Radiation and Cancer in Idaho (Boise, Pocatello: live, store, pollution)
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All of us grew up cancer free and many of my friends have beautiful children cancer free all of them. My niece was born and raised in Idaho near Emmett with nary a problem. It is an old rumor, it is partially true. Idaho has a very interesting history and one that bears looking at with the first nuclear city of the world. I ate trout caught in Idaho a lot and never got sick from that, so have many generations of Idahoans.
Personal anecdotes are not facts. Epidemiological studies are.
Radiation is only one of many possible cancer causes. Since radon, a radioactive gas occurs naturally throughout much of the intermountain west, including Idaho, it's commonness makes it more dangerous than the old nuclear tests, I would think.
Idaho is also full of mercury, lead, other heavy metals of all kinds, toxins aplenty from forest fires ancient and recent, sulphur deposits, you name it. We still have tons of transformers cooled by PCB lining the alleys of our streets.
Many of our older homes and buildings have several coats of the finest white lead available.
I could go on, but you get the point, ukiyo-e. Choose to be all boogered up about radiation if you choose, but there are plenty of hazards, natural and man-made here as well, just as they are everywhere. Living requires risk.
Unfortunately, it was brought to our attention this past week that Emmett (the town we were hoping to land in) has extremely high cancer rates due to the radiation testing in the 50's and 60's. We're in our 30's, so I think we should steer clear of the majority of the problems that come with being raised in the area, but we do plan on having children and would hate to increase their chances for cancer and other radiation related diseases.
Does anyone know if the effects are still lingering around Idaho? Specifically, is it still in the ground water & soil, are there still increased risk rates for cancer in the state because of this? Also, it looks like there is a nuclear waste site about 70 miles south of Boise, which is a little concerning. I know the internet isn't always full or truthful information, so I would like to get some local opinions about this. We really love Idaho, but want to make sure it is safe before we buy a home there.
Thanks in advance for and information you can provide!
INEL is one of the USAs biggest radioactive environmental disasters.
In the 80s much of the highly radioactive plutonium waste from Rocky Flats and other nuclear production plants was brought to INEL and buried in very poor containers which are now rotting away in the desert. This is some of what has qualified INEL for the Superfund clean up money.
Idaho Falls is directly down wind from the radioactive dumping sites. Plutonium and other toxic radioactive waste that has been poorly disposed of out there gets blown in the winds and taken to Idaho Falls and Pocatello.
Also the snake river aquifer runs under the INEL dump sites and under SL-1 melt down site. All of the water coming into Bosie via the snake river is contaminated.
As usual the INEL has decent propaganda that tells the natives that radioactive waste is harmless and they eat it up and all hope for jobs with it. The Snake River Alliance is one of the few organizations that cares, the rest of the folks will just parrot what propaganda INEL feeds them.
People move to Boise and get more exercise and fresh air than before. Soon they start feeling better and healthier, finding farms and orchards with fresh food, drinking milk that hasn't sat in a vat for months, incorporating the Greenbelt into their weekly activities and getting strong, healthy bodies. Then, if something doesn't feel right it shows up if it is something. Most of Idaho residents are transplants, or the children of transplants, and the health problems they bring get found and treated here. We have highest rated (over the Cancer Centers of America) cancer diagnostic and research centers in the Northwest. That is the primary reason there are more reported cancers in Idaho. Emmett is safe. OMG, farmland, and all the foods have passed gov't inspections.
Yes, Atomic City and Arco have a history, and the mines are rumored to be toxic dumps of arsenic, lead, mercury and so forth from separation techniques. It's said that the ground more than the water is polluted because the miners used the water to bathe, drink and fish. Idaho's history is interesting.
I heard that before 1950 or so Eastern Oregon was a cattleman's paradise with acres of grazing land and that there was no desert except a thin band between Oregon and Idaho. The old locals said that between Baker City and the mountains down to John Day from Tri Cities were affected by radiation, who knows, it could be rumor or fact.
A fact is that the gov't tracked the radiation like teen girls track boy bands and made detailed reports that are public domain. A fact is also that some radiation studies aren't finished yet, so may still be classified. A fact is that generations have grown up in Idaho and so far I haven't heard of any three-eyed babies yet. You can buy a good Geiger Counter and check around. Radon is prevalent in Idaho.
Howdy! I researched this extensively before we moved here. Why, you may ask? Because I was a Nuclear Specialist for the Army and it interests me. Notice I said "interests" and not "scares". There is radiation everywhere. Under your house, in your house, in the woods, in the city. You are exposed to it constantly.
It is also cumulative. This means your body collects it and it really never goes away. The more you accumulate, the higher your chances for sickness, especially cancer. But it takes SOOOOOO much to get to that point. There are literally THOUSANDS of things far more dangerous to your health than radiation. It's not the boogeyman Hollywood makes it out to be. I have been exposed to it my entire life at a higher level than any of you will ever be. Of course, I keep in touch with all of my coworkers from my past life. Funny thing is, I don't know any of them who have had or currently have cancer.
