Idaho women share cancer, nuclear history

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — The two women share a connection so deep they could be old friends.

But the connection is not shared moments — it’s cancer, possibly caused by fallout from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

Linda Morrey and Sarah Wolfe had not met before they attended a meeting on nuclear fallout at the College of Southern Idaho this week.

But within a few hours of meeting, they listened, smiled and even cried a bit as they shared stories about their struggles.

“We were sitting down one morning and the ground shook,” Wolfe said.

“I can remember my dad saying it must have been the bomb that went off.”

Researchers have concluded that the Nevada Test Site bombs, like the one Wolfe remembers, dusted cancer-causing radioactive iodine across the land.

The fallout was believed to be concentrated in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, but a 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute found that four out of the five counties in the country that received the largest doses of radioactive iodine were in Idaho.

During the years of nuclear testing, Wolfe lived on a farm and never thought twice about eating vegetables from the garden or fresh cow’s milk.

But scientists now say the fallout landed on those crops, which were consumed by people and cows.

Radioactive iodine concentrated in cows and goats milk. As humans drank the milk, the iodine gathered in their thyroids.

Though residents in Nevada, Utah and Arizona suffering from thyroid cancer — or 19 other cancers — can get federal compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, Idaho residents are not included in the law.

“All of Idaho was exposed to some sort of fallout,” said Ester Ceja, a spokeswoman for Snake River Alliance, the nuclear watchdog group that organized the meeting.

Ceja said the group organized the event to learn individual’s stories and encourage them to attend a hearing on the matter in Boise next month.

At that hearing, representatives of the National Academy of Sciences will hear Idaho downwinders’ testimony in an effort to determine if compensation should be extended to Idaho.

Both Morrey and Wolfe said they plan to testify at the hearing, scheduled for Nov. 6 at Boise State University.