Deadly Deceit: Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Cover-Up

Read the one-star reviews this book has received & you'll find that many people still don't get it: The effects of low-level radiation are not evenly distributed. Sure, you worked at Hanford & didn't get cancer, but what about all the others who did? Sure, you live next door to a reactor & you're still healthy, but what about all the others who aren't? The point is, does it make sense -- for the greater good -- to have these insanely toxic, radioactive materials produced, stored, handled & subject to all the risks associated with human behavior? The answer is NO. As the nuclear industry tries to convince us again, in the name of global warming, that we should build more nuke power plants, it's time to revisit & re-learn the lessons that fueled the anti-nuke movement in the 70s. If you want any more evidence, read more about the horrible legacy of the first nuclear age -- which still claims victims & costs taxpayers huge sums of money for clean-up. Let's learn from science & from past mistakes. No more nukes. Solar is the way to go forward, with a decentralized electric power system. Of course the corporations who profit hugely from big, polluting power plants & the inefficient distribution of power over the grid system will do their best to maintain the status quo. Resist. Change has never been more essential for the human race. And this is an essential book.

I met this author, after I had breast cancer, which I got 11 months after my mother died of it. My tumor was not genetic. I was only 48 when I got it, while my mother was 68 and my grandmother never had it and lived to be 86. My mother lived on Long Island, NY which is downwind of 3 nuclear plants and notorius for breast cancer; it is one of the top 3 counties for breast cancer in the country. I had to learn why the northeast has the highest breast cancer mortality ( NIH data ) so I could try to protect myself from dying like my mother. The government's Atlas of Cancer Mortality for breast cancer map correlates with the government's nuclear map, all across the country. The author of this book, a statistician who worked for the Queen of England, and his good friend Dr. Ernest Sternglass who is a medical physicist who had appointments with Einstein, determeined that women who live within 100 miles of a nuclear plant have the greatest risk of dying of breast cancer. This is statistically proven and published. The CT Tumor Registry, the oldest and best in the country, documents that the 6 towns closest to the CT nuclear plant have the highest of 12 different cancers in CT. They also document that 14 and 15 year old girls are now getting breast cancer in CT. That never used to happen. Children in the area around the CT nuclear plant know 37 kids with cancer. There are 50 kids around the Port St. Lucie nuclear plant in FL with cancer; that is published. According to Dr. Sternglass, Strontium-90 is a radioactive nuclear emisssion that acts like calcium and goes to the bones and teeth. The daughter product is Yttrium-90 and that goes to the soft tissue, including the reproductive, lungs, pancreas and heart. A female can pass the Strontium-90 in her body to her fetus during pregnancy. This can be seen in the Baby Tooth Study, done at Radiation and Public Health Project. Nuclear plants test milk from goats for the carcinogenic nuclear emission Strontium-90, for monitoring purposes. In CT there was, untill recently, a goat farm 5 miles from the nuclear plant. Test results revealed the milk was twice the reading gotton during the peak of the Nevada nuclear bomb testing days, which occured about 50 years ago. Between the goat farm and the nuclear plant is a school. This author and Dr. Sternglass began Radiation and Public Health Project to inform the public. They have published 22 peer reviewed journal articles and are non profit. The web site is: radiation.org I am very grateful for the work they have done and I would highly recomend this book. The younger generations are facing health problems not faced by older generations. Help protect your family with the education in this book.

Although there may be room for improvement in terms of readability, the importance of the subject matter bumps this rating up to 5 stars. The nuclear industry has been able to masquerade as safe for a number of reasons. One important one is people are not affected by it uniformly. It can kill one person in their lifetime or make them sick for 40 years, while another person will feel nothing, or may pass the effects on to future generations. I have been ill with CFIDS since 1988. I was living in Santa Fe, NM, just 12 air miles from Los Alamos National Lab which has not only been targeted by the EPA for radioactive air-emissions violations but which has been blowing up depleted uranium in the open air for years. (Check back issues, The Santa Fe New Mexican, 1987-1992, also an excellent 2006 article in a Santa Fe alternative monthly) One of my friends from there is dead of suicide due to pain that wouldn't stop; another was fine herself but had a genetically damaged child that died at birth; several other semi well known artists and musicians from there had CFIDS for years. I have never done drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, have watched my diet and exercised and generally exceeded the standard American expectation for physical self-care for many years, yet now I have developed the 'controversial' Morgellons' Disease. See, when you're not suffering, it's easy to be skeptical. It's easy to brand people like me as 'weirdos'. There is no doubt in my mind that Dr. Gould & crew have hit the nail on the head.

My only complaint about the book, as with other books of its type, is its heavy dose of statistical information--which is also its strength, but makes for dull reading at times. Otherwise, it's an important addition to the current literature.In response to other reviewers...to the Washington D.C. nuclear plant worker (are there any nuclear plants in D.C.?) who claims that "Many studies have been done, and there is currently a very large body of knowledge on the subject of real (what insurance companies consider) vs perceived (what trial lawyers consider) risks." Well, since there are NO insurance companies on the planet that are willing to underwrite liability for nuclear power plants, hence the reason for the Price-Anderson Act, your comment is a bit disingenuous, at best. As for nuclear power being safe, well, even Paul O'Neill, the current Treasury Secretary and a staunch supporter of nuclear power, by his own admission considers TMI and Chernobyl to be egregious exceptions to the nuclear industry's safety records. Over 15,000 lawsuits by leukemia victims and their families hardly serve as a vindication of Three Mile Island. And let's not forget the partial meldown in Savannah, by the way. We can talk about cost rather than safety: at $3000-$4000 per kilowatt hour nuclear power is hardly cost-effective, given the current costs of $3-$4 per kilowatt hour by using natural gas. Not to mention the problem of waste disposal. To Tim Steadham from Virginia, in a follow-up volume entitled "The Enemy Within," the National Cancer Institute's statistics and methodology confirm Dr. Gould's--the same methodology used in THIS book--showing that breast cancer rates in areas surrounding nuclear power plants are as much as +30% higher than the national average. The authors do not claim that low-level radiation causes AIDS, by the way, only that it may contribute to the deterioration of the immune system. A closer reading of the book would help you understand the premise. Obfuscating the facts with your wild opinions about the methodology doesn't change the facts.