Gender, Radiation, and Earth Day
/Yesterday was Earth Day: Healing of Our Planet is Our Biggest Concern
By Maggie Gundersen
In our ninth installment in our Nuclear Spring Series, I wanted to reflect on when Earth Day first became a thing in 1970. I was in college, and it felt so hopeful. Later, when I taught high school, all faculty members spent part of Earth Day working with students to clean up waste along highways, support an environmental improvement project at the high school, or joined in a local community Earth Day event. Joining with students and pulling together to help the environment felt even more hopeful.
Now that 50 years have passed, we are no longer talking about the joy of Earth Day. Instead, our planet is immersed in a climate emergency in which the future looks even scarier than ever.
What did you do for your Earth Day 2021?
At Fairewinds Energy Education, we spent Earth Day preparing for two major upcoming presentations, working on our ongoing Nuclear Spring Series, and participating in two Zoom conferences. Just another busy day as all of us at Fairewinds focus on the increased push by the nuke and weapons industries to increase their hold on federal monies and delay implementing renewable and sustainable energy sources.
Why are renewables the right choice now? They are safe for the planet. Sustainable energy sources do not have the hidden costs underlying nuclear power since the only costs of nukes that we see are the construction and operation costs.
Children’s art for Earth Day.
The industry and its industry captured regulators in federal government never evaluate: uranium mining, fuel fabrication, the massive cost overruns of constructing nukes, the decade long delays, the flaws in the designs that cause redo after redo, the radioactive leaks at every site in the country, and the radioactivity that is emitted daily from atomic power reactors. Finally, there is no sound methodology for storing nuke waste and no good program for cleaning up all these terribly contaminated sites that give us a legacy of toxic radioactive contamination for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.
So, I ask you again, what did you do on Earth Day? Some of my neighbors did projects in our community garden, and others had no choice but to go to work and focus on work after many had worked remotely for more than one year during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
This week, in honor of Earth Day, we at Fairewinds also viewed another major Humanity Rising video presentation discussing the impact of radiation exposure on human life. Mary Olson, who has worked with and known Arnie and me for more than 20 years, created the concept for this particular panel. We have also known and worked with Cindy Folkers for more than 20 years and Chuck Johnson for more than ten years. These people are incredible scientists and researchers. Tina Cordova and Victoria Moore are victims of major radioactive releases. Their personal stories detailing what they, their families, and friends endured will take your breath away.
You can watch the Humanity Rising video below:
We have embedded the video here and sincerely hope you will watch it as soon as possible. We can assure you that this is not a boring piece of scientific information. All the participants put the face of the human perspective on their work. These people are the advocates you want on your side to be sure that these atomic and nuclear disasters stop harming people. You want your congressional reps, senators, and other government officials to be well-informed about the risks of radioactivity released into our environment, rather than receiving the images and flawed projections created by atomic power and nuclear weapons lobbyists.
Questions about nuke power come to us from all over the world, yet there are many that we cannot answer because they discuss the health impacts of radiation exposure. The Humanity Rising presentation posted above is chilling yet understandable with sound scientific information about radiation exposure, especially because two well-known radiation biologists are part of the conversation. This presentation will also touch your heart and let you know how much is seriously wrong in the world as radioactivity has marked so many with its lethal exposure. You will also be able to see and hear the experience of two different women whose lives and the lives of their families and friends were devastated by radiation exposure unleashed by the United States government on its citizens without their knowledge or permission. After a brief centering introduction from Jim Garrison, founder of Humanity Rising, Chuck Johnson (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) hosts the panel discussion and technical slides. In order of appearance, the participants are: Tina Cordova (Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium), Mary Olson (Gender+Radiation Impact Project), Cindy Folkers (Beyond Nuclear), and Victoria Moore (Victoria Moore Fine Art). For your convenience, we have placed the individual bios at the bottom of this post.
Critical comments and insights
Mary Olson, founder and acting director of GRIP, is a biologist with a three-decade career working for better radioactive waste policies in the U.S. In Mary’s portion of the presentation, she discusses the convention of Reference Man in radiation evaluation. The U.S., which created the concept of Reference Man, continues to lag the rest of the world by continuing to use it in most U.S. radiation decisions. In its rush to proceed with atoms at all cost, the U.S. federal government left out physical differences in the bodies of women and children in radiation exposure laws since the founding of the two atomic industries: weapons and power. At GRIP, Mary seeks to bring those differences to the forefront of the discussion surrounding the effects of radiation on women and children and not only on the male body.
