As Kevin Kamps says in the 2023 documentary Downwind, “Downwinders are people who live downwind, downstream, up the food chain, down the generations from these radioactive exposures [from] nuclear weapons testing fallout.”

We are inviting you to experience Eric J. Garcia’s black-and-white drawing “Generational Blast” and read his story here.

 

Image courtesy of Eric J. Garcia

 

After attending the Downwinders Consortium at the Trinity Site in New Mexico in 2022, Eric wrote about discovering that his family members are downwinders. His parents are from Torreon in Torrance county.

“If we look at the map that demarcates the fallout zone, a huge portion of Torrance county was hit and even higher level of radiation actually hit the Estancia valley, the ‘pinto bean capital of the world.’ My grandpa Fidel died of cancer. My dad’s oldest brother Abe, died of cancer. My dad and his other brothers Sunny and Milton have had cancer. I had always known this tragic part of New Mexican history but it wasn’t until I went to the Downwinder’s demonstration did I make the horrific personal revelation/connection.” - Eric J. Garcia, graphic artist with Justseeds Artists' Cooperative

Image courtesy of Eric J. Garcia

You can also check out the new documentary, Downwind, an “expose of the United States’ disregard for everyone living downwind” of the over 900 nuclear tests in Mercury, Nevada. “Downwind exposes an infamous, harrowing chapter of US history and the ongoing health consequences for downwinder communities including the marginalized Western Shoshone whose sacred land - by treaty - is still restricted with the resumption of nuclear testing ‘under debate.’” - Downwind description on Apple TV

The Atomic Heritage Foundation shares: “In the United States, Downwinder communities exist primarily in the Pacific Northwest and intermountain range between the Cascades and the Rockies, in states like Nevada, Utah, Washington, Idaho, and New Mexico. Downwinders also exist at former Manhattan Project sites including, but not limited to, Oak Ridge, Fernald, and Rocky Flats, where airborne radiation was released offsite.”

High Country News reports that under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA): “Currently, ‘downwinders’ only qualify for compensation — and acknowledgment — if their exposure occurred in limited counties in Nevada, Utah and Arizona downwind from the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. detonated over 1,000 nuclear bombs — 100 of them aboveground — between 1951 and 1992.” Since 2005, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium has been calling for the expansion of RECA to cover New Mexicans living downwind of the Trinity Site. 

Other downwinder communities near nuclear facilities around the country, such as the Hanford Nuclear Site, struggle to get their health impacts acknowledged. You can learn more in Trisha Pritikin’s book, The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice. “At the center of The Hanford Plaintiffs are the oral histories of twenty-four people who joined In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation litigation, the consolidated action that sought recognition of, and recompense for, the grievous injury knowingly caused by Hanford.”

Here are a few resources to learn more. Let us know if you have any favorite resources and we can add them:

  • Downwinders by Eric J. Garcia (article)

  • What downwinders inherited at Trinity by Sean J. Patrick Carney (article)

  • What ‘Oppenheimer’ Doesn’t Tell You About the Trinity Test by Tina Cordova (article)

  • Downwind, directed by Douglas Brian Miller and Mark Shapiro (film)

  • No ‘Oppenheimer’ fanfare for those caught in first atomic bomb’s fallout by Karin Brulliard and Samuel Gilbert (article)

  • The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice by Trisha Pritikin (book)

  • National Park Service overview of Downwinders, (webpage) impacts to people and communities downwind of weapons testing and nuclear facilities releasing radioactive material. Includes links to learn more about the Green Run, Karen Dorne Steele (environmental journalist known for breaking the news about Hanford nuclear experiments and health impacts), Trinity Test Downwinders.