Funny story: I had a client who wanted to meet me. When she gets to my office, she asks me if I have LED lights in my office. I told her that my entire office was retrofitted with LED lights because they are brighter and save energy. OH NO! She won't come inside! She then tells me that she had the LED lights taken out of her car she bought, and that the government put LED lights on interstate freeways as an effort to reduce the population through cancer. It was a plot called "Concept 21" or something like that. Something to do with the UN or whatever. Now, the entire time she is blabbering on about LED's, I'm looking at her. She is literally brown and leathery from either spending too much time in the sun with no sunscreen, or she used tanning beds. She is also chain smoking cigarettes. She sounds like one of the Party Girls from Mount Pilot .(That's an Andy Griffith Show reference. You may need to Google that).
Anyway, I'm standing there, listening to her thinking, "IT'S LED'S YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT?!?!?!?" Her chances of getting cancer from LED's is exponentially lower that from the sun or cigarettes!
So, what I am saying is, move where you want, don't smoke, wear sunscreen, and live a happy, worry free life!
I would have thought based on my previous moderate investigations of the State of Idaho and potential hot spots of contamination's being an issue, that parts near Idaho Falls where they previously did a lot of Atomic testing (such as the town of Atomic area) areas of extensive polluting mining such as Kellogg and Wallace where the contamination of water extended to this very day out into the beautiful Coeur d' Alene lake and more are probably the one's that come most to the forefront of my mind and concern. Mining that caused pollution to the water sources has of course occurred in many spot around the state but many if not most of those are from the past and not current sites. One that tends to get ignored sadly is the significant polluting of our wonderful Snake River by all the farm and cattle poop sent to or leaching into the river. Wish they could put a stop to that but $$$ talks apparently. One reason regardless of what I'm told about how wonderful our water is I have RO in my kitchen for drinking and a softener/filter on all water entering my home. Even the plumber that helped put the home together didn't dis me for this move.
This is all great info, thanks. There are threads here warning against purchasing a home/land in Idaho. It's seems many areas have health hazards in ID. Is the proposed smelter on the WA/ID border going to cause acid rain like I've read about? There is alot for sale in that location. How does one unfamiliar with Idaho go about finding safe land to build on? Or maybe not?
We lived in Meridian, Boise area for a total of 14 years starting in the mid 90's. We were shocked by the number of people we knew who had cancer including a close family member (nonsmoker, non drinker, avid skier) who was diagnosed at age 55 and passed 8 years ago. Many of the cancer victims were 20 years old and younger (leukemia). People will dispute this comment. I don't care, I know what I saw. We visited many friends in the hospital during the time we lived there. You can't argue with what I saw.
- Idaho on average has a cancer rate about 2% lower than the the US average.
- The highest single ID county rate (Shoshone) is only 11% above the national average.
- The county nearest to INL with any significant population, Butte County where the town of Arco is located, has a rate 2% Above the national average.
- The most populous county east of INL (downwind) is Bonneville, where Idaho Falls is located, and where most INL employees tend to live these days, has a cancer rate 4% below the national average.
- The county for Pocatello (Bannock), where some idiots are claiming is laced with uranium-filled mine tailings, has a rate 18% below the national average.
- Limited personal observations are of no use in characterizing this matter.
- This false claim about Idaho is just political.
- The radiation fall out map on page 3 may be 100% true and accurate but that does not say ANYTHING about cancer rates whatsoever.
- Ditto with mines and the Manhatten project sites; there is no automatic or direct connection between any of those and cancer rates. There are 10's of thousands of mine sites throughout the country, and yes, we have a closed uranium mine in Virginia; no one is freaking out about it.
The basic problem with the first post is no one yet knows why any cancer starts becoming cancer.
Every cancer yesterday was nothing but a clump of normal cells, but tomorrow, those cells suddenly changed and became so different they will kill us. Yet they are as much a part of our body as any other part. Cancer can strike a baby before it is even born, and can wait until another person is 90 years old before it strikes.
All we know is some cancers begin from environment, some from genetics, some from catching some other disease, some from physical injury, some from what we eat and/or ingest, and some for no apparent reason at all.
Is cancer an opportunistic disease from some failure or weakness within or from without the body? No one knows for sure. Is it parasitic disease that needs another disease to survive? Who knows?
All we know for sure is far, far less than what we don't know. We don't know why other creatures develop cancers we never catch, or why some creatures never have cancer. We don't even know much about the creatures that almost always develop cancer.
We don't even know why cancer cells are immortal. They are; as long as the cells are nourished, they won't ever die.
We know how to kill some of the forms cancer takes, but not all of them, and no one knows why it takes on different forms. And even though we do know how to kill some cancer, killing it is never certain. Why one person lives and another dies is still a mystery.
Cancer has always afflicted humans for as long as humanity has existed. It likely afflicted the dinosaurs, and all the mammals that came before us, all the fish and birds and reptiles, plants and trees, and God only knows what else.
It isn't called The Emperor Of All Maladies for nothing. Humans have been fighting cancer in an organized way for well over 3,000 years, and we have eliminated many diseases that were once even more lethal, but we really haven't learned much at all about how it starts, stops, or lives and dies within us.
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