All scientific data proves that radiation exposure is cumulative – meaning that many small exposures will add up to a larger dose as that radiation is internalized in people’s bodies. As a mother and grandmother, one of Mary’s quotes touched my heart. Mary said, “In Australia, some people say it this way: “It [Radiation] breaks the stories our bodies hold that keep us healthy. Damaged stories can be passed on to our children.”
I truly hope that you, our Fairewinds followers and supporters, will watch (or listen) to this latest Humanity Rising presentation and let it inspire you as it has inspired all of us.
Bios & Information from Humanity Rising Presentation
Chuck Johnson (moderator) serves as Nuclear Program Director for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a global federation of medical professionals in over 60 affiliates worldwide and winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in bridging the Cold War gap between US and Soviet doctors and their colleagues around the world. IPPNW’s clear message, which was adopted by US and Soviet leaders, is “nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.” Chuck is responsible for coordinating the federation’s advocacy work on the medical and humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. He is currently serving as administrative co-chair of the International Steering Group, the governing body of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize and lead NGO in support of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force on 22 January 2021. Prior to joining IPPNW in 2017, Chuck was a long-time leader in national, state, and regional coalitions in the US, and an advocate at the UN in New York, opposing the development of nuclear energy and supporting nuclear weapons abolition.
Tina Cordova is Co-Founder of Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium; Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a seventh generation native New Mexican born and raised in the small town of Tularosa in south central New Mexico. In 2005 Tina co-founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC) with the late Fred Tyler. The mission of the TBDC is to bring attention to the negative health effects suffered by the unknowing, unwilling, uncompensated, innocent victims of the first nuclear blast on earth that took place at the Trinity site in South Central New Mexico. Ultimately, the goal is the passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments to bring much needed health care coverage and compensation to the People of New Mexico who have suffered with the health effects of overexposure to radiation since 1945. Tina is a cancer survivor having been diagnosed with Thyroid cancer when she was 39 years old.
In her role as an advocate on behalf of the TBDC she has testified before the US Senate judiciary Committee and the Committee on Indian Affairs. Tina has also been a guest lecturer at the University of New Mexico and at events all over the State of New Mexico communicating the history of the New Mexico Downwinders. Throughout 2020, Tina was invited to participate in webinars all over the world as people reflected on the 75th Anniversary of the Trinity Test. Tina has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree from New Mexico Highlands University where she majored in Biology and minored in Chemistry.
Mary Olson is the founder, and acting Director of Gender and Radiation Impact Project (GRIP) a non-government, educational organization based in North Carolina, USA. Originally a student of Biology and Life Science, Olson’s work on radiation is rooted in a three-decade career as an educator and advocate for better radioactive waste policy in the United States. During that work, a novel question was posed to Olson, on whether biological sex is a factor in radiation harm. In 2011 Olson undertook an independent gender analysis of the data reported in the US National Academy of Science (NAS) report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, which is primarily from the A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her findings were striking and resulted in a series of presentations in United Nations proceedings, including the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons in 2014, the 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and in 2017 during the negotiation phase of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Olson was also hosted to present the findings that radiation is more harmful to females compared to males, by the International Committee of the Red Cross both in 2016 and 2020. She has also presented at Gender Summits (EU) in 2016 and 2018.
Cindy Folkers is the Radiation and Health Hazards Specialist at Beyond Nuclear. She advocates for science-based radiation regulations that are more protective of public health. Her focus is on the disproportionate impacts radiation exposure causes to women, children and pregnancy. She has written numerous articles and essays, and given presentations, on how this impact from nuclear weapons and power technology is minimized or ignored altogether, even as society is making world-altering decisions about what energy sources should be used to confront a changing climate. Cindy hold a degree in Environmental Science from The Johns Hopkins University.
Victoria Moore is an artist, author and activist whose entire life has been influenced by atomic and thermonuclear testing in the Pacific Proving Grounds. She is the daughter of US Naval Chief Petty Officer Moore on the Command ship USS ESTES, designed specifically for the Joint Task Forces, where he served from her departure to the Marshall Islands in 1951 until his forced early retirement in 1962 due to medical complications of repeated ionizing radiation exposures. Victoria was conceived in 1955 when she was considered quite “hot” from protracted and repeated exposures both Op IVY & CASTLE. She was deemed an ‘at risk’ pregnancy and birth. She was somewhat monitored as a child and often in the company of her father on bases surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Born under the veil of silence in a “Q Cleared” officer’s home required strict protocols and mostly operated on a ‘need to know’ basis. At 23, Victoria required a full hysterectomy due to ill-defined organ failures.
