Post 4 - Navajo Mines, Uranium Epidemic

Uranium for the most part is what jump started the race to obtain nuclear arms. Most of this uranium was mined from the Navajo reservation. Nearly 15,000 or more people, about one-fourth of them Native Americans,were laborers under the U.S. Vanadium Corporation, an accessory of Union Carbide, Kerr-McGee and other mining establishments in the area's mines and mills. Depending massively on consultation with remaining extant Native American miners, Peter H. Eichstaedt's, If You Poison Us, eagerly records the unfortunate calamity that uranium removal brought upon the Navajo people. 

Public health specialists had voiced worry about the possible aftermath that exposure to radiation would have on the miners. These men labored in mines with little to no fresh air flow. and mill workers often return home from a day of work layered with concentrated uranium.  "while the mine operators and government officials were well informed about the health hazards that workers in the mines and mills were exposed to daily, the miners were kept in the dark." (Eichstaedt)

Eventually, over a span of time, the federal government ratified safety principles for the mines, but by that time it the miners had already been exposed to radiation. The National Security's will to get uranium, no matter what was at stake (and note that they understood that a nice percentage of the those who were affected were Native American) and mining companies' befitting from milling and extracting uranium in the most least expensive way, caused the postponement in bringing about equipment and rules for the safety of the workers. But the mining organizations vigorously put forth effort to terminate the making guidelines that were practical. As a result, workers consumed radiation levels, sometimes multi-thousands of times then what regulations stated, that caused cancers and a variety of illnesses in a majority of the workers. 

The U.S. Congress, after a couple decades, passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), this act meant that the Justice Department was to create a $100 million trust fund. The Bush administration was initially opposed to the bill, but after being  the hassled by the Republican senators, most of whom where from Western states, Bush signed the bill. But even after that major break through there were problems with the white miners receiving their money before the Navajo.