by Hanford. Radioactive contamination of American communities was not uncommon during the wartime Manhattan Project, nor during the Cold War nuclear buildup that followed. Pritikin interweaves the stories of people poisoned by Hanford with a parallel account of civilians downwind of the Nevada atomic test site, who suffer from identical radiogenic diseases. Against the heartrending details of personal illness and loss and, ultimately, persistence in the face of a legal system that protects the government on all fronts and at all costs, The Hanford Plaintiffs draws a damning picture of the failure of the US Congress and the Judiciary to defend the American public and to adequately redress a catastrophic wrong. Documenting the legal, medical, and human cost of one community's struggle for justice, this book conveys in clear and urgent terms the damage done to ordinary Americans in the name of business, progress, and patriotism.
About the Author
Trisha T. Pritikin is a lawyer and president of the Board of Directors of Consequences of Radiation Exposure (CORE) Museum and Archives, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase public awareness of the human toll of exposure to ionizing radiation. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Reviews
The discussion of health effects from exposure to radioactive contaminants tends to focus on acute effects--cancers and death tolls. Pritikin shows in heart-breaking detail the stockpile of health problems from exposure to radioactivity and how painfully these chronic health problems dismantle lives. A passionate and carefully researched account of the failed fight for atomic justice." - Kate Brown, author of Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters and Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster
"Given the current political climate--North Korea's nuclear threat, the current US administration's provocation of North Korea, the potential unraveling of Iran's nuclear deal, and the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan--Trisha Pritikin's The Hanford Plaintiffs is a timely addition to literature that has addressed the health harm caused by radiation exposure downwind of weapons' production and testing sites as well as from the use of nuclear weapons in warfare; from uranium mining, milling, or transport; from nuclear power plant accidents; and from leaking nuclear waste. Pritikin's work stands out, not only in its description of the plight of the people--called downwinders--in and around the Hanford site but also in its disclosure of the callous disregard of the US government for the innocent citizens it was supposed to protect." - Yuki Miyamoto, PhD, associate professor of religious studies, DePaul University, and author of Beyond the Mushroom Cloud
"The Hanford Plaintiffs is an urgent book for our times. We think we know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the one hand, and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima on the other. We might imagine that these places stand for events safely consigned to the past or that the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power are separate affairs. Now we are encountering, once again, cavalier talk about the use of nuclear weapons. The Hanford Plaintiffs opens our eyes to the reality of how the atomic age has played long-term, continuing havoc with whole communities, the environment, and democratic principles in the United States and throughout the world by presenting the life stories of the downwinders of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced. Pritikin lays out her material methodically, providing the scientific, medical, legal, and historical components important to readers' full understanding." - Norma Field, PhD, professor emerita, University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and author of In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End
"The Hanford Plaintiffs is an extraordinary and unique expose of the human results of deliberate releases of huge quantities of radioactive isotopes from the Hanford reactors and nuclear complex over many years of operation." - Helen Caldicott, MD
Book Information
ISBN 9780700629046
Author Trisha T. Pritikin
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint University Press of Kansas
Publisher University Press of Kansas
Weight(grams) 555g
At the center of The Hanford Plaintiffs are the oral histories of twenty-four people who joined In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation, the class-action suit that sought recognition of, and recompense for, the grievous injury knowingly caused by Hanford. Radioactive contamination of American communities was not uncommon during the wartime Manhattan Project, nor during the Cold War nuclear buildup that followed. Pritikin interweaves the stories of people poisoned by Hanford with a parallel account of civilians downwind of the Nevada atomic test site, who suffer from identical radiogenic diseases. Against the heartrending details of personal illness and loss and, ultimately, persistence in the face of a legal system that protects the government on all fronts and at all costs, The Hanford Plaintiffs draws a damning picture of the failure of the US Congress and the Judiciary to defend the American public and to adequately redress a catastrophic wrong. Documenting the legal, medical, and human cost of one community's struggle for justice, this book conveys in clear and urgent terms the damage done to ordinary Americans in the name of business, progress, and patriotism.
About the Author
Trisha T. Pritikin is a lawyer and president of the Board of Directors of Consequences of Radiation Exposure (CORE) Museum and Archives, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase public awareness of the human toll of exposure to ionizing radiation. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Reviews
The discussion of health effects from exposure to radioactive contaminants tends to focus on acute effects--cancers and death tolls. Pritikin shows in heart-breaking detail the stockpile of health problems from exposure to radioactivity and how painfully these chronic health problems dismantle lives. A passionate and carefully researched account of the failed fight for atomic justice." - Kate Brown, author of Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters and Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster
"Given the current political climate--North Korea's nuclear threat, the current US administration's provocation of North Korea, the potential unraveling of Iran's nuclear deal, and the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan--Trisha Pritikin's The Hanford Plaintiffs is a timely addition to literature that has addressed the health harm caused by radiation exposure downwind of weapons' production and testing sites as well as from the use of nuclear weapons in warfare; from uranium mining, milling, or transport; from nuclear power plant accidents; and from leaking nuclear waste. Pritikin's work stands out, not only in its description of the plight of the people--called downwinders--in and around the Hanford site but also in its disclosure of the callous disregard of the US government for the innocent citizens it was supposed to protect." - Yuki Miyamoto, PhD, associate professor of religious studies, DePaul University, and author of Beyond the Mushroom Cloud
"The Hanford Plaintiffs is an urgent book for our times. We think we know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the one hand, and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima on the other. We might imagine that these places stand for events safely consigned to the past or that the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power are separate affairs. Now we are encountering, once again, cavalier talk about the use of nuclear weapons. The Hanford Plaintiffs opens our eyes to the reality of how the atomic age has played long-term, continuing havoc with whole communities, the environment, and democratic principles in the United States and throughout the world by presenting the life stories of the downwinders of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced. Pritikin lays out her material methodically, providing the scientific, medical, legal, and historical components important to readers' full understanding." - Norma Field, PhD, professor emerita, University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and author of In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End
"The Hanford Plaintiffs is an extraordinary and unique expose of the human results of deliberate releases of huge quantities of radioactive isotopes from the Hanford reactors and nuclear complex over many years of operation." - Helen Caldicott, MD
Book Information
ISBN 9780700629046
Author Trisha T. Pritikin
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint University Press of Kansas
Publisher University Press of Kansas
Weight(grams) 555g
