Allowing more nuclear waste into Utah is shortsighted. Don Gale’s April 29 commentary about the southern Utah downwinders during the 1950s, many of whom died of cancer as a result of living downwind of the open air nuclear tests, reminds us of the unintended consequences of playing with radiation.
Another example in Utah is the epidemic of Navajo neuropathy, a severe birth defect eventually determined to be caused by uranium waste from mining on the reservation leaching into the groundwater.
We are assured that the depleted uranium that will be brought into the state will not endanger the population of Utah. Utahns have received these reassurances before.
I am a child of downwinders. We know what happened to the first generation. But what about the second? Or the third? No one knows. No one had studied us.
How long are we going to endanger Utahns by playing with radioactivity?
JJ Esplin, Salt Lake City